I have become a regular reader of Chris Garnett's excellent site which is full of tips about blogging and how to make a business out of it - check it out here.
I was particulalry interested to read some time ago the critique he wrote about Doug Scott's blog and it really led me to think a bit harder about what LE BLOG DU BARON was for and how it could be improved.
I will quote hereafter each one of the 10 tips listed by Chris and how I believe this blog fares against them:
1. The blog is unfocused, this comes across visually, in the content, and also navigation. While it is obviously something of a personal blog, which could have its own ROI, I think Doug needs to decide who and what the blog is for. Who is your perfect reader? How can you delight them enough to bring friends?
Clearly the most important point for me and I'm sure it is no coincidence if Chris puts it first. What is this blog for ? From my viewpoint, it is rather simple: I write this blog because I want as many people as possible to know about BARON ZERO, the music and what it stands for. This is why the first thing that happens when you arrive on this page is for the music to play. And since I'm convinced that at the stage where I am, building awareness is more important than building a business, I want everybody to download the music and grow into it.
2. Right now the blog is using an off the shelf design which is more suited to a ringtone affiliate. Lose the generic smiley faces header and build something unique.
Hopefully a good point for me. Building a unique territorry has always been an essential aspect for BARON ZERO, not just in terms of image but also to reflect the beliefs and values I see as important.
3. Again the blog name and tagline do not offer much idea of what the blog is about. Within 15 seconds your blog has to tell the reader what is in it for them. If your reader answers “So what?” then you are not trying hard enough.
This is one comment that had me think quite hard and I'm still not sure what is the best way forward. Beyond (obviously great) music, I also see this blog as a way to share some of the trials and errors that I'm going through in the hope they might be of help to fellow musicians. I toyed with the idea of changing the subtitle on the banner to "The singer of BARON ZERO on how to make it in music after 40" but finally decided to keep the current banner. Good idea, bad idea ? Let me know what you think on this one.
4. Build an About page. Who are you? What is the blog about? Why is that beneficial and important? Why should I care? Why should I listen to you?
Fair enough. This is something that is obviusly missing and I'll get a crack at it in the near future.
5. There are a couple of redundant widgets in the side bar, I would lose the Links and month archives. Much better to link to people in context from posts rather than have a blog roll. Of course you might want to link to your own stuff, but it doesn’t need to be at the top.
6. Categories are for readers to navigate, not your own sense of organization. Seems to be an ever growing list of categories. Seven is more than enough, and you never really want to have an “other” category.
Agree on both these points which led me to rething completly the side bars. What do I want people to do once they got to the page ? 2 things: download to the music and subscribe. Which is why I went for the biggest RSS button I could find immediately to the right side of this post.
7. Where is your best content? Have a most popular list, a “beginners start here”, personal faves, or a recommended list. Of course I recommend you have some flagship content
Again a good tip which I have tried to take into account. In addition I think Chris' idea of "flagship content" can help build more traffic; I have started to leverage ZEROCAST just in that way but we'll talk about it in more dteails some other time.
8. I list my own name as author because I want to rank for my own name. If you are not bothered about that, and you are the only author, it’s probably not necessary to attribute your posts on the homepage. A box in the sidebar and in the RSS footer would suffice.
9. Using “More” tags on the homepage is a matter of preference, and some suggest can help with SEO, but you need to make the “Read More” very prominent. Also, make sure you also provide full feed in the RSS. Talking about feeds, move the subscription options to the top, allow subscription via email, and consider having feeds for just the juicy Aff stuff separate from the more personal/fun content?
I'm personally not really in favour of the "read more" approach, which is also due to the fact I try to keep my posts short and snappy (except for this one ?).
10. My favorite headline so far is “Leading stupid people to click“. Inflammatory, compelling and great advice. It wouldn’t work on my blog but suits your tone of voice and brand perfectly. More like that, please.
Great headline. I could do with a bit more of those !
That's it for LE BLOG DU BARON: how does your blog compare against Chris Garnett's tips ?
