This week’s community blog review is of a blog by the name of Groovy Vegetarian (another ProBlogger.com member).
The idea behind these reviews is that readers of ProBlogger read:
- the story of the blog
- the goals of the blogger
- the questions and areas of concern that the blogger has (all below)
Then readers are invited to visit the blog before giving their feedback and constructive advice to the blogger whose blog is being reviewed.
Please do keep your advice helpful. Telling the blogger that their blog is no good isn’t constructive – share what you’d do to improve it.
OK – here’s what Missy (the blogger behind Groovy Vegetarian) submitted in response to my questions about her blog. I hope you find it helpful information in constructing your own advice for her blog.
Tell us the Story of Your blog
I started Groovy Vegetarian back in the Summer of 2007 at first to chronicle my experiences with becoming a vegetarian. Like many other bloggers I had started on blogger.comand over time progressed to the more powerful WordPress platform. But for some reason (can’t recall why) I wanted to start with a completely new blog. Actually I think it was the name, I wanted to create a new BRAND and so I cooked up the brand Groovy Vegetarian. When I created this blog I knew nothing about WordPress, SEO, monetization, Google, etc. The only thing I did know is that I wanted to SHARE my vegetarian experience with others. And that is what I did. As of right now the blog has over 600 RSS readers, 1,200 plus Twitter followers and over 500 email subscribers.
I had been having hosting trouble lately but last week, I switched hosts. And so far so good with it staying up. I love my blog and know I need to nurture it more to get it to the next level.
What are your goals for the blog?
I would love to be a go-to resource for the vegetarian lifestyle. To have more pillar content. To showcase more cool vegetarian products. Vegetarianism has evolved, it isn’t your mom and dad’s granola hippie type lifestyle anymore. Lots of people are interested in the lifestyle, because of several factors, but one driving alot of interest as of late is global warming. There is nothing more planet destroying than eating meat. This has been proven by scientists. Not too mention the horrors inflicted upon BILLIONS of animals each year.
So more mainstream people are turning to the net looking for information and resources on the topic. PETA does a great job of providing information, but there is room for us small publishers as well. I’ve never really considered Groovy Vegetarian a recipe or food blog, but more of a lifestyle blog. Focusing on news, products, information, entertainment, etc.
And most importantly, I would really like to create a guide on the topic. A comprehensive one aimed at new vegetarians and those wanting more information on the diet. That for now is my next BIG goal – to create a vegetarian guide of sorts.
What would you like our readers to help you with?
A challenge for me from the get go has been content, organization and design. I don’t know how to structure the blog content or layout. Obviously there needs to be room for monetization, but what form should that take? And which WordPress theme should I use? Everyone keeps touting Thesis, but I’ve never liked the design aspect of Thesis. So minimalistic. But it appears to be a really good theme with a solid support community behind it.
I would love for your readers to advise me on what they would do with my blog? What is the first thing they would change or get rid of and what do they like about the blog?
