Seven Criteria for Evaluating Writers Blogs

Back at the beginning of April, I blogged about having a Criteria for Writer’s Blogs so that one could evaluate a blog from a technology viewpoint. How well does the blog use technology to market the writer’s work?

Back then, I didn’t have any criteria — just my personal biases. After looking at a lot of writer’s sites over the last month, I’ve come up with seven criteria for evaluating a site.

Note that my criteria is my opinion — and I’d love to hear yours as to what makes a great writer site. And, it is not my intent to be critical of any particular site. Indeed, the ones I select will be ones that I consider as doing well in meeting the criteria. Ones that you should emulate in working with your blog setup.

Let’s take a quick look at the seven criteria and then I’ll expand on them in the next few days to more fully explain what each section means.

The seven:

1. Great Content. All blogs, not just writers blogs, need great content. Without great content, there is no reason for a reader to read what the writer is writing.
2. Blog “About” Page. This would explain what the blog is about from the writer’s viewpoint. Is the blog about a particular book that you have written and you are writing about the subject in the blog? Or is this the personal writer site where you write about your success and struggles in writing the next big novel? Either way, a reader should find this out from your About page.
3. Contact Information. A reader — or publisher, editor, or others wanting you to write for them — should easily be able to find out how to contact you.
4. Subscription Information. It should be easy and obvious to subscribe to your content in your blog.
5. Media Page. This is a page that talks through your bio. I’m particularly biased towards several views of your bio — a tag line, a short bio for a paragraph at the end of an article, and a long bio where one could formulate questions to do an interview with you. Pictures that can be used for an article in different sizes and/or poses a plus.
6. Top Posts. This is a place to make it easy for your readers to find what you think, or your readers think, are the best content from your site. There are lots of blogs where the most popular and read posts are from a year ago through yesterday. Continue to promote those posts by showing them on the front page.
7. Good Blog Design. Not necessarily fancy or custom — but a design that doesn’t detract from the message you are trying to promote on the blog.

It has been an exciting month looking at all the different sites seeing what works best.

And, clearly, I have a lot of work to do on my blog based on my own criteria. Time to get at it!

Scot