Open Discussion: What Would Your Blog Report Card Be?

If you had a report card on your blog suddenly delivered to your inbox, what would it say? What grades would you get? A C+ in Headline Writing? An A- in posting consistency? A D+ in traffic? A C- in SEO?

Of course, asking you a question like that is asking you to grade yourself, and most of us happen to kind of suck at that. We’re too hard on ourselves about some things, and hold ourselves in too high a regard in other areas. On top of that, we have outright blind spots where we don’t even know what questions to ask ourselves in the first place.

I think there might be significant value in providing some sort of blog assessment service for entrepreneurs marketing their businesses via blogging. A blogging “report card.” Think about the following:

Would you even know how to grade yourself on SEO?
How do you know your About page is any good?
Do you know what criteria by which your offer should be judged?
How do you know you’re reaching the right people with your blog?
How do you know whether or not you could be getting more sign-ups/subscribers?

So… do you think some kind of “report card” service would be valuable? What kind of information should such a service provide, and at what price? I’m curious what you guys think.

Image credit: v.h.d.

Filed Under: Blogging

http://www.facebook.com/tammykahnfennell Tammy Kahn Fennell

There is a similar service for this “IMReportcard” for internet marketers. Free i think but i think they get a lot using it
~Tammy from MarketMeSuite
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  I went and looked at http://www.imreportcard.com/ and it's not anything at
  
  all like what I'm talking about here, but it looks like an interesting
  
  service on its own. Thanks for mentioning it.
http://www.murlu.com Murray Lunn

I think it's something worthwhile to look into.

Overall, I consciously omit a few things from my blog just because of personal ethics and minimal approaches to promotion but I could see a HUGE value in determining who the true audience is for a blog since so many miss that point from the get-go.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Murray, once you've got a lock on the audience and their needs/wants,
  
  whatever helps them is extremely desirable. Aside from outright breach of
  
  trust you can hardly do wrong. Let's take what many would consider an
  
  egregious example: a giant pop-up subscribe box. If the free offer designed
  
  to entice your sign-up is exactly what you were looking for, are you going
  
  to mind that it came in the form of a pop-up? Hell no, you're gonna be too
  
  busy filling it out.
  
  The point is we can use the information and tools at our disposal to
  
  dramatically increase traffic, conversion, and profits… if we know how.
  
  Getting *something* is often seen as triumph when in fact we could have been
  
  getting a lot more if only we'd made certain changes.
http://katstudios.com/contact-us.html Kreg Ertman

Overall I think it's a good idea. Everyone needs to hear 'it' from someone or the other once in awhile since we as human tend to lose focus anyhow…now what was I saying?

I guess I question more of the investment of your (or anyone's) time vs. the outcome.

From time to time, I prepare website evaluations for people in hopes of getting business through their need to improve. At least in my experiences, these reports generally answer the questions that they already know deep down inside and that's, “Yeah, I need to do something, but you know, I'm doing alright too.”

Unless you can light an extreme fire under someone's butt, I don't see the payoff unless you're just bored and really like commenting on other people's blogs. Oh wait, that's what I'm doing right now…
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Great points, Kreg. If it were something I provided as a service, my time
  
  would be paid for in advance. If the customer chooses not to act on it, they
  
  wasted their time, but it's the same for me, either way. Naturally I'd be
  
  thrilled if they implemented on my advice and turned into a great
  
  testimonial.
  
  And you're right there may be some “deep down I knew that already” going on,
  
  but in my years doing this I've noticed that many business owners approach
  
  site-building and content marketing as if they were trying to build a
  
  complete set of cabinets but had never handled a saw before. Everything
  
  looks like a bad case of “there, I fixed it.”
  
  So I'm hopeful, but testing the waters. Doing one of these once in a while
  
  for free will give people a chance to see what's involved and will be great
  
  marketing, too.
  - http://katstudios.com Kreg Ertman
    
    Certainly! Do a freebie here and there, get some testimonials and at the very least, you'll have a good 'story' to write another quality post about.
    
    p.s. It wouldn't hurt either if you could make/have a badge that said, “This site scored an A- on the Remarkablogger scale.” (with a backlink to your site)…
    - http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
      
      Yup, keep your eyes peeled for the announcement soon to test the waters.
Ellen

I definitely think it would be a valuable service provided instruction was included on how to improve. It's all well and good to be told you need to do XYZ but without information that tells you how, it's really not all that valuable. Most of us know what needs to be done either specifically or in a general way. We may not all have the know how or the vantage point to see how it can be done.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Ellen, thanks for bringing that up and I agree: a diagnosis without a
  
  prescription is only part of the picture.