To use Christian blogs for outreach, one must understand how they work best and the ways they differ from conventional websites. Spend lots of time reading different secular blogs: find them in directories such as BlogCatalog and Technorati or in the Weblog Awards.

Although there are thousands of Christian blogs, almost all of them are written for Christians, in Christian language and addressing Christian concerns. While non-Christians may accidentally find them, in most cases they are unlikely to stay to read, unless they happen to be seekers of the truth. A local community-based blog can and should include links and postings to appropriate local church activities.

Analyze which ones are actually readable, communicate well, and why this is. You’ll notice an incredible range of blog subjects. Some few people have the gift of being so perceptive and witty in writing, that they can write engagingly merely about their own lives and thoughts, and others will read the blog for these things alone. Such blogs can become wildly popular with web users – for example see the secular blog Petite Anglaise by an English-woman living in Paris.

Blog evangelism is about building online relationships with people within an area of shared interest. The offline equivalent is the way we relate face-to-face with people we work or study with, or meet socially. We make friends with them and enjoy their company, rather than preaching at them. Online relationships can be deep and used by God. As they get to know us, they sense that we have things in our lives that they do not yet possess and they effectively give us permission to share. It’s that fragrance spoken of in 2 Cor 2:15. Writing that is from a Christian worldview, and from a heart that has been transformed by the Holy Spirit, should sound different! One area you must carefully avoid: whining and complaining. Many secular blogs (like my own) take the opportunity to rant and unload a lot of negativity!

Here’s the blogging strategy
Build a blog around a secular topic or felt need that interests you. We should always ‘write what we know’. The subject could be sport, music (including pop music), your hobby, local community activities, a health issue you face, some project you are involved in – just about anything. The blog can even just be a diary of your life (like Petite Anglaise) if you really have the gift of writing compellingly about yourself. Women are more likely to do this well than men! Some people create a family-news blog primarily for the extended family.

Postings that contain your opinion on anything (Christian or secular) should be tentative, sensitive and open-ended, inviting the reader to comment online (or at least, to think).

The blog name should not sound Christian but be catchy and easy to remember.

A local community-based blog can and should include links and postings to appropriate local church activities.

Where you feel there is an appropriate faith angle to add within the context of your secular topic, express this in a non-preachy, sensitive, jargon-free manner. An explicit faith comment is almost certainly not appropriate in every posting. “Less is more.” To help you remember not to lapse back into ‘Christian-speak’, try to imagine that you are writing for a specific non-Christian that you know. Indeed, it will also help if you find a non-Christian who is prepared to critique your writing and give you his or her reactions to it.

You can also tell your personal story on the blog ‘about me’ link. This should not be an in-your-face preachy testimony, but an overall introduction to you as a person. Who are you? What do you like? Where do you live? Pets? Interests? But of course, you can go on to add that finding a relationship with Jesus has been the most significant element in your life, and how it happened.

Blog systems also enable you to add additional links, such as ‘books I am reading’ and ‘favorite sites’. Here’s a chance to include a book or two that would be truly accessible to non-Christians. But add some secular books too, showing you are not stuck in the Christian ghetto.

Likewise, in the ‘favorite links’, you can add appropriate sensitive outreach sites such as Power to Change, Women Today or others appropriate to your particular readership. Also include some best secular links for your chosen topic, including other blogs.

Fruit is most likely to result from a blog outreach as you slowly build relationships with individual site visitors, either through their feedback postings, or in private email/messaging to them. If most of your readers turn out to be Christian, you obviously need to reposition the style, content and language of your blog.

Examples of outreach by Christian blogs

1. Lois Turley is an experienced web evangelist who has produced several different outreach sites. When she was diagnosed with the eye problem ‘strabismus’, she started a blog on this health issue: Eyes Apart.

She writes:

“Eyes Apart helps people with vision impairment and social acceptance issues relating to crossed eyes. This often provides opportunities to tie in how God has helped me through my own vision struggles and given me clearer spiritual vision too.”

2. A Filipino Christian immigrant in Switzerland blogs her expatriate experiences here without using Christian jargon words, although she does cite her Christian faith in her ‘About Me’ page, and occasionally blogs about her Sunday School ministry and cell group activities in a non-preachy way.

