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Blog Improvement Project Blogging Other

Blog Improvement Project Week #13: Blog Post Bingo, Round 2!

BIPThe Blog Improvement Project task this week is:

Blog Post Bingo!

We have to take a look at the 12 types of blog post below, and over the next three weeks, try to write as many of these different kinds of posts as we can.

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 The 12 Types of Blog Post

A Link Post – share link (or series of links) your readers might find interesting
A Short Post – less than 200 words
A List Post – simple as it sounds, a list of some sort
An Opinion Post – take an event, news, or another blog post and share your opinion on it
A Poll or Question Post – post a poll or ask your readers a specific question for feedback
A How-To Post – You’re an expert in something; big or small, share how to do it
A Long Post – more than 700 words
A Review Post – self-explanatory, I think 🙂
A Definition Post – show your expertise about a topic related to your blog
NEW: A Personal Post – something that’s going on in your life, related to your normal blog topic or not
NEW: A Resource Post – you know a lot about something, share the sites/books/tutorials you go to on that topic. This is similar to a link post, except these links should be related in some way and be useful for other people who want to know about the topic.
FREE SPACE – a type of post of your choice (that is not the same as one of the previous posts)

I loved doing this task last time, but it was really hard work. I’ll do my best to complete the list, but I could do with your help. I need some inspiration for the How-To Post and the Resource Post.

Is there anything you’d like to know how to do? 

Or anything that you think I might be able to find out for you?

Categories
Blog Improvement Project Other

BIP #11: Analyze Some Book Reviews!

The BIP Week #11 project was to dissect some book reviews, and analyse the numbers. The idea was to compare the reviews of book bloggers with professional ones, and see if there are any obvious differences. If you are interested in seeing all the figures, then the spreadsheet is here. 

I decided to compare the 8 professional reviews with the 8 blogger reviews and see if I could notice any major differences:

  Average Number of Paragraphs  Average Number of Words Total Number of Personal References
Professional 5.25 550 2
Blogger 7.5 500 78

 

The most obvious difference is that book bloggers use personal references. In our small sample the blogger made a personal thought or feeling known 39x more than the professional.  This is what I love about book bloggers. I can frequently read professional reviews and at the end still have no idea whether the book was any good.

Bloggers tended to have slightly shorter reviews, and a greater number of paragraphs, but the other statistics were all a lot more similar than I expected them to be. The average number of words in each sentence/paragraph was very similar, although I noticed that I tend to have less words in the sentences I write than the professionals do.

Overall, I was surprised by how similar they actually were, but will stick to reading the reviews of bloggers as I can build up a personal relationship with them, learn their taste in books and therefore trust their judgement.

Are you surprised by the similarity between blogger and professional reviews?

Have you noticed any other major differences between the two?

Do you read professional reviews?