For my third peer review, I’m doing a deeper dive on Kirsten’s blog, kirstenlifts.com. Right off the bat, I really love Kirsten’s intentions with her blog. I love that she’s documenting her fitness journey and inspiring others through doing so, and how she’s using it as her own personal diary and “digital garden” (Basu, 2020). Similarly to my blog, Kirsten has taken something she’s really passionate about and is using it to both share her experience and provide value to others through that. As someone who’s also really passionate about fitness and working out at the gym, I find that I can really relate to her blog posts and it really motivates me as well with my fitness journey!
Starting off with the appearance of her blog, I really love how Kirsten used her own images as the background image of her home page and that you’re still capable of reading the text on top of it really clearly. I think these images give a really personal feel to the blog! It would be great to see more visuals and images throughout her blog and her posts, because nowadays our attention spans are so little and images are so important in keeping people engaged. Using more images of her own to share her journey and knowledge about fitness in her posts would allow her to connect with her audience more, as “design augments the message of the content” (Gertz, 2015).
I like that she has two buttons leading to her “About me” page and “Blog posts” page on her home page, but a suggestion I have is to create a “Recent posts” section below her “story” section. I think it would be nice to have so the user can see deeper into her blog and her content without having to click around as much. Maybe even making more headings or content pillars to break down the blog could be beneficial, for instance through having a “progress” section or a “workouts” section to allow the user to understand the type of content they’re going to receive when they get to the home page. In terms of website accessibility, I think Kirsten’s blog is really easy to navigate as she has clear headings and subheadings for her content (Accessible Publishing Learning Network, 2022).
As for marketability to Kirsten’s intended audience, I think she’s off to a really great start! I think if she did want to take her blog further to try and monetize it, she should create more content around providing tips and value for her audience on fitness and using her experience and knowledge to do so. Using SEO and keywords in her posts would be really beneficial in reaching her intended audience, since it’s one of the most “viable and cost-effective ways to both understand and reach customers” (Hollingsworth, 2018). Fitness is really popular niche online today, so I think using other social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to share her journey would be such a cool and great way to drive users to her blog and integrate transmedia practices.
Overall, I really love Kirsten’s blog! I think she’s doing a really amazing job at sharing her journey with fitness and I think there’s so much potential for monetization and marketing if she wanted to go down that road in the future.
References
Accessible Publishing Learning Network. 2022. Website Accessibility
Basu, Tanya. September 5, 2020. “Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet” MIT Technology Review.
Gertz, Travis. 2015. “Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse.”
Hollingsworth, Sam. April 13, 2018. “12 Reasons Why You Business Absolutely Needs SEO.” https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close
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