She writes:

“Despite the fact that most of the readers do not share my Christian belief and convictions, we do get along in this blog. There is mutual respect and understanding. There is online friendship. There is wholesome fun. It’s friendship evangelism [2] [3] at work. Indeed, you can redeem the blogosphere for Christ!”

3. Kelsey writes about her family experiences, in a blog enticingly and self-deprecatingly called ‘Holy Mama! – True confessions from the everyday life of a sorta shallow Christian mom’. Her writing is witty, winsome and lacking in Christian jargon or insider stuff, so it works well for anyone.

She comments:

“I write from a Christian worldview, but my site isn’t one of those geared for other Christians. Christ is in me, and is a large part of my life, and so there’s plenty of ‘God stuff’ mentioned and implied in my writing – but it’s not preachy, devotional, or inspiring in nature. It’s really sort of silly, fun, and honest. It’s just life as a Christian mom. It’s a small, new blog, without a lot of traffic. And yet, people are finding it, reading it, and deciding they ‘know me’ well enough to start an email conversation about salvation. I’m astounded at the honor that is!”

4. Geraint Lloyd in UK has launched ‘Lloyd on life’. The purpose is to post discussion on issues in the news, or more personal thoughts, from a Christian worldview: Lloyd on life.

5. Vic Grace lives in remote British Colombia, Canada, and blogs about wildlife, and her own experiences, from a Christian viewpoint: Cariboo Ponderer.

6. Scot has a computer technology-related blog in which his Christian faith emerges naturally at appropriate points: Scot Yang’s Playground.

Anyone can do it!
I must emphasize again: you do not need technical expertise (or money) to operate a blog. Just enthusiasm, an understanding of how blogs communicate best, and the ability to write in a brief, enticing style. It should be informal but clear and structured, using humor.

Edit, revise and shorten your entries before posting: It may be better to write entries in a word-processor, and even print them out for proof-reading and revision, and only copy them across into the blog interface after checking (though most blogging systems allow you to correct and change entries after you have posted). Poor grammar/spelling or jumbled thoughts will reduce your writing’s credibility.

Many blog entries are far too long and self-indulgent. Some, indeed, are virtually unreadable. Unless, of course, you produce something so intentionally banal it is popular, as Dave Walker has with his The Dullest Blog in the World and gets 85,000 visits a month!

Use frequent line-breaks to split longer postings into separate paragraphs – this is much more readable, but not often done.

Links on starting blogs
Check Beginner’s Guide to Blogging for a short introduction.

You can start a blog in minutes with a ready-made online system such as WordPress (my favorite) | Blogger | LiveJournal | Xanga | MSN Spaces | TypePad | Life with Christ.

VidBlogs and BlogCheese are great providers of video blogs.

Tools which you download and then install on your server include: Movable Type (Review) | WordPress (Review) | ExpressionEngine and many more.
Search online for more discussion about their features, advantages and disadvantages.

• Choosing a blogging tool
• Start-a-Blog
• TechSoup
• How to start a blog
• Learn how to keep an online journal
• Wikipedia guide to blogging

You can also obtain offline blog-editing software such as RocketPost.

How to promote your blog

Research and implement the many different ways to promote your blog online, thereby making it easier to draw in and retain readers. Here are some other great examples: 1 | 2 | 3 . Locate and link to other blogs where appropriate, and they may link back to you.

Other notes

• If you have enabled readers to post feedback on your site, be prepared to check frequently and remove any abusive comments.
• Although most blogs are written by a single person, some operate well with two or more people working together in a team.
• Remember, all your personal thoughts are there for the world to see. Do not break the confidences of others. Do not post your home address or phone number. A contact form is better than posting your email address online, where it can be harvested by spammers. An easy alternative which many people use is to spell the ‘@’ and ‘dot’ characters in words, and leave users to translate them.
• If you start a blog with one of the ready-made services such as WordPress, your blog URL will be in the form http://yourchosenname.wordpress.com. If you change blog providers, all incoming links to the old blog will cease to be valid. However, if you register your own domain name for your blog (eg. www.tomsfootballblog.com) then you can use it to point to the actual URL wherever your blog is currently located. So, for example, if you have started with a free online service, and then decided to upgrade to using your own installed software, your URL remains the same.

I love input: If you found this information to be useful or have any other tips feel free to share them with a reply.

Get Critiqued: Want the Blog Critic to take a look at your blog? See my open invitation.

