The Blog Review Connection

[Michele Martin]

I know that a lot of members of the community would love to get feedback on their blogs. I also know that a lot of people here would be willing to give that feedback. I'm setting up this forum to help people connect with one another specifically for a blog audit/review session.

If you're interested in offering your services as a blog reviewer, I'm going to suggest that you leave your name and an email link, along with the time period for when you're willing to do a review.

If you want someone to review your blog, leave your name, a link to your blog and the time frame for doing the review.

Hopefully we can start facilitating the connection process this way.

[Luke]

I enjoyed your blog quite a lot - I find your content to be fresh and interesting.

I guess my main suggestion would be to include more links - to places that you found information, and especially to previous entries.

For example, I would have loved to see a link to the 'A Way To Solve All Problems' post at the end of your 'More on Visual Problem Solving' post.

My only other suggestion would be to break it up a little. You tend to have large paragraphs of text, and while it's great that there's that content there, I find it a little hard to read - I have to really concentrate. I like smaller paragraphs, more line spaces.

That's just my personal opinion though. Overall, yours is a good blog. I've bookmarked it and will come back once a day. After about a week, I will assess whether or not it will stay in my bookmarks (that's what I do for all blogs I read) - whether or not I find it interesting or relevant to me.

[Michele Martin]

Hi Luke--have you thought about using RSS feeds and a reader to keep track of your favorite blogs, rather than keeping them in bookmarks? If you aren't familiar with RSS, I'd encourage you to check out this quick little video, which does a great job of explaining it. I find that it makes me much more efficient in following various blogs and areas of interest.

[Luke]

Hi Michele,

Yes, I am familiar with RSS. Your question has actually prompted me to write a blog post.

Why I don't like RSS.

Thanks for the tip though!

[Michele Martin]

Love the post, Luke! I completely get why you don't use RSS and I think you bring up a pretty interesting point, actually. Thanks for that other perspective!

[Luke]

If you liked the post, you should comment me on my blog, so other people reading the post can see that you liked it. Besides, it makes me feel much more warm and fuzzy when I get a blog comment (seeing as I am currently experiencing a comment drought).

There you go - another reason not to use RSS with blogs - makes it more of an effort to comment the blogger. :P

[Michele Martin]

You're absolutely right, Luke--I was actually contemplating doing a post on my own blog about it, so that's why I didn't comment yet. :-)

[Luke]

Haha - sorry, I got in a bit too early. I'd love all that attention though, so go ahead, if you'd like to. :D

[Luke]

I feel so loved right now. :P

[Claudia]

Wow! Thanks, Luke. This is very helpful. More links and more images are definitely on my list of To Dos. Funny enough, I hadn't really thought about linking to my own posts.

One of my strategies for breaking up the long paras is to use headlines for each para so someone can skim. Does that help at all? I know I've done that on some posts, but not on others.

Thanks again! I plan to look at your blog tonight.

[Michele Martin]

Hi Claudia--subheads will definitely help break things up visually for readers, who tend to skim. And one of the best things I got out of participating in the 31 Day Challenge was the need to link to your own posts as a way to drive people deeper into your blog. Of course, you also want to link to other bloggers, but I think that sometimes we forget that have great content on our own blogs to link back to!

[Christine Martell]

Here you go Claudia:
http://www.screencast.com/t/fYa10N60

Also...where are you from? I like to see that on an about page also. You'll see this group as an example, we are from around the world.

[Claudia]

Hey Christine,
Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. I haven't had a chance to look at the screencast yet. But that is just the coolest idea. Is the screencast software free? If not, how much does it cost? A few days ago, I happened to look at your screencast for someone else's blog, and I thought it was such a great way to give this feedback.

Anyway, I plan to look over all these comments in a day or so. I'm just VERY slow! And overwhelmed! Does anyone else feel overwhelmed by the huge volume of things to do with blogging and social networks?