First victim customer of my blog critiques is Not Just Cricket
Initial Impressions
- Nice 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 main
- No popular posts but there are archives going back to February 2005
- No pager link to navigate to older posts from the homepage
- RSS button tucked away in bottom left navigation
My advice
- Orient the reader – within seconds you need to tell the reader where they are, what it is about, who you are, what they should be reading and how it will benefit/entertain them.
- Encourage subscription – don’t hide your RSS button away, put it up where it can be seen and give them the option of email signup (easy done with copy and paste code from feedburner)
- Show off your good stuff – Give new readers a sample of what they can expect from your blog. If you don’t have any representative articles create some. You need some flagship content 🙂
- Get out, connect and mingle – Open up the blog to be more outward facing, the more you link out and open up the more links you will get in. Encourage and welcome comments. Start discussions.
- Consider spinning-off blogs – I realise there are diverse interests represented, which has an appeal, but I think there are topics that could be given their own blog, Cricket especially. Focus helps attract audience.
I think that is enough to be going on with. In summary I found it a nicely written blog with some very interesting directions it could be taken, like many personal blogs, perhaps too many topics. In particular I think the cricket content could be expanded and attract a sizeable audience.