Its about as simple as the picture I just took under the very popular wordpress tag life. I wont go into details about how its done.

My quest is to get WordPress to fix it so that others will stop abusing the system. PERIOD!

I recently made this topic here in regards to a user that used the method “gaming” all the time in the wordpress category/tag page system to keep their post above all others and on the front page while other hard working bloggers wisped away to the lower sections by date of post etc. In doing so It created a nasty fuss as you can see here. This was not my intent but it turned out that way so be it.

Some of you have noticed that certain users post seem to always be on top when you search under wordpress tags. These users are simply manipulating the system and I don’t like it and neither should you.

So that the blogger I recently wrote about can see that my complaint is not just about them I took this snapshot of another blogger just a few minutes ago under the first page of wordpress.com’s tag “life” one of its most popular tags and here’s what it looked like. Click here to see the photo in in full size

Notice the age of the topics They range from 2 weeks to one year. Should they be above your post you wrote an hour ago? Notice how many are there and I can only show you half of the screen in this picture.

I am asking anyone and everyone that works hard on their blogs to step up and write to wordpress support so this can hopefully be put to an end. If we don’t it will only get worse as time goes on.

PS. This has nothing to do with persons using excessive tags etc. as that’s an option we have available and to our discretion. I just used a ton of tags on this post, but dont think for a minute that it’s the same as what I’m talking about above. Its done another way but I dont want to have everyone in the world learning the method. Just don’t confuse the difference in the two.

Thanks,

Opinions?

Does this picture look familiar to you?

What’s up with this wordpress? I want to know why Catherine Morgan’s Blogs are stuck on the front page in wordpress tags regardless of how long ago they have been posted?

I don’t want to sound like a whiner here but wordpress you need to fix this and bring it to an end. I watch others post go down the line in minutes, but not for Catherine Morgan and all of her blogs. Her topics can be days and even weeks old yet they stay on the front page in tag searches.

This is not necessarily a stab at you Catherine see this example here of another. You may not know why its happening. But um, well, um, its working with all your different blogs so maybe you are doing something you shouldn’t be. Only you know!

To those reading, I think its time this comes to a halt. What are your opinions?

Talk about overloaded.

I have countless blogs waiting to be critiqued and I’m not real sure I will ever catch up. I want to be able to regularly help these bloggers and do so as fast as possible with solid valuable information that will help them. I sent a topic out once before asking for help. Since your reading this at the moment please take the time to read the following located here.

Thanks in advance and by the way, enjoy today’s Super Bowl

A friend Chris Garret has supplied some great information that I felt would be of interest to you. Here’s 10 tips for attracting more comments to your blog.

Your blog can be thought of in many ways. As a pulpit, a soapbox, a magazine, a platform, a newsletter, a diary. A lot of bloggers focus on the “broadcast” aspects, getting their message out. While great content is essential, never neglect the community element of your blog.

First of all, as we have said time and time again, you must answer comments that are made on your posts. It is not only the polite thing to do, it also encourages more comments. If people see they are treated with respect and they will get answers they will comment more. It still surprises me the amount of bloggers who post then sit back and ignore the feedback they receive.

I’m hoping you will be able to add to my tips or correct me if I have something a bit off. It will be pretty ironic if my post about attracting comments goes without being commented on!

On with the tips.

