Remon Talks

Productive strategies is holding an iPod giveaway contest! All you have to do is write a review of Mark W. Sheads productivity blog. The best 5 reviews have a chance to win a shiny new iPod Shuffle. What I like about this contest (except for the iPod ofcourse) is the fact that reviews can be positive, negative or mixed and are being judged on being informative.

Upon entry.. 

When you first enter the site, you’ll notice the simple, yet goodlooking layout. The main colors are red and grey with black text. The blog is easy to read and navigate. One thing I don’t like is the fact that you have to click to read an entire post, I just want to scroll down and read everything I haven’t read yet. I’m probably not the only person doing that so I would suggest he shows full posts on the frontpage.

Another thing I noticed at the frontpage is that there’s no link to the next page of (older) articles. Like I said before, all I want to do is scroll down and read everything that’s interesting to me, when I’m at the bottom I want to click “next page” or “previous entries” and start at the top again. I don’t browse archives, not being able to go to the next page is usually a goodbye from me.

The good stuff! 

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about the good things of Productive strategies. As you may have noticed, Mark makes good use of images. I should start doing that too, since it makes the blog look better and it draws attention to the posts. He doesn’t write killer headlines but neither do I. The headlines do give you a basic idea of the post, which is good enough in my book.

Upon clicking a “read more” link you will find the first paragraph of the post, followed by “continue below”, a square adsense block and finally the rest of the article. I have absolutely no problem with monetizing blogs but this setup is too disturbing. I would suggest wrapping the text around the adsense block and ditching the image next to it. I’m not sure but I think images next to an adsense block are not allowed anymore.

Productive Strategies also offers a full RSS feed which is very good. According to problogger partial RSS feeds are the number 3 reason for readers to unsubscribe from your blog.

Now that we’ve handled the layout, let’s get started with his content shall we?

Quality content 

Mark doesn’t update his blog very often BUT he also says so in his about page. The posts are well written articles about time management and personal productivity and I must say he’s doing a very good job.

I haven’t read much about time management or personal productivity before, but posts like Working effectively with a new assisant are really refreshing to me, especially since I’m in doubt about hiring an assisant / coworker. Another well recommended article is Your own business and Streamlining your business. It looks like Mark and I agree on many points!

As a conclusion, I would like to say to Mark: Keep up the good work! There are some things you may improve, such as posting more often and/or offering full posts on the frontpage. For SEO purposes, you may want to move the name of your blog to the end of the title, ie: “Streamlining your business - Productive Strategies” instead of “Productive Strategies: Streamlining your business“. Also, place a “next page” link on your frontpage if you can!

Overall, a blog worth reading. I have added it to my reader and will visit it regularly!

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