Men with Pens Squeaks Out 1 Point Victory in Blog Match Up

In a hard and close battle, this blog lost by a measly 1 point to those big bad Men with Pens, Harry McLeod and James Chartrand. (Just because they are prolific bloggers with a huge archive of valuable posts and a community of raving fans who adore them...really!)

John Hewitt of Writers Resource Center is doing the equivalent of March Madness of writing blogs, pitting two blogs against each other, and generating valuable feedback on how to make blogs better.

I can't disagree with anything he said about this blog, and will take his suggestions for improvement to heart. You can read his critique of Writing on the Web here.

John has been so generous in sharing his wisdom and perspective. On top of which we all had a great time leaving trash talk comments about the contest on each others' blogs.

Here's James' and Harry's report out of the contest from the victory box. Good luck to Men with Pens in the next round where their blog is matched-up against Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

Here's what else I learned from John Hewitt of Writers Resource Center:

You would be wise to take a look at how he's structuring this contest because it is great for not only adding valuable content to your own blog, but generating loads of link love in a niche. Maybe you can come up with an idea to do something similar for blogs in your field?

John took the concept of looking at a list of the top 16 blogs in an industry, made up a draw like in a sporting event (his is modeled after basketball), and is doing a side by side comparison of pairs. Eventually there will be a face-off between two blogs, and a champion.

Along the way everyone learns about what works and what doesn't from an outsider's perspective. In fact, learning about what works for a blog is what John says is "...one of the reasons why I started this tournament. I wanted to look at what all the other blogs were doing (right and wrong) and see how I could improve. My laundry list keeps getting longer."

John based the tournament on several factors, archives, blog purpose, personality, design, usability, and 5 recent posts.

Related Post: Blog Contest: We face-off against Men with Pens

Comments

[John Hewitt]

Thank you for competing Patsi. It was a great match.

I have a couple of quick clarifications. First, there are actually 32 teams in the contest, not sixteen. Second, as much as MWP may want their next matchup to be with Copyblogger, they are actually in an entirely different bracket. Both sites will have to win a few more times before they could meet.

[Bob Younce at the Writing Journey]

Patsi - Yours is, I believe, the first analysis of the contest itself. Very cool perspective.

I think the match was a close one. I really dig MWP, and I expect them to get to the final 4 at the very least; maybe better. I guess if you're going to go out early, you want to go out to the winner, eh?

Then again, they could crap out in the next round. Hard to say!