Blog Critique: Fresh as a Daisy

In this series I give constructive feedback about the look and function of an author blog from a marketing perspective. As always, I rely on help from graphic designers Tom Barnes (my hubby) and Joe LaRue. To review the blog elements we look at or to submit your own blog for critique, go here.

I postponed Monday's blog critique so I could announce winners yesterday, but no worries - we still have one this week. Since we're already a day late, let's jump right in. Go on over to Daisy Carter's blog Fresh as a Daisy and we'll discuss below.

Okay, are you back? Then let's discuss. 

Daisy, your blog is perfect. Seriously. It's beautiful. 

• Your palette is divine. I love the colors and the way you use them. I could stare at your blog for a long time.
• You have depth and relevant information on your pages.
• You have a contact me page.
• You don't have samples of your writing, but you're on submission which puts you in a different ballgame.
• Your profile info is high on the sidebar.
• You stick to your blogging schedule.
• You use pictures in your posts which are very thoughtful and interesting to read.
• What else can I say? You should include a picture of you somewhere. I don't have the percentages in front of me right now - they're sitting on my desk at one of my client offices - but faces attract people to read the information more than images without them. And we want to know what you look like.
• I also personally prefer changing the "Link Within" option to 5 instead of 3 - it fills the page better.

The only other criticism, if you can call it that, is that I'm surprised you don't have more followers. You obviously engage with the readers you have - you have lots of entries in the contest you are currently running and you seem to have comments on each of your posts. But I think, if your heart is in it, you could improve those numbers. I've written various posts where I talked about this but I must not have labeled them well since I can't find any of them right now. Looks like I have some homework...That doesn't help you right now. Some obvious suggestions that are also time consuming:

• Visit lots of blogs. Follow blogs. Make comments.
• Stalk followers - find blogs you want to emulate, click on those followers and invite them to follow you. Or just comment on their blogs to attract them.
• Join blogfests.
• Hold contests (like you are now!) and encourage people to tweet/blog about you as part of their entry.
• Be genuine.

You're probably doing all of those things already. This is just a confirmation that those are the right things to be doing. Good job! And good luck as you continue on your career!