Business Plan and Monetization

Shar’s apparent business plan is to bring enjoyment to her audience. I do not see anything that produces revenue for Shar on her website right now. I think there are options for monetization for Shar. She can always try advertising, I understand if she wants to avoid cluttering the website with ads, I feel the same way towards my website. It still is a legitimate option she could look at. Shar could also look to partnerships with companies that are also related to music. I noticed that Shar has a Spotify playlist linked at the top of her blog, it would be really cool if she could foster a partnership with Spotify surrounding the creation of playlists. I know at this stage that might be a faraway dream, but it is important to not lose sight of any monetization goal. Shar herself is writing music, and there are definitely a lot of smaller musicians that could benefit from a having their song featured in a Dissected Songs post on Shar’s website. Shar could barter a featured post for copies of their music, as a way to receive some sort of revenue from her site.

Engaged in a Call to Action

Shar tends to ask for direct actions from her audience. In her blog post in which she dissects the lyrics to Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s Shallow, Shar asks her audience to comment any song requests they may have.

This call to action allows for Shar to respond to what her audience wants and helps her to better understand who they are through the music they listen to. Shar would benefit from consistently asking her audience for their contributions.

Addressing the Second Peer Review           

Shar’s second peer review was done by Vanessa. Vanessa outlined a few recommendations for Shar including, playing around with different fonts, and adjusting the size of her Song of the Week feature. I totally agree with Vanessa that the video player is huge and takes away from Shar’s written explanation. This may be too hard to address but is something Shar should look at when she has time to edit her site. Vanessa also pointed out Shar’s lack of diverse font use, I understand completely falling into complacency with the fonts the theme provides for you. Again, when time permits have a look at fooling around with them.

New Challenges

Shar’s site features this logo, and in having this logo front and center takes away from the title of her website, Millennial Speaks.

Upon seeing the logo, one may assume that MS is Shar’s initials it is only when you scroll down that the site name becomes apparent. I would recommend finding a way to enlarge the name of the website so that it is very obvious to new viewers that they are on Millennial Speaks.

I am excited to keep reading and to follow Shar’s music journey. Congrats on building such a compelling and personal voice, that is inspiring and relatable to a wide audience.

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Remy’s Social Media…

Remy’s use of Instagram is perfect for the style of blog she has, travel. Remy has used her Instagram for many years to showcase her many travels and adventures.

All the work she has done for years will pay off, as her Instagram already has major travel influencer vibes. Instagram is definitely the most relevant platform for Remy as writing about travel, lends itself to images of these places you can travel to. Remy does not link to her website on her Instagram though. She has over 1,000 followers so why not encourage them to read her site through having her Instagram bio link be the web address for her blog. Her posts do not coordinate with her blog posts when a new blog post goes live why not shout it out in the Instagram caption of an appropriate photo.

Remy also links on her blog to her Twitter account. Her Twitter is less consistent and less appropriate than her Instagram. Her Twitter appears to be mostly re-tweets rather and she does not link back to her website in any tweets. This makes sense as Instagram appears to be her preferred platform and is more appropriate for the style of her site anyways.

Pinterest is the final social media, Remy links to on her website. She has the least number of followers on this site, but the format does lend itself to her travel blog.  

Remy’s Online Growth…

I gave Remy’s first peer review from Helena a quick read and Helena gave Remy some great feedback. Remy still has some gaps in her actual site design.

The banner at the top of her site feels out of place, it does not scream travel blog to me. I love the images with her main offerings on them, but I was disappointed that when I clicked on them, I was not automatically brought to a feed of posts.

Remy forces the reader to click yet again to get to specific content and in some cases, people may because of this.

It was even more disappointing when I followed Remy’s instructions to click here to read more on her Behind the Scenes page and was met with “no posts found.”

Helena mentioned that this was empty in the last peer review as well. I cannot stress how important it is not to have empty pages or categories. If Remy plans to do some posts in Behind the Scenes at some point, there is nothing wrong with setting up the category for the future but keep it private until it is ready to launch with posts.

I do really think though that Remy has picked a great theme that matches book her Instagram aesthetic and lends itself nicely to a travel blog. Remy’s pictures are beautiful and do not take a long time to load which are both essential to this style of blog.

I am excited to see where Remy’s blog goes, I will definitely be checking back to see what place she discusses next.

The post Peer Review #2: Remy June appeared first on ClaryNathanWill.

I will be reviewing Audrey’s blog LateNightAudrey. Audrey is just at the beginning of her blogging journey.

The blog is quite sparse, and I really do not understand what LateNightAudrey is? Her current posts read like Process Posts rather than Professional Posts that highlight her brand. When I dived deeper into Audrey’s About section Audrey mentions writing about her experience studying abroad in Scotland, and as more professional posts appear on her blog her brand will become more apparent. I get the vibe that Audrey is still building what exactly her brand is, and my tip for honing this would be to write and write and write. In my own experience as I kept book blogging, I was better able to understand what I was providing within the larger sphere of book blogs, and what exactly my brand is within the book blog world. A travel blog will have a similar process to go through. Audrey should focus on her own voice in her posts, as even from just her few Process Posts I can almost hear Audrey in them. This should be incorporated into the Professional Posts as well.

I like the idea of having a central travel image of her centred on the homepage. The image may be too large though as on a standard laptop size screen the image takes up most of the page when the blog first loads. One can lose sight of the content or not realize that they are supposed to scroll down to read the blog posts.

I am a big believer in an about section for any blog, and I think the placement of it matters a lot. Audrey’s About section is currently a blog post imbedded into her stream of posts on the homepage. Once Audrey begins to post more it will disappear from the homepage and the only other way to access it will be in her Categories widget on the right side of the page. I am huge fan of an easy to spot About Me section physically having the text in a widget directly on the homepage, making sure no one has to search for it. I think back to the Lecture in class when we examined the Brain Pickings website. The website lacks a clear about section, one has to scroll for what feels like forever to find it. I was surrounded in class by people who were frustrated with this. Hence, making sure the About section is carefully placed is one of my biggest blogging tips.

A good component of her blog is her Instagram widget as when I think of a travel blog, my mind goes right to photos. There should ideally be more images than three. Audrey should work on building up her Instagram as an Instagram presence would really benefit a travel blog. Posting to Instagram frequently will benefit Audrey’s brand of a travel blog.

Audrey may feel pressure to have a successful brand right away. I have been growing my brand for a while, and I had to stop early measuring my success on numbers alone. I think back to the reading from Kevin Kelly entitled “1000 True Fans,” and what is super important from that reading is you do not need thousands and thousands of readers. Work on keeping a core group coming back, form a community that loves your brand.

I encourage you to check out Audrey’s blog and keep up with her brand’s journey, I know I will.

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