WEB REVIEWERS

07 Apr

Building a Blog - Part 1 - Planning

by Web-Reviews.com, at 3:18 pm
Tips & Advice | permalink | rss

 
 
The single fastest growing segment of the Internet is blogs. With a quick search you can find a blog that focuses on just about any topic, from making money online to mixed martial arts all the way to maintaining aquariums. Everyday hundreds of people join the Blogosphere and most of the new bloggers will become disheartened and quit blogging in short order.This 4 part blog series is intended to aid the new blogger in setting up and designing a blog that will be successful and unique. The 4 parts will be 1. Getting Started, 2. The Set Up, 3. Customization, and 4. Branding and Advertising

Building a Blog

 

PART 1 – Planning

When starting a blog planning is essential to success. A potential blogger must first ask themselves 3 questions, and the answers to these questions will help build a long term success plan. Write the questions down and answer them.

The first question a potential blogger must ask their self is “why do I want to start a blog?” Do you want to start a blog to make money? Do you want to start a blog to share your opinion? Is your blog going to be your artistic outlet to the world? 

Next question is “What subject do I want to write about?” Finding a niche to write about is important. Blogs that discuss anything and everything are very rarely successful. It is important to have focus and it is important to keep your blog in focus.

Now that you know why you are starting the blog and what niche you are going to blog about “What am I going to write about in this niche?” 

Finaly, “What is going to make my blog unique?” There are tons of blogs on the Internet right now, what is going to make yours unique?

Now that you have these questions answered it is time to put the answers to work to build a plan. I will give an example of a blog I built for a specific subject that has become quite popular in its niche.

Here where my answers:

Why do I want to start a blog: To share my experiences traveling around Florida.
What subject do I want to write about: Florida Travel
What will I write about: My personal experiences traveling around Florida on the weekends.
What will make my blog unique: Personal experience with recommendations and reviews that are not sales pitches.

I sat down with the information above and built a plan around them. I already travel around Florida on the weekends so that part of the plan was covered, but I planned to document everything I did, review places I went, and share my opinion on everything I did.

The blog has focus and is unique in the travel related blog niche. Now using the same 4 questions I answered sit down and formulate a plan for you blog. In the next part of this blog series we will discuss setting up the actual blog.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!
 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

no comments

01 Apr

All things Metallica

by Web-Reviews.com, at 9:53 pm
Music | permalink | rss

 

Rating
Content
Design

Metallica is one of the most popular heavy metal bands of all time.  They released their first album in 1983 (Kill ‘Em All) and have continually produced albums since.  Metallica has many fan pages dedicated to them but on of their best is the Unofficial Metallica Site, MetPage.org
Content ()
MetPage.org provides quite a bit of information about Metallica and their music.  With information ranging from tour dates to album releases all the way to lyrics I found this Metallica site to be quite informative.  I did however find that some of the content was not completed (guitar tabs) and some of the content you had to be signed up with the website to access.  I don’t mind signing up for a free service but I did find it odd what content the made exclusive to their members.
Screen Shot
Design ()
MetPage.org has a fairly simple design that is easy to navigate.  I did find quite a few dead links in the discography section of the site and some of the main navigation links unexpectedly lead to other websites.  I did find the look of the site to be appealing and there is a nice constant theme to the entire site.
Conclusion
Overall I found MetPage.org to be informative and rather useful.  I would like to see a few of the issues fixed (dead links, odd members only content) and I think the site has quite a bit of potential.  As a Metallica fan myself I will be checking in on this site a few times in the future.  If you are a Metallica fan you will most likely enjoy this site, if you are not a fan, this site is not for you!
Pros: Great resource, tons of Metallica related info.
Cons: Design issues and incomplete content.
The Unofficial Metallica Site

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

no comments

25 Mar

4 Star Music Blog!

by Web-Reviews.com, at 11:51 am
Blogs : Music | permalink | rss

 

