Shine's Woman of the Year (Community): Brett Blumenthal

Any experienced blogger will tell you that blogging is easy, but writing a consistently good blog can be hard. To be a great blogger you need determination, commitment, and a love for what you're doing. This is why I have the highest amount of respect for our users who are dedicated to Shine and blog here on a regular basis. To be blunt, keeping up a good blog takes work!

There's one blogger who's a stand-out amongst our users and makes blogging look easy. Her name is Brett Blumenthal and she's our pick for Shine's Community Woman of the Year.



Some of you may know Brett; if you frequent Healthy Living you've probably read her many posts there. For those seeing Brett's name for the first time, here are just a few reasons why Brett is so deserving of this title, and why we unanimously admire her here at Shine:

• Did you know that Brett was one of our first users to blog on Shine? Her debut post "Stevia: Finally, a sweetener that isn't bad for you" went up on April 29, 2008. At last check, Brett has 106 live blog posts on Shine, an average of 4 postings per week.
• Brett has two - count 'em! - two posts that were selected for Yahoo! front page promotion: "Why losing weight is so hard and gaining weight is so easy", and "Natural sweeteners that can replace sugar". An article has to pass some pretty strict editorial hurdles to even be considered for front page promotion, so you can imagine what a cool accomplishment this is.
• Brett's posts get viewed so many times that she routinely makes our daily Top 10 list of posts with the most page views (web speak for eyeballs).
• The editors often feature Brett's posts on Shine because they are timely, informative, and always well-written (all of you grammar-challenged bloggers take note!). This means her post is moved up from the raw feed and placed in "editor's picks".

But the title of "Shine User of the Year" isn't just about popularity and page views. The fact is that Brett is simply a great blogger. Her blogging style is concise and has a sense of purpose, but most importantly, she believes in Shine blogging tip #1: "Blog about what you're most passionate about". Brett writes about health and wellness topics that are relevant, valuable, at times provocative, but always in tune with our users' needs. Lastly, Brett embodies the qualities of a conscientious blogger by revisiting her posts long after they've been posted to read comments and answer questions from fellow users. This encourages conversation, which is what Shine is all about.

It takes a lot of character and enthusiasm to keep a good blog going, and this is why we applaud Brett for being our first Shine Community Woman of the Year. From all of us here on Shine, congratulations, Brett!