What qualifies a website to appear as the Small Business Blog of the Day

What should this website be? What would you like to see added or changed? We've had the suggestion to add a list of small business blogs and it's coming. What else can we add?

What kinds of blogs should appear as the Small Business Blog of the Day? I'm in favor of excluding blogs that depend on advertisements for the writer to make a living. I'm also in favor of excluding blogs about companies in the business of writing blogs...although I'd be happy to feature their clients and give them credit for being the creator/consultant. Any thoughts on this?

I've been flirting with the idea of a ratings system to rate how good a small business blog is. What do you think about this? What categories for rating would you suggest?

Any comments would be most appreciated.

Comments

[Justin Kownacki]

Just found this blog yesterday and am now making it a recurring stop on my daily web journey. Great idea and great job!

As for the questions above: a ratings system may be too easily-influenced / subjective, but could serve a purpose if you highlight both good AND bad examples. (Otherwise, they'd all be 4 star examples... though isn't that the point?)

I haven't read through the archives far enough to know if this is redundant yet, but: have you given any thought to conducting the occasional interview with small business bloggers to discuss the nuts and bolts of how and why they blog, and what the impact has been?

[Brian Brown]

Great, I think we're on the same wavelength.

First, I'm totally not opposed to reviewing blogs that I think are less than stellar. There really are relatively few small business blogs out there right now, that even doing a blog badly is a step forward and worthy of review. Over time of course, they should be getting better and better.

Secondly, the interview portion is in the works. I have worked out an email template to send to folks who have been featured with a few questions that I think would be helpful to others who want to blog. I'm going to use the template to save me some time because I foresee this beginning to be a major project so I'm going to streamline a little, but hopefully not at the expense of quality information.

The idea with the interview is that the writer of the blog could respond to the questions at their leisure or not at all, and then I would post the reponses as a follow up to their SBBotD mention. I'm not going to incorporate the interview directly into the SBBotD posting, as a rule, because I don't want to be dependent on someone else to get a post submitted every day. This way when someone responds, I'll post it, and everyone's happy.

I'll include the email template in another comment.

[Brian Brown]

Ok, I lied. I decided to make the email its own post. See it here:

http://pajamamarketblog.typepad.com/pajama_market_small_busin/2006/03/if_your_blog_is.html

[Justin Kownacki]

Very good ideas. Streamlining and independent follow-ups are key.

The template for the interview request looks solid. Two other things to ask might be:

What features do you wish the blog offered you that it currently doesn't?

AND / OR

What features do you wish you could offer your customers via the blog that you currently can't? (Could rope in blog coders as a "wish list" aggregator)

Good luck!

[Brian Brown]

Thanks Justin. Good suggestions.

[Natalie Ferguson]

I've only just found this blog as well, and think it's a brilliant idea!
A rating system wouldn't go astray with me, especially because a 'good blog' is definatly a matter of opinion (hense me hating a lot of the most famous blogs on the internet :)) It would be good to have a reason why as well (eg. 4/10 - It is a real struggle to read those massively long posts.)
I think profiling 'bad blogs' is also helpful - especially if it's put in a positive light (eg. ways to improve, instead of why it's so bad)

[Brian Brown]

Thanks Natalie. I've really been thinking about this aspect of the blog, and I think a system from 1-5 pajamas for about five categories would work well.

I'm still working on the categories which I'll probably bring up in another post to ask people for feedback and suggestions.

[Ilan Kwittken]

Love this blog about blogs!! I am the author of Chic Ilan , a blog about Beauty, Style and women's issues. I'd love to be considered for your review.
Ilan