The next blog that Bloggeries is going to review deals with a sensitive subject matter and readers should take this into consideration when reading the blog. The blog is called PPD Connect. This is a blog for women that have suffered or are suffering from any degree of Post Partum Depression to join, meet, share their stories, raise awareness, and help other moms that are struggling. Post Partum Depression is a psychological disturbance that happens with some women after they have given birth. There are varying degrees of the disorder, which you will find out for yourself when you read the most recent bloggeries: Liz’s Story; Advice for Moms with PPD from Another Mom; Leah’s Story; Lisa’s Story; Amanda’s Story; A Readers Response to the Author’s Story; A new moms story, seeking Welcome to Postpartum Depression Connect. What you will find when you read this blog is story upon story that will touch your heart of real women, with real stories and the struggles they face every day when coping with this psychological challenge. PPD is a real disorder, a real problem, and this blog has been created to reach out to everyone to educate, raise awareness, and help heal.
This blog contains two navigation systems and is very easy to navigate. Bloggeries are centralized with black text on white background and links are highlighted with pink. In the left navigation bar you will find links on how to submit a story, Categories menu (containing only one category – stories), and a Recent Comments Menu. In the right navigation bar you will find a disclaimer about the claims of the blog, Learn More about PPD Menu, PPD Resources, and information on Support Groups. The blog is strictly stories and content so there are no associated pictures with the posts, and as of the time of review, the blog does not have an about page, though the blog is fairly self-explanatory.
I will give this blog a 3.4/5 for now and offer a few suggestions for the blogger so they may see some growth to the blog. At this point, there is only one category in the categories menu, and I do recommend the addition of more categories to ease navigation of the blog. The blogger could make use of additional categories for not only navigation purposes, but for traffic as well. With so many degrees of PPD, the blogger could add ‘Post Partum Psychosis’, ‘Baby Blues’, and things of that nature to sort the stories out for the reader. I also suggest the blogger use keywords in the titles of headlines for the same purposes, it eases navigation, will bring in more traffic, and sorts the stories. Adding keywords like ‘Post Partum Psychosis’ to relevant headlines for the bloggeries would make a tremendous gain on the navigation of the blog. Content is well written, and has the potential to move the readership to action which is the goal of written content. While I recognize that the point of the blog is based on story submission, I do recommend the blogger allow the readers some editorial rights to edit the submissions as some of them are not that easy to read. There was for example one bloggery I read where a run-on sentence lasted about 5 or 6 lines. By using editorial status on the submissions without affecting the integrity of the story, the blogger may make her posts easier to read on the readership. The blog is also new from what I can tell, though without an archives menu it is hard to guage this. With newness, comes a lack of blog meat for any blogger, and I suggest for Appearance sake the blogger move the navigation bars into one navigation bar for the time being to ease up on some of the white space of the blog. Overall however, this is an excellent blog with a unique niche. If it follows some of these suggestions, and works on continued improvement, it should do very well. This blog has a large target audience and with its quality content has the potential to really hit the mark with its readership and see tremendous success.
-Chrissie