So I finally decided to clean out my feed reader (FeedDemon) because, to tell you the truth, after a year and a half it had become a chaotic mess of feeds and news and JUNK.

Step one (dont laugh) was to delete all of the feeds that came with the initial setup. Step two was to create Channel Groups and organize the feeds that I subscribe to. Some of them are forums, some are blogs, and some are just corporate/business (boring) BS that I just like to peek in on every now and then.

More so than by topic, I organized my feeds by interest. For example: blogs I like to read daily, blogs/feeds I just scan, blogs of close friends, blogs with great tips or marketing info, etc.

In the process, I realized I didnt know who half those bloggers were. No name. No picture. No nothing. I’m searching from top to bottom, left to right, trying to find some little hint of who it might be… and finally give up, screaming “WHO ARE YOU?!” into my monitor. Ahh well. Delete.

Please, I beg of you, dont hide behind your blog. I subscribed to your blog because I met you, liked you, was told about you by a friend, knew you somehow from somewhere at one time or another…

One guy actually had a big fat sponsor ad in the top right section of the content area - one that contained a head shot of (what appeared to be) Satan himself. I thought “Geez, I subscribed to your blog??” It took some squinting (and actual reading of the surrounding text - geez, put me to work!) to figure out the photo was part of an AD, and not the author of the blog. Grrrr. Delete!

My request is simple: Put up a picture. Or at least some kind of icon or image that ‘represents you’. Add a name in there somewhere - even if it isnt your real name. I dont mind, as long as I think I know who I’m talking to when I leave a comment. Put something on your About Me page, and link to it.

Keep in mind I am reading from FeedDemon, not a web browser. On one particular blog I searched everywhere. The header, the footer, the sidebar, I even scanned the teeny tiny text below the posts to see if the blogger signed off or something. Just as I was about to delete the feed from my reader, I happened to glance up and see the domain name - and realized it was a good friend of mine! Oops! Kept that one

Even if you own a niche blog, or a business blog, or a whatever blog… you could invest a little time to make it look unique and remind us where we are and why we are reading your posts. If you have a blog about dogs, put little doggies in the header along with the name of your site. That kinda thing. I’m not actually going to read the text until I figure out where I am and why I should. Search engines will, but I wont. And search engines dont shop online (but I do).

Oh, and by the way, in my feed reader LEFT SIDEBARS SUCK. Not a big deal. I’ll live with it. But I thought I should let you know…

Tags: profiles, blogs, blogging, feed reader, feeds, rant, feeddemon