Sorry for my delay in judging week 1 of Project Blogger...
Judging for Project Blogger is a tough proposition. These contestants are clearly professionals and good with their blogs. While there are differences the gap between all of them is very small. It's very early in the 14 week contest and our contestants are only getting started. Early on I am seeing some great stuff. So here are reviews of the results from each team for week one of the Project Blogger competition.
The first 5 blogger contestants are ordered by their win. The remaining are not in any particular order. This is fairly difficult to judge, and at this stage at least, they are all doing very well.
I want to thank all of the coaches, and the contestants as well. This project is a large undertaking for all, yet it is doing a lot for real estate professionals and the industry.
1. Mary Pope-Handy's got a terrific blog put up that is easy to read, and is clean. She gets really personal with her blog, while at the same time really doing a good job of letting you know the town.
One criticism would be that I'd like to see just a little more conciseness to her posts.
2. Julie Ferenzi writes from a personal perspective, it's about her experience and who she's with. She's tying these in with local factors like a new housing development, and a grocery store grand opening. She identifies with the local flavor and you get a sense of what's going on here, what has been, and how change has come. Julie keeps it about her experience her beliefs, and she's coming across well in her writing. It's clear where her coaches influences are showing through, I'd guess that in her grocery store post is influenced by Mr. Turner
They've put together a good blog on linvinginplainfield.com a good use of photos, I like Julies signature at the end of posts. I am unclear about the blogs main image. I'm assuming that's a shot of somewhere in Plainfield.
3. Jackie Colson- Miller and The Tomato have put together a good package, the blog looks clean except that her scrolling pictures took a while to load up in by browser, and seemed to cause some issues. The blog default text was large and easy to read. This was a great bonus.
We don't get a lot of real estate stuff in the post yet but we get to see Jackie as she travels. And it is fun to check it out. We even get to see a video from Budapest, that was pretty cool. Jackie was lucky enough to get a client while she was gone.
Would like to see more of Jackie's personality in this blog though. I'm not getting to know her as much some of the others.
4. Vali Wimberly did a great job of keeping topics together in her post so that they were easy to read. Along with her project blogger kick-off post she had one post on home inspections, and one about a hiking trail. I liked how even her home inspection post was easy to follow and identify the main points. The Herman Gulch post was my favorite however as it identified local flavor as well as being very easy to read.
5. Ines Hegedus-Garcia comes right out of the gate throwing it out there. She's telling us a lot about herself, and how it applies to what she does. She's writing in short easy to read sections. Taking the giving approach as others have done Ines has taken the time to highlight fellow bloggers, which is helpful to readers so they can understand and identify new blogs, of course the bloggers themselves get extra attention, and this all comes back to Ines, if not just in reflecting on her knowledge and good will toward others. This helps a lot in identifying your public persona. One thing I would have liked better was if in her Historic Home Nice post, if she'd added some of her thoughts about the different posts, as opposed to having a list with one general explanation. I loved the Romero Britto post, one thing that would have sealed it would have been to make the tone of the post more about how the subject Romero Britto, impacts the local geography.
Tisza Major-Posner, took the "just write" approach. Tisza can really keep it interesting, being very descriptive with her words.
The team has done a great job creating “Route66 Living.” Route66 Living is a good looking blog, you get the idea of the blog quickly with a good amount of photos, lots of clean white space and a clean font. It's easy to read and easy to navigate.
Tisza is a terrific writer, but I would have liked to see things a little easier to read by breaking them up and making it easier to identify the topics. What I wasn't seeing in Tisza's posts was real estate. I would have liked to hear a little more local flavor. I would love to hear Tisza's description of a local restaurant.
Theresa Lussier has done a great job expressing on her ActiveRain blog the changes and thought she's had as she's gone through this process. She does an amazing job of being open and honest. In talking about Huber Heights Public Radio she's identifying something personal to her as well as a bit of local flavor.
Kevin Tomlinson is doing a terrific job writing and keeping it real. It's pretty easy to get to know him through his blogging. This team seems to work together pretty well. This is made clear in the posts. But one thing that needs to happen is that Kevin needs to get writing. I've haven't seen much talking about real estate here.
Michael and Barbara Daly put together a word press blog. They have a good mix of property and industry information. Mousing over images on the blog was awful as each image had an associated SnapShots pop up. I would have liked to see more from this group.
Kelly Kilpatric got organized all right Her posts were quickly readable they were easy to glean information from. Kelly needed a few more posts to this round.
Madison Hildebrand did an excellent job of putting out a good amount of content. He talks a lot about what's going on locally. I'm not sure whether it's Madison, or Malibu, but there's a lot here about celebs. Madison also talks about local issues which is great. His posts could have included more sources and links to add to his stories. There were plenty of celeb links, but for the other topics I didn't see any citing of sources or links. Madison had a pretty good start for this competition.
London Whitted has a lot of informational content that was very readable. The topics are quick and to the point the information flows freely. I'd like to see a little more persona in these posts but so far London is off to a good start.
One again I'd like to thank all of the contestants and coaches participating in Project Blogger, hopefull this contest will bring much more interest to real estate blogging. Oh, and also a big thanks for Inman News for helping us with this contest, be sure to check out their Bloggers Connect Conference where the winners of Project Blogger will be announced.
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