1. Ask! – Ask for people to comment, you are more likely to get comments if you ask for them. Sometimes people do not know it is ok to comment. Just because there is a comment form does not mean people automatically feel worthy to post a comment. The higher the profile of the blog or the less the person feels they “know” the blogger the less likely they are to comment. By “giving permission” they will feel more entitled to comment.
2. Seed - Like a tip jar, people sometimes need a hint, get friends to comment to start the ball rolling and you might open the floodgates. On some blogs people like to be first, on others there is a hesitation period where they do not want to expose their opinion to early.
3. Ego - People like to talk about themselves, provide the opportunity. They might not be experts in the topic but we are all experts in our own experience and we all know what we like. You know the famous phrase about everyone having an opinion. Sometimes it is nice just to give people the opportunity to brag.
4. Links - Bloggers and webmasters are always on the lookout for link opportunities. They might not be your ideal kind of comment but they might encourage others that it is ok to feedback. Allow link drops in your blog comment settings and do not use nofollow so the link visibly has value.
5. Hint - Open questions are the best to get great quality answers, ie. “What do you think?”, but they can be intimidating. If you struggle to get comments it might be easier to give simple leading ideas for what people should say, eg. “Do you agree?”, “Are you for or against?”. “Yes, no, me too” are not great responses but at least they are a sign of life!
6. Restraint - Resist the urge to make your posts too complete if you want to receive community input. That’s one of the great things about top ten lists, you have to stop at 10! Don’t put everything into the post, especially if you know your audience has certain expertise they are bursting to share!
7. Usability - Sometimes people don’t comment just because they can’t! Make sure the comment form is obvious and easy to use. Also do not take the visitor to a different site in order to comment. The very worst culprits for this are the hosted services that not only take you to another site, they use a popup to do it. Why not inflict actual pain while you are at it?
8. Open - While a blog with a true membership is more valuable, if you are having difficulty getting comments open up your comment settings to allow comments with out registration. We can get away with requiring registration because we knew we would get the comments, consider carefully if your blog can get away with it too, many can’t.
9. Topic - If you want to attract comments then you have to pick your subjects. Some subjects people just do not have an opinion on, others you can’t stop people talking about. Current affairs are good but it needn’t be controversial, politics and religion get people talking but can also send your blog down a path you might not want to go down. Press peoples buttons. You can endlessly recycle some topics, others are shortlived.
10. Observe - Note the topics people often comment on, there might be a trend. Just be observant. Be on the lookout for topics people comment on and write about them.

Not every post needs to get a ton of comments but if your blog hardly ever gets a single comment then it will look unpopular and start a downward spiral. Hopefully using some of these tips you will turn it the other way and create a positive community snowball affect.

Now your turn, what do you think of these tips? Have you any other ideas? What has worked for you? Is there a topic that consistently gets comments on your blog? Let us know!

Here are some easy things you can do to get your blog noticed fast.

1. Are you familiar with Google Pages? Take the advantage of signing up and add some original content about your blog, then add your blogs link there. This will drive Google’s search engine crazy. In turn your blog will get indexed more often.

2. Submit your blog to AddMe.com This will place your blog into the major search engines very quickly absolutely free.

3. Another good place to submit your blog is SubmitExpress.com. They will send your blog to 20 search engines.

4. Think about using Ezine Articles. When you’ve taken the time to write a good article don’t limit it to only being seen on your blog. Ezine Articles will use your article(s) to drive massive amounts of traffic to your blog.

5. Feeds Feeds Feeds. They can do wonders for you. Take the time to add your blog to the RSS Feeds directory and list it in every related category.

6. Find high traffic blogs and make sure you reply to them. If your blog isn’t a wordpress blog then be sure you have your link attached. Don’t spam them, instead reply to the topic with some relevancy, an opinion etc. Anything less and they will simply delete you or others will not click your link because they know what your really doing. Spamming!

7. Add your blog to The Blog Critic. If your blog meets the right criteria your home free to lots of new traffic.

8. Be sure to submit your blog to every single category at Pingomatic and use them often. They will ping the other major services all at once.

9. Another great ping service is Pingoat. They will ping around 50 other blogging ping services all at once.

10. Create a My Yahoo account. Once you have done so go to “YourYahoo” account and add your blogs feed to your personal page. This will get your blog into the Yahoo search engines directory almost instantly.

11. Do the exact same thing with My MSN as done in step number 10.

12. Join I love clicks. Once doing so you will earn credits by visiting other blogs. In return they will visit yours.

13. Join BlogExplosion. Its basically the same as I love clicks mentioned above but it has been around much longer.

14. Be sure to have a link to your blog in your signature in every message forum (board) you visit. Do the same with outgoing emails, etc.

15. Last but not least. Be sure to post quality relevant content to your blog as often as possible.

I hope these tips help you get your blog noticed. If you know any other good tips? Please share them here.

If you run a blog that is generally about helping other bloggers via tips, advice, or any other form then I would like to know about it. If I find information that is useful then I am going to add your blog to my links (blogroll) page located at the top under “Related Links“

I would also like to use help links to your blogs. When I write articles its my job to provide users information that will help them. If there’s something on your blog that I think would be beneficial to them then I want to be able to send them to your blog via a text link and that’s exactly what I will do.

