This time, the turn has come to the blog Provocation of Mine(d). The author – Rebecca – has finally decided to make an assessment of her blog by the outsider – me. I hope you can use my points to anything.
S:
- good writing style
- you are consequently personal
- you seem to have a great and loyal group of visitors – assessing on the basis of comments received
W:
- the DESIGN is absolutely DREADFUL! It kills completely your personal approach, it’s not only the visitor that is lost in your template – you are also feeling uncomfortable, I can bet on it! The template is not only boring, but also extremely wide, which makes a huge clash with the intimacy of your thoughts. It’s like reading a poem at the football stadion without a microphone…
- the header is also much too big, much too formal.
- the name of your blog is a bit confusing – but definitely remarkable. Bt the risk is that the visitor who would like to comeback at the site will forget the last letter of yor url (d or e??)
- the site is loading extremely slowly – guess some plugins/widgets you implemented at the site – you definitely do not need so much of them!
O:
- I think that due to the fact that your strong side is writing, the basics are solid for continue with a good quality blogging. You’re probably right that you need to describe yourself a bit better, become recognizable, remarkable because one or more features which are characteristic for you only: your sense of humor, writing from the woman/daughter/pet-lover/democrat/fishing person/etc, etc.
The simplest and most logical would be focusing on PROVOCATION – as your title indicates. As for now, it’s too little of it there. Some blogs simply take a very concrete approach starting each of their posts with the same noun/verb/etc, see e.g. http://gosmelltheflowers.com/.
Those are the suggestions only – just trying to make you understand my point of being a blogger others remember for something special.
T:
- it’s always hard to say what are the threats for a blog – in the Web where all other blogs are potential threats. Your very own threat would be the visitors who will never comeback due to the unfriendly design.
Overall, I think that you have the basics of a good blogger: your great writing style and the loyal readers. Those 2 points are crucial for blogging I believe, so all that I have ben writing about here – no matter how harsh it was – is at the 2nd place.
Wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you grow!
Thank you!
I knew I needed someone who didn’t know me, who wasn’t biased to give me some hard line truths about my site. I haven’t liked my header for awhile and will change that asap. I’ll see what I can do about the size of page, or perhaps even look for an entirely new template. I thank you for both the time you afforded my site and your input. It is very much appreciated.
Rebecca
You’re welcome! I really hope you can use my critics to something. I am not sure what platform your blog is based on but I know that it’s possible to move every blog to Wordpress – and there you have a mulititude of templates to choose from, some of them truly gorgeous. You may also consider this solution.
All the best