Business Sphere Consulting Home Page

Business Sphere Consulting Home Page

As a way to become deeply engaged with a wider variety of blogs, I recently offered to provide a free blog review.  I am pleased to say that the very next morning, I received my first request for review.

Before I get to my first review, I feel the need to provide a bit of a framework for the mindset that I will bring to these reviews.  First, I am no more than an average blogger.  I have a background in communications, sales, marketing, systems, training, distribution and logistics – and much more.  Exposure one gets with 30 years at a $140 billion company.  Generally, I’m pretty good at what I do.

But as a blogger: average.

So it is not the blogging experience that will come out, but rather the application of 30 years in Corporate America applied to blogging.  Now, on to the review.

Business Sphere Consulting

In Eli Gatanela’s request for a review, he indicated his blog, Business Sphere Consulting, has been in existence for only 80 days and already gets 600 visitors daily.  Admittedly, with his involvement in Entrecard and Adgitize, he may have a high bounce rate (as I do for the same reason.)  However, to grow a new blog to a traffic level that is arguably not insignificant should tell all of us that he’s doing something right.  As I explored his site, my suspicions were confirmed.

The tag line for Business Sphere Consulting is a very appropriate badged slogan of “Let’s Talk Business.”  BSC uses articles from Ezine Articles as what appears to be his primary source as opposed to original material.  Is this bad? Absolutely not!  BSC is a very carefully organized collection of topics that follow the four pillars of advertised content:

  • Business Advice
  • Consulting
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Real Estate

I would rather see carefully selected content, selected with an experienced human “filter” than I would rambling posts from a misinformed author.

One of the more appealing aspects of the posts he has selected is their length. This blog review post is much longer than I normally post.  That’s on purpose.  It is intended to be an in depth view of a topic.  Occasionally, I will let my keyboard run free and load a lengthy post.  Normally though, my style is to comment on a topic, provide a few examples, maybe some links to more information, and wrap it up with some perspectives.  My hope is that this approach provides for easy and enjoyable reading. Eli is doing that with Business Sphere Consulting.

Next, the layout you see here.  A very straightforward and clean WordPress template. In fact, one that may work for me in a future project I am considering.  No issues with the layout, but I would recommend that Eli consider a different color scheme for the topmost navigational tabs.  In Google Chrome, the “inactive” tabs carry a gray color on the medium blue background and are hard for my old, tired eyes to read.  When they are hovered over, then turn black and more visible.  The “active” tab of course is quite visible with black text on white background.  See additional screen capture below, showing the tabs in more detail.

Another cosmetic suggestion: the name of the blog does not appear in the Internet Explorer header bar.  (See detailed screen capture below.)  All that is displayed is what appears to be a vertical bar.  As a result, all that displays in Google Reader is “(name unknown).”  Any additional visibility for a blog’s name should be exploited.

One more comment about the layout.  I see too many blogs that are much too busy. Though involvement with Entrecard and Agitize, both BSC and the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit run across many kinds of blogs.  I hate to admit it, but even many of the ones trying to be serious are simply too distracting.  Too many widgets, gadgets, ads, and overall, clutter.  The BSC of course has ads (that’s why many of us blog), but they are not imposing or distracting.  This should be attractive to advertisers because they get excellent visibility without the distractions numbing visitors.

Based on Eli’s biography on his “About” page, he has substantial experience in law, management consulting and real estate.  He appears to be using that experience to carefully select very specific articles from Ezine and apply them carefully to the Business Sphere Consulting blog.

Business Sphere Consulting Header

Business Sphere Consulting Header

Very enjoyable reading while gathering valuable business insights.  A “win-win” in my opinion.

Dave