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A Blog Review: Ideas to Deals
I have been following Michael Bowers’ blog Ideas to Deals for a while now because he offers business advice and social media insight for entrepreneurs.
Mike agreed to a blog coaches review of Ideas to Deals. This is an exercise in which we look at the strengths and opportunities for growth in a blog.
Mike’s goals are to 1) increase the reach of the blog as a resource for small business, no matter where they are in the business development cycle 2) increase blog traffic and 3) communicate regularly with his blog audience.
Blog Strengths
Memorable Name. Ideas to Deals is memorable and relates to Mike’s business. Branding your blog with a name that is easy to remember and relates to what you do helps people talk about you: word of mouth and using social media. Problogger tips on naming your blog.
Relevant content. As Regional Director of the Ohio Small Business Development Center, Mike and his team work directly with all types of businesses in various stages of development. Mike’s blog topics are a direct result of daily work with business owners. His advice is down-to-earth, personal and honest. A post I found to be extremely relevant: Prep for a Productive Week.
Authentic Voice. This is an outstanding quality in a blog — especially when that voice speaks through a mix of content and different approaches and make me feel like I am sitting across the table from you. A post that does this well: Business Startup ~ Don’t Make it Difficult. Problogger advice: Finding Your Blog’s Unique Voice.
Post consistency. Mike posts once or twice a week. This is effective as many business people struggle to maintain a weekly post. However, analytics indicate that the more we post, the faster we can grow our blogs — depending on our ability to write quality content that connects with our audience. A formula for determining post frequency: Type of blog + goals = posting frequency.
Promotion techniques. Mike takes advantage of the community building power of social media by using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and weekly e-blasts to promote his blog.
The Weekend Long Run. In Mike’s weekly wrap-up, he aggregates links to business and social media folks who haves something compelling to say. He places the spotlight on others and incorporates his love of running into this Friday post for originality.
Opportunities for Growth
Brand with design. The name works well — and by tweaking his tagline a bit and adding a custom visual in the header, Mike can continue to develop his brand. Working with a graphic designer to stylize his blog, and sharing personality consistently in the way he speaks online, also contributes to brand strength. A blog that captures the personality of the blogger well is: CC Chapman.
Seek compelling visuals for each post. Finding that right visual for each post, and using more than one visual in longer posts, draws people into the story. Photos can evoke human emotion, humor, irony, passion or adventure.
To achieve this, use of your own personal photos, experiment with the Advanced Google Search to uncover something unusual, explore Flickr Creative Commons for images or consider Pond5 for extremely creative, photos, illustrations and videos that you can purchase for as little as a $1.
Unleash the power of outbound links. There are some opportunities for additional outbound links in Mike’s blog posts. Careful and strategic use of links gives readers opportunities to learn, helps build relationships with other bloggers/readers and adds to the perceived value of your blog post. Linking to one or two of Mike’s own former posts is an effective strategy to keep the reader actively engaged in your own blog site.
Reign in the e-mail popup dialog box. The email sign-up dialog box popped up repeatedly on Ideas to Deals while I was reading. This can be effective marketing tool, but too much popping up can feel more spammy than user friendly.
Reconsider how to navigate the Archives. It wasn’t easy to navigate the Ideas to Deals Archives. A small arrow at the bottom of the page led me back to earlier posts. I could also go to the monthly archives and dig in from there. An alternative strategy is to use Blog Categories and tags that are named rather than archived by month so your readers can find and explore blog posts by content category rather than by date posted.
Load up great content in the right column. Loading up great content in the right column is easy by using presentations via SlideShare, listings of upcoming SBDC and other regional events in a calendar and maybe even an e-book for entrepreneurs. Reading other business blogs gives me new ideas for additional blog content.
What advice do you have for taking a blog to the next level? Do you implement changes to your blog based on reading other blogs?
