Is Your Blog Really Sick? 8 Health Check Points

Is your blog sick? I don't mean in a good way, like your blog's really hip, slick and cool. I mean is it limping along on crutches with barely enough Google juice to keep the joints from creaking...maybe you haven't been posting lately, then when you do, you make a few lame excuses and expect readers to care...

Maybe your blog is a reflection of you, just a mirror of your mind, an expression of your spirit or lack of it...you could put on a happy face, do some blogging, and then say to yourself, "There, it's done, I've blogged."

So what? You know that's not what I mean when I say that a business blog is the best damn content marketing tool on Earth. But you can't get fired up and fix what's wrong if you're not sure where the problems lie.

Maybe your blog needs a yearly physical checkup. Here's Patsi's quick fix check list for diagnosing blog problems...

Take a look at your blog and examine it for the following signs of health:

1. Blood pressure: How's your traffic these days? Last week, last 30 days? Has it gone up or down in last 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?

2. Temperature: Has your content been hot? Are you getting comments? Have other bloggers and Tweeters been mentioning your posts? Is your content getting links from other blogs?

3. Weight: Have you been writing frequently, creating a large body of content using keywords? Is your content covering your main categories? Do you have cornerstone content pieces people can download?

4. Skin: Does your design reflect good branding, easy to navigate, consistent and clear, designed for trust?

5. Reflexes: Do you give readers suggestions, questions, and clear calls to action? Is it clear how people can hire or buy from you? Do you have a testimonial page?

6. Psycho-Social Indicators: Is your blog user-friendly, is it easy to leave comments, subscribe to get email updates? Are there easy ways to find you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn? Can your posts be retweeted easily?

7. Optical-Audio: Do you have video and audio files on your blog so people can see you and hear you?

8. Blood panel: Take a look at the quality of your content. Are you writing original stuff, or just regurgitating what other people say? Are you keeping readers' interests in mind? Is your content meaty, or fluffy?

I'm not an MD, I'm a psychologist. I'm sure a lot of the blogs I see have good excuses for not being better. But there's really no excuse.

If you're going to blog (and you know you almost have to when it comes to finding an inexpensive way to get known, get found, get customers), then don't let your blog lie around and get fat and lazy.

Attract, Sell, Profit

Work it, baby, work it. If you're not sure what to do, then find out. Listen, there's only 3 reasons to be blogging for your business: you want to attract, sell and profit online in the easiest way.

And there are 4 health spots for any blog:

1. Content
2. Outreach
3. Design
4. Action

Want to know more about how a few tips can get great results? Join Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, and I next Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 4 p.m. ET on this teleclass:

Time Saving Tips for Smart Blogging

Click to register, there's a small fee but, heck, you get handouts and more great blogging tips that you really need to save time, money and energy. Let's get your blog healthy again and start making profits.

Comments

[Process Management,Australia]

Thank you for sharing with us and was usefull too.....