Finally, I found the last entry to my May Buzz Competition: The Blue xB. I lost the blog address AND the email address of the blogger, so I had no way to find it! I eventually found courtesy of Technorati!
Time for your Buzz!
This blog has been around for a while, but due to the way the blog is administered, it’s difficult to find out anything about the blog itself, the blogger, or anything else at all. In fact, it’s difficult to believe that this is a blog.
Here are the problems I found that I think would be best addressed by all bloggers, if you want your blog to be recognized as such.
- There’s no way to navigate easily around your blogs, except via the categories/tags in each post, and the bottom of the page link – get your categories in your sidebar! Some posts don’t have any tag.
- There’s no search function for the posts in your blog – why not? Let visitors search your blog so that they can find stuff that they want, remember the blog is for your visitors to enjoy! Google provide a search function that can help you to do this. Google does allow you to search this site as any. Click here to see what I mean… but why should I have to go to Google to do that when the function is built into WP.
- Give your blog some personality, please! At least make it something that readers can recognize! There are hundreds of ways to set this up! You can even create a persona like Kumiko Suzuki‘s blog has done! I’m not even sure she’s a female blogger – but it’s still a great blog! At least add an about page! Or change the theme!
- Allow visitors to respond to comments! Right now, in some posts comments are closed, in others registration is required but registration is closed. That’s a pity – if you are worried by spam, you can easily install anti-spam plugins
In fact, the more I look at this blog, the more I believe it’s purpose is simply to post for money, not to post for readers. I do hope PPP bloggers aim for something more than dollar signs in their eyes. And I seriously hope I’m wrong… so take a look for yourself. Adding categories, search, some blog personality, and interactive elements would all go a long way to alleviating that impression, and creating a small community of readers sharing your interests, thoughts and passions!