Part I: Tips on Making Easy, Effective and Quality Reviews

My inspiration on writing this blogging tip came upon stumbling one of the many eGuides from SuccessFactors, titled The Secret to Effective, No-Hassle Performance Reviews which by the way you can grab and read for free here.

>>UPDATE: It seems that the free eGuide from SuccesFactors is no longer available, still if you want to look for other great free eGuides, you can search for them here.

For us bloggers, writing a review is absolutely inevitable. Come to think about it, I believe reviewing is a huge, integral part of blogging since our jobs (passion too) mainly requires publishing our opinions. And when we publish opinions, thoughts, (constructive) criticisms, it’s already reviewing by definition.

Can’t Review Properly? It’s Not Bad, it’s Too Bad

Many share this dilemma whether it’s consciously or unconsciously. Especially if you’re making money through sponsored reviews (or planning to in the near future), the lack of ability to generate an effective, quality review might hinder you to blogging success, or to higher earning potentials at the very least. Aside from the money issues, substandard reviews too is bad for any blogger’s authority and reputation. Just look at John Chow, Maki on Doshdosh and Warren of Problogger, they’re like the top of the blogger’s community, and one of the too many common traits they share is that they are absolute experts on making amazing and prime quality reviews (they pull in thousands of money every month just by sponsored reviews alone). See what I mean when I said, ‘too bad’?

Improve Your Reviewing Skills

When I mean a ‘bad’ reviewer, I don’t necessarily mean someone who can’t do a review at all, for I believe no blogger like that ever existed (I hope so). The only possible reason why some reviews looks less than others is based on the criterion on how good they relay their message and opinion to their readers, and on how well the have presented the entire review.

This blogging tip is separated into three parts.

First is,
Tips on Making Easy Reviews

Let’s get the thought straight first. Confusing, but I don’t mean to say that doing reviews is ‘easy’, because actually, if you aim for a really good review, then it’s definitely ‘not easy’. My point is, you can make doing a review easy if you just know what you’re doing and on how you should properly prepare yourself.

There is one very important key to making reviews easy, and that is, research. For example, on blogging, the niche you’ve selected is the topic you’re familiar and most comfortable with. You know what’s in your niche (that’s why you’ve blogged about it!) so writing posts about that topic is easy for you on normal circumstances since you’re already knowledgeable to it. The same thing with reviewing, if you’ve researched well and made yourself familiar and comfortable with the topic, then writing that review will be almost a piece of cake. With proper research, you could be writing that review like you’re just writing for your next post. The secret is just research, research and more research, until you’ve known and got yourself familiar with the whole thing.

To be continued with topics focusing on the keys to making effective and quality reviews. Be sure to watch out for the part 2. Will post it soon!

>>UPDATE: Part II (Tips on Making Effective Reviews) is now posted!
>>UPDATE: Part III (Tips on Making Quality Reviews) is now posted!