What do most people do when they start a blog? They just start writing.This isn't the wrong thing to do. Actually there is a lot to be said for just getting on and doing it.So what is the problem?You get whatever audience you attract.Lots of people are happy with any audience they can get for their personal blog, well unless you get complete weirdo stalkers, but mostly it is fine. What though if you have a particular goal in mind with your blogging?Perhaps instead of your ideal prospects you … [Read more...]

A bit of a different blog to critique this time. Unlike my other blog critiques this is a blog attached to a network management product e-commerce store. Anyone with a corporate blog of any variety will likely be familiar with the challenges involved.The OPENXTRA Blog was launched in November 2006 judging from the archives. There is a fair amount of news content and some posts with a modicum of insight into the inner workings of the company. Network management is a well-geeky topic so there is … [Read more...]

Todays blog critique is the small business blog "Clever Start". Small business, or SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises) as they are often called in the UK, is a huge market. Anyone who can do well in this space should have a decent audience, and businesses nowadays need to be online which ought to help also. The downside of course is there are a ton of people blogging the niche, after all every pro blog, freelancer, affiliate, microstock photographer, etc is a small business. Covering the whole of … [Read more...]

"Diogenes" has asked me to respond to the following questions. Now, I don't know who the questioner is but his or her questions are interesting enough that I thought I would answer them.What is a blog to you?Blogs are for me all about conversation. This is why I get so annoyed at fantastic bloggers who turn off comments. You put your thoughts out there, people respond and your initial ideas are shaped and polished. I have gone on record enough with my usual answer that I fear repeating myself. … [Read more...]

Like most bloggers with a reasonable amount of readership I get some interesting comments. Most of my most ... um ... colourful come after a guest post or mention on anothers blog. One theme that seems to come up a lot is that I should "get a life" and related but subtly different, people earning money blogging is somehow lazy ("get a real job") or even unethical (the "all blogs are spam" argument).I don't see how. The arguments are not well explained. Is the implication that if you don't lift … [Read more...]

Several people have pointed me to the Guardian piece about blogs by Victor Keegan. Sorry guys but you won't find me getting hot under the collar, I don't jump up and down defending blogs any more (I got that out of my system years ago). Here, since people asked, is my (hopefully calm) thoughts.If you read the article the points seem to be that blogging is mostly a spectator sport and that if you want to communicate with a peer group you might be better off with social networking. I agree.Some … [Read more...]

I have been going through my emails since arriving back in the UK, only 165 left. One of the messages prompted me to write this short post. The message included the phrase "I guess though he must be right, after all his blog is huge". I realised reading this I might be partly to blame for misleading this blogger. Over on Problogger I wrote a couple of posts looking at what we can learn from successful blogs. You see, just because someone has a popular blog does not mean they are doing all the … [Read more...]

Todays critique is Garrett Albright's Ray Gun Robot which has the tagline "Tech with Personality" - a good start!Right away I have a feel for what the blog will be about. Great stuff. I know the name of the bloggerThe domain and blog name is catchy"Tech" helps define a target audience, the "Personality" aspect tells us it is not going to be "dry"OK, let's browse around and see what we can find ..Initial ImpressionsAlready mentioned the name and orientation, but also there is an "About & … [Read more...]

First victim customer of my blog critiques is Not Just CricketInitial ImpressionsNice template. Tiny font. Does look pretty but people with not great eyesight would appreciate a larger font size?"Not Just Cricket" ... sports blog?No "about"? No "Author" ... no name listed that I could find ...Looking down the categories, quite a mix. Personal blog?Posts on the homepage seem to be currently about template changes in the mainNo popular posts but there are archives going back to February 2005No … [Read more...]

A few people have asked me to explain Trackbacks. I can understand the confusion, it is one of those things people assume you just know about but seem to be important somehow.Trackbacks are ways for one site to notify another about an update. SixApart, the people behind Typepad and MovableType, invented Trackbacks as a way for blogs to inform another when it has been referenced in a post. A trackback consists of a link and optionally a snippet of text. On many blogs you do not have to enable … [Read more...]