If this is you then reply to this topic with some good information about your blog (not spam) and I will take a look. If its found to be useful in regards to the above it will be added to my links page.

Note: Add me, check out my blog, and so forth will be treated as spam and deleted without a 2nd thought, ha ha.

If I add your blog, consider doing the same for me.

When the New Orleans Saints went marching into Chicago to meet the Bears they looked great at first glance, but as time went on they were exposed and soon found out they still need to improve greatly if they want to be Super Bowl contenders in the future.

When the Blog Critic visited your blog “my indiarose” for the first time I simply took a quick glance at it and thought to myself “this is going to be a quick easy review. Everything looked ok until it came time to start prodding and probing around. I quickly found out how wrong I was in my initial thought just like some were concerning the Saints going into Chicago.

I have critiqued your blog based on findings from many areas within. You will receive a grade in each area along with an overall grade at the end using my scoring system (0 to 100) found at the end of this topic.

Appearance

At first glance one would get the feeling of a very clean, easy to read, nice laid out blog (The Saints). I got that feeling also when I first saw it, but it is my job to look beyond first appearances. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be a very good critic.

Before I go into all the details I need for you to remember that I am a search engine fanatic. Meaning, if you are not getting most of your hits from internet searches then you are not going to be very successful. You may or may not care about quality traffic, you may feel perfectly comfortable with just getting the gradual visitor from wordpress tags, only you know. If you want to win in the SEO market with your blog do what the Bears did last week in Chicago by being better than your opposition and follow some of my suggestions below.

Hopefully you are already noticing something I am doing to optimize this page to bring visitors here. Hint: Will the Chicago Bears be able to handle quarterback Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl Sunday?

Starting from the top – As said above your theme has a very good warm feeling about it. Its easy on the eyes, easy to read, and quite appealing. You made an excellent choice to go with the Ttarskitheme by Ben Eastaugh and Chris Johnson.

The Header – Once again a very appealing look from the outside but search engines don’t care a single thing about looks so I did what they do and looked at the image tag. This can be done by simply putting your mouse over the image itself. What I found was that it says “Image Header”. Boy that’s sure going to help you – not! Fix this by going into your CSS file, find the code and change it to 3 or 4 good keywords (not a paragraph) that are about your site. This should also be done every time you use an image anywhere on your blog based on the title of the topic the image is in. WordPress gives you this option when inserting images so use it to your advantage.

Your Title – “my indiarose” I can say for sure that its original but what does it mean? I searched the dictionary and Wikipedia for the word indiarose and turned up nothing. On a positive note when I searched it on google your blog is at the very top. I wonder why? I also wonder how many people use a search using that name for things? My guess is very few. Now the name may mean something very special to you and if that is the case then most definitely keep it. You may however consider adding a couple of hot hey words that fit your blog to it though. I.e. My Love, My Life, My Indiarose

Your Description – “hai friends.. its all abot me” OK what is that? I don’t know and I wonder what your readers think. This kind of grammar is a complete turnoff to your viewers. There is no such English word as hai and what is abot? Again, think about your readers view and also on being search engine friendly. Make your title better by using relevant common keywords effectively.

Your Introduction – A nice introduction overall. Its short and direct to the point. One again check your grammar and punctuation. I will be bringing up grammar issues with you in more detail later in this article.

Overall appearance score 55 / 100

Layout

I mentioned above that overall your layout is appealing to look at. Its clean, fresh, and has a certain warmth to it.

Your Categories – Categories can be anything we want them to be. We can name them whatever we desire and so on. You have done so and it’s good to see them on your blog. Some bloggers choose not to show their categories for various reasons. I recommend that you re-think a few of the categories you have listed and change them to a more relevant wordpress tag if you want others to find your topics. Here is a list of the most common wordpress tags that are being used in searches.

Your Images In The Topics – Images, photos, pictures or whatever best describes them are a definite positive when used properly. They add extra interest to the reader. Lets face it we all like to look at things. What’s that old saying? “A picture is worth a thousand words”. With that being said, how would you feel if I told you that there is a very good chance that persons landing on your blog leave it (give up, exit out) before it even opens for them.

What do I mean exactly? Our society has changed a lot over the last few years. People don’t have the patience of prior generations and they will not have the patience to sit and wait 3 minutes for your blog to open when they land on it for the first time.