Rating
Content
Design

There are so many genres of music I enjoy listening to that keeping track of them can be quite a daunting task.  I have found many Alternative Rock blogs, many Classic Rock blogs and many other genre specific blogs.  ZMEMusic.com covers them all!
Content ()
ZMEMusic.com is a blog based website that offers quite a bit of high quality content.  The site offers reviews, news, tour dates and much much more.  I found the reviews to be informative, the news to be accurate and useful and found that they cover just about every genre of music there has ever been.I would like to see more industry related news.  The music industry is going threw a giant transition and the record labels are slowly dying.  I think if ZMEMusic.com would offer their unique perspective on this subject this site could be 5 star.
Screen Shot
Design ()
ZMEMusic.com has a simple and attractive design.  The 3 column blog design is familiar and easy to use.  This site puts ads above some of its navigation and that always deducts a little from the design rating, but not all of the navigation is obstructed by ads.  I also found that on some posts the right side navigation bar drops to the bottom of the page.Almost every post has images attached to them of the band that is being discussed and this helps keep my attention.  I found the use album covers for links to album reviews to be rather interesting and added to the fun of the site.
Conclusion
I found ZMEMusic.com to be rather useful and entertaining.  Keeping track of the music industry can be daunting and ZMEMusic.com is a site I will be visiting often.
Pros: Great information,  frequently updated blog.
Cons: A few navigation issues, I would like to see more opinions on the industry.
ZME Music Blog

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

no comments

22 Mar

Gardening by the Square Foot

by Web-Reviews.com, at 10:10 am
Home & Leisure | permalink | rss

 

Rating
Content
Design

A few years back I remember watching a show on PBS about gardening using a square foot block at a time.  The host Mel Bartholomew walked the viewers threw the process of setting up a Square Foot Garden and gave many great tips on gardening in general.  That show is gone now, but I recently came across SquareFootGardening.com and it has renewed my intrest.
Content ()
SquareFootGardening.com is the official website of Mel Bartholomew, the author of the all time best selling gardening book “Square Foot Gardening”.  The website offers a few quick how-to articles and quite a few articles in the “Mel’s Columns” section that I found to be rather informative.The site does sell many products and is heavily weighted towards the sale.  I think this site could benefit greatly from a blog or a forum.  I can see this becoming a very popular site quickly if a best selling author would blog about his garden once or twice a week.  Having that type of interaction would entice visitors to return more often, and returning visitors equal greater sales, it is a win win!
Screen Shot
Design ()
SquareFootGardening.com has a very simple design.  While it is easy to navigate (and that is important) it is visually disappointing.  There is nothing about this sites design that I walk away remembering.  The owner of the site is not only a best selling author but was the host of a long running PBS show about Square Foot Gardening, these factors really make me long for a more appealing site, and with the large archive I am sure Mel has, I hope he decides to update the look!
Conclusion
SquareFootGardening.com presents an innovative idea in gardening and provides enough information for an inexperienced gardener to get started.  The articles are informative, but I would like to see more of them and I would like to see some sort of social addition to the site.  Overall, I think the sites rating is grater than the sum of its parts because of the innovative and interesting ideas presented.
Pros: Innovative ideas, good articles.
Cons: Poor design, lack of social networking.
Square Foot Gardening

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

no comments

15 Mar

Tips for Bloggers

by Web-Reviews.com, at 11:05 pm
Blogs | permalink | rss

 

Rating
Content
Design

As the Blogosphere continues to grow an odd side effect is that one of the most popular things to blog about is blogging.  There are blogs about how to write content, what content to write about and there are even blogs about how to write blogs about blogs.  BloggingTips.com, however, is one of the blog oriented blogs that I find usefull.
Content ()
BloggingTips.com has a large list of writers, and for the most part they are knowledgeable and helpful.  I have found many of the tips that they provide to be useful and I have even implemented a few of them.New posts are posted multiple times a day, and many of them are high quality.  With subjects ranging from SEO (search edging optimization) to design all the way to monetization BloggingTips.com offers quit a bit of information that any blogger will enjoy.  I would have rated the content 5 stars if it were not such an over saturated niche.
Screen Shot
Design ()
BloggingTips.com has a nice simple design, with quite a few unique and interesting graphics in many of the posts.  This site suffers from one of the biggest problems I am finding with blogs.  They place ads above navigation, forcing scrolling to get to the content links.While they do have ads above their navigation, they have added a few navigation links to the header of the site that makes navigation a little easier.  This little addition helped me keep the rating at 4 stars.Other than the ad placement I have no complaints about the sites design.  It is attractive and simple, two things I like to see in a blog!
Conclusion
If you are looking for some good advice about blogging BloggingTips.com is a great resource.  I use this site myself and would suggest it to anybody who is a blogger or is thinking about entering the Blogosphere!
Pros: Great information, useful tips, frequently updated blog.
Cons: Another blog about blogging.
Blogging Tips

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

one comment

older posts newer posts