5 Signs Your Blog Needs A Makeover

Time flies when you’re having fun, or so they say. Whether that’s true or not, it definitely is true that time seems to just zoom by, especially if your life has a never ending parade of things to do. You start saying things like “My cell phone bill is due tomorrow? Didn’t I just pay that last week?” Um, no. That was a month ago.

By the same token, how many years has it been since you created your blog? How long has it been since you shook things up a bit? “Hey!”, you probably say, “My blog incorporates the best references, images, and video that 2005 has to offer!” Yeah, except that it’s 2013, genius. If you want to keep your online reputation pristine, you better get with the program and bring things current.

Here are five warning signs that your blog needs a makeover.

1. Declining Visits

When you begin a blog, part of your strategy should be to build up an audience. More hits, more followers, more eyes. This is a figure that should be trending upward, as more people find out about your awesomeness and start to visit you regularly. But if you notice that the number of hits is going down, you may be boring people, and as we all know, boredom is anathema to the Internet.

Hello? Is anyone there?

2. Outdated Information

So according to the About information in your blog, you’re in college, majoring in binge drinking, odd sexual practices, and journalism. Your relationship status is “Hitting on everything with a pulse”. Your occupation is “None. I’ll never work for some stupid boring company as a wage slave”. Well, that’s all well and good, and it’ll be definitely interesting to see you explain all of that to that special someone that you just got engaged to and your boss at the bank. Oh, that’s your information from 2004? Looks like someone needs to update their information. Look on the bright side: the damage control you’ll need to run will make for one amazingly interesting blog post.

3. Way Inappropriate Pictures

Your photo galleries seem to be a collection of pictures of duck face posing, pants on the ground wearing dimwits, things which, these days, invite more scorn than compliments. Or maybe you have photos of your kids splashing in the bathtub as toddlers when in fact that was about ten years ago, and they’ll be starting high school just as soon as they recover from the trauma. And there’s that profile picture of you playing beer pong while wearing a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” t-shirt (and nothing else!) that just may be damaging your professional reputation right about now.

4. Who IS This Person?

People change. It’s a fact. But if you look over your blog and start frowning and going “Who IS this tool?”, you may be reading information about a younger, less wise version of yourself. Your blog is an extension of yourself. If the person depicted in that blog is no longer you, you need to update it. Now.

5. No One Cares

The first symptom listed was “declining visits”, but that didn’t mean that you weren’t getting any visits at all, did it? No, it’s just that your numbers are off. Surely the ones who do show up appreciate your blog? If that’s the case, then how come lately they haven’t given you any feedback, replies, comments, or any other indication that they are in fact, alive? If your blog has become a boring, uninspiring thing that barely elicits a “Hm” from people, even if you’re posting a blog entry about something controversial, then you need to shake things up.

It’s easy to get into a rut. It’s also easy to have time fly by so fast that the things you had that were edgy and relevant are now dismissed as being “so 2005”. Experiment with a different background, a newer profile picture, perhaps tackle a few topics that are red hot and current.

Oh, and get rid of that “All your base are belong to us” meme. It’s so 2001.