Right now your images are hurting you. How? According to recent studies only 28 percent of American households have access to broadband Internet. I don’t know what the statistics are worldwide but I would think overall its probably not any better.

I made that point to bring up this point. If this study is correct then odds are we all have a ton of users visiting us that are still on dialup. How many of them will wait for your page to load? I have no idea so use your own intuition. Of course if they don’t mind the extremely long wait then your photos will be cached and it won’t take them as long next time. Now when you update your blog again they will have to go through that long wait again and the cycle continues. Do you want this?

Alas’ there is a cure for everything. Here is a free download from GifBot that will shrink your images pixel size. Put it to work on all your old images, update the topics with the new images and watch your page views go up almost instantly.

Last but not least concerning layout – Where’s your blog search box? I have no need to go into why you need a search box, its a no brainer!

Overall Layout Score 65

Overall Content and Relevancy

I don’t think your going to like what your going to hear from me concerning this area of your blog. Do you remember what I said earlier about the Saints and the Bears? Right now I’m that bear and this is going to hurt.

Grammar – What the h***? I could simply leave it like that and you would get the point. I will not because if your going to take your blogging serious you have got to take your time and do a better job.

I have taken the below from the very first topic people see right now when visiting your blog. The one currently at the top of your main page with the painting titled “me- my portrait” I have bolded the errs that reap beneath.

I love this pic, because it is me.. lol; but that doest mean i didn’t love anyone..I love everyone..love always come from my heart… from my bleeding heart. my eyes are closed since i didnt know how you going to take my love.. my ears are open since i wanted to hear you, what u are saying..but i am silent..since i didnt want to cry, yell.. may be i could talk to u in silence..

What on God’s green earth is that? I should have bolded the whole thing because nothing is remotely close to proper grammar and punctuation among other things. Its hideous and I see the same thing in most of your topics and post. If you don’t have the time to do a spell check before you post something live then I suggest not posting at all.

On a positive note I did find articles that were perfectly written, sadly all of them were simple copy and paste jobs from other authors. Speaking of that, try and stay away from copying total articles from news sources or anyone for that matter. If you want to copy snips of the articles and then add in your own remarks regarding it that’s fine, but do you have the original authors permission to copy and publish his or her work? This is not a good practice. Some people don’t realize that the search engines are so fine tuned today that they know about all duplicate content across the web. If you do it long enough you will be blacklisted by the major search engines and you definitely don’t want that.

Title and content relevancy – Your content description says or was suppose to say “Hi friends! Its All About Me” If its all about you then why are you copying news articles and stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with your life as your description claims? If your going to write about your life then do so and make it interesting. Your life is huge, its surrounded by something new everyday. You have activities that you enjoy, people in your life and the list goes on. Write about those things!

Put forth the effort to bring out quality topics with meaning that others will enjoy. Do it right and it can become fascinating and intriguing to your readers. This will attract even more as they tell others, but most importantly take your time!

Everything that happens from this point on is up to you concerning your blog. Will you follow my advice or will you keep doing what your doing now? Only time will tell. My hopes are that you will take a deep look and decide to go after that Super Bowl Victory!

Overall Content and Relevancy Score 18 / 100

Total Score For Your Blog After Review 46 / 100

The above blog can be viewed here: “my indiarose“

Help needed! Would you like to become a blog critic? Take a look here

If you would like The Critic to review your blog or any topic within click here and follow the “how to” information provided.

First of all lets get this straight! I’m not nude at the moment, nor am I an American Idol on YouTube. I am however an American blog critic in need of some help.

Since starting this blog “The Blog Critic” I have been overwhelmed with traffic and can see that here very shortly I am not going to be able to handle the task of doing all the critiquing by myself. Now I don’t really care if your setting there at your computer in the nude, or if your an American Idol on YouTube.

What I do care about is finding other authors that know for a 100% fact that they would like to critique from time to time with me here on this blog. If your thinking yes this is me then read on.

First and foremost this would be voluntary on your part. It does not pay anything, nothing, nada, zero, zilch and never will. What I do here is absolutely free for any and all and it will remain that way.

Here’s how it will work for those interested.

First you need to reply to this topic and tell me a little about yourself and how long you have been blogging along with why you believe you would be a good critic.You need to also give a general idea of how often you would be able to critique other bloggers topics. Notice I said “topics” not entire blogs, as this option will only be given to authors over time once they prove that they have what it takes to critique an entire blog.

