Today I’d like to try something a little new here at ProBlogger and want to invite you to engage in a little blog consulting and work shopping on a reader’s blog.
Let me explain why I’m doing this:
- I get asked to look at a lot of blogs – to give feedback – to do consulting and to help bloggers improve their blogs
- I can’t possibly do this for everyone – in fact these days I’m stretched to the point where I am unable to do any at all – even paid consulting
- Previously I’ve found that helping one blogger publicly actually helps not only that one blogger but those who read along – if one person has a problem it is likely that others are too
- ProBlogger is read by an incredible group of bloggers with a diverse range of skills, experiences and expertise – collectively we know so much more than what we each know individually
How Will it Work?
The idea is that later today (in the next post) I’m going to post a link to a blog of a ProBlogger reader that has asked for some help (I’ve got their permission to do this).
In posting this link I’m not going to give any initial advice or tips or critique – I’m simply going to post a link, a screen shot and a few words from the blogger who is asking for help.
Then I’m going to throw the consulting work over to you the ProBlogger readership. In a sense it’s a type of case study or workshop.
Your job is to give advice, tips and constructive critique to the blogger. I’ll give you a few areas that you might want to divide your advice into.
I’ll leave you to do this for a few days – at which point I’ll then attempt to draw together some of the main themes that people have talked about with some of my own advice.
I don’t know how this will work – but my hope is that it’ll help one blogger improve their blog, that it’ll give those who participate and read on some tips on improving their own blogs and that those who give the advice might also help their own reputations a little by showing some of their expertise.
If this works I’d like to do it on a semi-regular basis – but we’ll see how the first one goes and take it from there (I’m sure that this process will evolve over time)!
All I would ask is that you keep your comments as constructive as possible. The blogger who has agreed to do this knows they’ll probably hear some negative feedback but is willing to do so because they want to learn and improve – however I’d encourage everyone to be supportive and constructive. The point of this is to help someone (us all) to improve.
How’s this sound?
Stay tuned for the first blog consulting project in the next few hours. update – you can see it here
Update 2: Thanks to everyone for participating in this and for your feedback. I’ve been inundated with emails asking to be included in future consultations. At this point I’m not taking any of these on – but want to see how this first one goes before deciding whether I’ll do it regularly and if so how that’ll work. I’ll post more in the coming week or so on how it goes and how we’ll proceed. Thanks for your interest in the project though – I hope we can consult with a lot of your blogs.
