Critique of this blog February 4, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : 31daychallenge, distributed research, blogs and community, tools , trackbackNing Group
I went to the better blog Ning group which is kind of a community of practice for some bloggers, and asked for a critique of my blog, from the point of view of a new reader. It’s one of the tasks in Darren Rowse’s 31 day challenge. Then I hid under the duvet and waited to see what, if anything, might arise. Christine Martell responded with a screencast which is a great way to review any website.
Screencast
The screencast is hosted at screencast.com which means I can’t at present embed it here, so here’s an ordinary text link to go and listen to Christine as she explores this blog and remarks upon it, followed by my response below:
http://www.screencast.com/t/GrQpa0kXhC
Response
Many thanks for the screencast Christine, you gave me several things to think about and work on there. That was a great way to communicate about a blog’s functionality and hopefully took up a bit less of your time than typing up a critique. You also hit the nail exactly on the head straight away by exposing the central problem that I’m grappling with - the combination of several seemingly unrelated themes or niches into one blog. The only thing that ties them altogether is the common author, myself. So I have diverse target audiences, apart from the very small audience that may be interested in me, friends and family so to speak. So I’m always trying to isolate the categories and pages into slices that can be consumed on their own. What I discovered from Google Analytics is that certain individual posts can gain an audience of their own, coming from the search engines and then moving onwards. This is in fact how I’ve started to derive a small income from the blog, to recoup expenses, through some individual posts in the archive. But a series of individual disconnected posts does not a blog make. Which is why I set myself the goal of increasing RSS subscriptions and joined in the current 31daystoabetterblog group, to see if I can bring it all together a bit more. One thing I’m considering is to see if I can provide a selection of RSS feeds for the main categories. That’s better than having separate blogs, although I do have some of those as well!
Action points from the critique:
- Explain Social objects at the beginning of the jump-off page
- Tweak the RSS “Full” panel ( built in to theme)
- Explore moving the comments link ( also theme)
- Keep grappling with the challenge of serving unrelated niches
Is it time to consider changing themes? Probably not in the middle of all this other activity.
Thanks again Christine for giving great feedback.
Oh, and I’ve also wondered about the feeling of being ‘watched’ and spotlighted by mybloglog as we surf around each other’s blogs, not at all anonymously. I suppose we are assumed to have taken that on board when we join that service. I’ve tried three of these type of things and ditched the other two. I also upgraded mybloglog for the better stats, which I find very useful in combination with Google Analytics.
Now over to other readers:
What did you think of Christine’s screencast and my response? Can you help me understand better some of the issues raised, or maybe add your own points please? I promise not to turn it into a blog all about blogging, there are enough of those already.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
Hi Andy, I have been meaning to pop by for some time and do a ‘new reader’ audit. I am relatively new to blogging, so am not sure how useful my feedback is.
I really like the look of your blog. Its clean, spacious, and uncluttered. There is a RSS feed and search facility. The only thing I would say is that I find the font a little small. Other than that, I really like it. cheers Sarah
Hi, couldn’t watch the screencast. Requested for different flash version..