When I said above “give a general idea of how often you would be able to critique” I meant as an example of something like one topic a week, once a day, several a day, several a week, well you get the idea.

Once you have done the above I will do a little research and get back in touch with you if interested. I will then give you my private email so we can go into more detail with one another etc. If everything works out I will give you author permissions on this blog. Of course at first I will have to review your critiquing before it will go live.

Just because we call ourselves The Blog Critic does not mean we simply criticize. What we do is far from that. Our primary purpose is to help persons build better blogs and improve their blogging potential. To get an overall view of how its done click here.

That’s pretty much it. For all others not interested in the above but wishing to have the critic review their blog click here for more information.

Oh by the way, if you are a nude American Idol on YouTube then that’s ok to. jk

The Blog Critic has reviewed this blog by request “Musings from a damaged individual” and found quite a bit of areas that need improvement. I have taken into consideration that your blog is new and you may lack knowledge on the various ways to enhance your overall blogging capabilities.

I have critiqued your blog based on my findings on your front page (main page) only. You will receive an overall grade at the end using my scoring system (0 to 100) at the end of this topic. 

Appearance

Beginning with the very top – Your title “Musings from a damaged individual” is an ok title as long as you are not looking for quality traffic from the major search engines so consider using more relevant keywords. Your titles font size is to large thus creating more of an eye sore than a great appearance. Take note on how your title splits in half when viewed. This can be fixed by doing a little research inside the WordPress FAQ or in the forums. Why the period at the end of your title? Get rid of it, its not necessary.

Your blogs description – “Attachment disordered, histrionic, clinically depressed and suffering from chronic PTSD. My struggle to become a human being.”.

Overall the description is not bad. You have used some good keywords in the description which will help bring new readers to your blog when they go searching the web for related content. On the negative side, your description has the same problem with appearance as mentioned above and goes hand and hand with your titles problem.

Theme colors – OK how do I say this in a nice way? Well I cant so here it is. What in the world are you doing with the colors? From the top its starts off with a nice clean looking gray color and then for whatever reason you decided to add in a blend of a color that I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen before. Its a mix of some kind of greenish grayish something and it looks bad. You also decided that highlighting your topics with yellow might look good. Well it doesn’t, at least not at present with the colors you are using.

Take a close look at your blogs appearance concerning just the colors and ask yourself “Does this gray, yellow, blue and white blog look professional” or could it use a complete overhaul? Will you take the time to clean this up and make it more appealing? I certainly hope so because my eyes are hurting.

Overall appearance score 45 / 100

Layout

So you decided to go with the Andreas04 theme. I personally like the choice and think if used properly it is one of the better themes available from WordPress. Notice I said “if used properly”

About – The text addition about yourself on the right side bar is way to much information for people to have to look at every single time they flip through your blog. I wonder how many viewers are actually inclined to read all that? Not very many! If your lucky at best some will simply skim through it and move on. After a while their going to get tired of seeing it over and over every time they visit your blog.

I suggest you shorten it to no longer than the length you have in the opening paragraph and leave it at that. If you want to use such a lengthy description about yourself then create a new page (not post) from within your posting administration area and give it a good title. Doing so will give readers the opportunity to “by their choice” read it if they want. Believe it or not doing this will actually get your viewers to take the time to read it and it will also offer them the opportunity to comment on it.

Your widgets- Right now the way you have it set up its hard to find your recent post, categories, links, archives etc. Don’t be fooled  into thinking this is ok where it is because its not. It needs to be close to the top and right in front of the viewers eyes so they are inclined to follow some of your links the widgets produce for you. Fix the about you as mentioned above and that will move it up.

Why do you not have a blog search on your site? Do you honestly believe people will just go hopping through links in hopes of finding content that interest them? If so then you better think again.

Experiment with a few more available widgets such as the calendar, akismet, etc. to add more functionality to your blog.

Overall layout score – 53 / 100

Content Relevancy

I’m going to start this off by quoting your very first post you made on your blog “Speaking of Unpleasant Things“. It says the following so pay close attention as you read it once again.

