Blog Makeover of the Week: Moms with Grace

We’re going to do something different with this week’s blog makeover. Our winner is Sharon Wright, blogger at Moms with Grace.

I took a close look at Sharon’s blog, which is hosted at WordPress.com (a free blogging service) and she is definitely doing things right, design-wise. So we’re going to use Sharon’s blog as an example of what to do.

Here’s a screenshot:

I like the way Sharon’s blog is cleanly designed:

She clearly identifies her blog’s title (and theme): Moms With Grace.

Her tagline is tiny, and a bit lengthy, but it lets us know “what’s in it for me” and promises a tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted approach to the foibles of motherhood.

Motherhood comes with mistakes, mysteries and moments of pure bliss. Explore them all while keeping your dignity firmly intact.

At the top, Sharon prominently includes a “search this blog” form, which is excellent, particularly for a “mommy” blog in which many topics are interrelated.

Her e-mail subscription form is “above the fold” (visible at-a-glance to anyone who lands on her site). I suggest adding an option for people to subscribe via their RSS feed reader, as not everyone likes to receive blog updates via e-mail.

Sharon includes a “Share” widget that includes the major social networks. She also includes a couple of her latest tweets – a good enticement for those who may want to follow her on Twitter.

She lets us know she’s a contributing blogger at Attachment Parenting International, which lends her credibility.

And Sharon includes something most bloggers neglect – she lists links to her three top posts. These “top posts” don’t necessarily have to be posts that are the most commented on or the most linked-to; they are simply posts YOU want your readers to pay attention to.

Just one suggestion regarding Categories: I’d get rid of the “Uncategorized” category (which is WordPress’s default category) and file the nine posts that currently reside there into their own categories. On a blog, Categories function like an index; they’re important for helping visitors find their way around and dig deeper into your archives.

BLOG POSTS

Sharon shares from her heart, and from her personal experiences. And while she is giving advice to other moms, she doesn’t come across as preachy.

Some of her paragraphs are lengthy, which is a common problem among bloggers. In school, we were taught to write detailed paragraphs. Blogging, however, is journalistic-style writing. Short paragraphs. One tiny idea per paragraph.

Here’s the opening paragraph of one of Sharon’s posts:

I spent the last nine days worrying and praying for my 19-year-old niece who was hospitalized again for a problem stemming from her kidney disease. Her strength and stamina are inspiring, her tears are gut-wrenching and her journey is still an uphill climb. One realization for all of us this week is that she can never live by the same rules enjoyed by her peers. While most collegians survive on pizza and experiment with alcohol, my niece can get sick from too little sleep and too much stress. It doesn’t take much to upset the delicate balance of keeping her body healthy. She must adhere to very different rules and regulations.

There’s nothing wrong with this paragraph. It expresses one complete thought. But blog readers are skimmers. We read more slowly on a computer monitor, but we subconsciously want to read at the same pace as we would read a book. So we give a blog post a 2-second once-over to see if any words or phrases jump out at us.

If we’re presented with four or five lengthy paragraphs, we tend to lose heart and stop reading.

So it’s important to format your posts for skimmers. Here’s how I’d break up the paragraph above:

I spent the last nine days worrying and praying for my 19-year-old niece who was hospitalized again for a problem stemming from her kidney disease. Her strength and stamina are inspiring, her tears are gut-wrenching and her journey is still an uphill climb.

One realization for all of us this week is that she can never live by the same rules enjoyed by her peers.

While most collegians survive on pizza and experiment with alcohol, my niece can get sick from too little sleep and too much stress.

It doesn’t take much to upset the delicate balance of keeping her body healthy.

She must adhere to very different rules and regulations.

-I put that final sentence by itself because it is the thesis of her article. Putting it on a line by itself calls attention to the thesis and gives readers a chance to pause and think about the words.

-Note that I structured the pizza and alcohol sentence as a block quote. That sentence contains phrases guaranteed to elicit an emotional response in readers. Setting it off in a larger font size adds visual variety to the post, as well as telling readers, “This is important. Pay attention!”

MOM DARE

I love the “Mom Dare” Sharon includes near the end of many of her posts. The Mom Dare is a practical, doable challenge that will help moms improve some aspect of their parenting.

Again, break long Mom Dares into short paragraphs (give each part of the dare its own paragraph).

The Mom Dare would be a great place to solicit reader comments. Share the “Dare” and then ask readers to report back on their progress, or invite them to share additional ideas that work for them.

BUILDING READERSHIP

Sharon writes:

I’m committed to blogging once a week, after realizing twice a week was overwhelming with my workload.

She asked where she can submit her blog posts so she can build her readership, and how to link to social media sites.

Since your posts are so informative and well-written, I suggest searching Technorati.com http://technorati.com for “mommy blogs” or “motherhood” blogs. You can also do a Google Blog Search for mommy blogs. The search results will give you a good idea of some of the popular mom blogs (and there are thousands of them!).

Check some of them out and find out whether they accept guest posts, or reprints of previously published posts (often, you can rework a post you’ve already published into something new and fresh and submit it to a blog that doesn’t accept reprints).

Guest posting on others’ blogs will attract new links (and new loyal readers) to your blog.

LINKING TO SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

You can automatically stream your blog posts into Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn (as well as many other social networks).

In addition to (or instead of) the automated links, I suggest crafting short “teasers” that entice people who follow you on Facebook or Twitter to click through to your blog posts. I wrote a guest post for the TwiTip blog that explains how to do this: http://www.twitip.com/get-more-mileage-out-of-your-blog-archives-with-twitter-teasers/

Readers, can you offer any additional suggestions to Sharon?

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