“We turn our backs on people who make us uncomfortable, homeless people, starving children on television, the abused woman with children living in her car, the crazy girl on the corner talking to herself. I did that for many years. Somehow I thought if I didn’t look at them or acknowledge their existence, then I didn’t have to look at myself.After my hospitalization for PTSD, and clinical depression, I challenged myself to look. Not just look but become. I became one of them. The people who live marginal lives, the crazy people on the corner, talking to themselves.I was the sketch artist working a corner of the street. I told myself “at least I offered something.” I felt I was better than the person who was begging for spare change. I sketched portraits on the street, quick sketch for tips. I lived in a half way house, had a case manager, and I was surviving.What is the value of my life compared to the banker, the land developer, or the politician? Not much according to the people who I made uncomfortable. It is surprising that even though I was offering something of value, a charcoal portrait, I was still ignored, or laughed at. I was on the street with all the other useless eaters. People who survive. People who are looked at as needing a real job. I had lost my desire to accumulate things. I did not want a big house, a fancy car, or a fat bank account, and for that I was less, than people who desire those things.

I am willing to share my stories, and they are not pleasant stories. My stories are not about family love, or success, or happiness. My personal stories are about human exploitation. A mother and a father, men, and a society willing to exploit innocence. I make people uncomfortable. For that I’ve been made to feel ashamed. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve realized that now. I am a reminder that if you ignore unpleasant things they do not go away. They keep popping up reminding you that taking a look is healthy, it is right, it is good to look a unpleasantness and then act.

Human history is filled with horror that could have been prevented if people had been willing to look and act. Do not look away. Your future may depend on your willingness to confront the ugliness of the world.”

After reading that topic of yours I found it to be the best one on your blog thus far. The title of it isn’t exactly up to par for using keywords effectively related to your content however this topic of yours meant something. It said a lot about you and what your initial intent was when you started your blog.

This is your doorway to success. Your niche so to say, so use your past experiences to help others and keep building on that. There is so much information regarding the things you have gone through available on the www so why not use it to your advantage and to attract readers that you can actually help by providing useful relevant content to your blog on a regular basis. You’ve been through it according to your profile, you know what works and what doesn’t work in regards to certain mental stresses. Your goal should be to attract an audience that has been through some of the same things. They will become loyal to you and your blogging community and that is exactly what you should strive for if you are truly serious about having a successful blog.

For some odd reason you decided to stray away from your initial intent and went for the Jerry Springer concept. Here’s your most recent blog entry titled “Sexual responsibility, what a concept“  and quoted as is below.

“There are many who would disagree with me I’m sure. The concept of sexual responsibility is not foremost in a mans mind when his penis becomes hard. In fact, there are many who would say that it is a mans prerogative to cling to neanderthal and biblical notions of a mans right to impregnate women indiscriminately.Can I hear an amen?Despite the protests from men who are delinquent in their child support, ahhh you made a choice buddy. You made a choice to have sex with a woman who you didn’t particularly like, but there was nakedness, your penis got hard and she got pregnant. Now you want to complain.Get over it. If you weren’t a drunken horn dog, who was desperate to put your penis in a woman without a condom, then you wouldn’t be in court right now, would you?

I’m supportive of the rights of people who are sexually responsible.

Can I hear an amen?”

I can only think of one positive thing about this post. You got the keywords right in the title but that’s pretty much it. Are you trying to be like Springer? This isn’t what your blog is about so why even go there? All you did by making this post was to try and show a feminist viewpoint by downgrading men. Its not what your blog is suppose to be about. If it is then consider changing the title of your blog to something more relevant like “Why Men Ruin Women’s Lives” or to something of that effect.

Don’t rely on the wordpress tags to bring in a huge amount of viewers. You need to concentrate on relevant titles with relevant content on your subject. Doing so properly will bring in massive amounts of visits from the search engines.

Where are the helpful links inside your topics on your blog? There are none at this time, zero nada. If your going to use words like PTSD, stress, anxiety etc. then you should also provide a link to other helpful topics on the very same subject like I’ve done in this topic.

Your readers are at your site for one reason and one reason only! They found something that interest them. Now improve on that by doing what I’ve mentioned above and watch how your blog hits increase.

Overall content relevancy score 42 / 100

Total Score For Your Blog After Review – 46.6 / 100

UPDATE – 2 Days after Diane read our review she has totally revamped her site taking a lot of what I said into consideration and it looks so much better than before.

The above blog can be viewed here Musings from a damaged individual

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