frogstr is one of the few blogs where I really hang out (as opposed to quick, efficient and RSS ed content consumption). It’s hard to fit marketing tints in my articles so Ben over there is linking to me more often than I to him. Well, I am willing to have blue frog on purple background in my sidebar so we are even.
Anyway I had recently won small contest at frogstr and it was nice excuse for reviewing Rarst.net which in turn is nice excuse to review frogstr.
Personality
Blog is managed by Ben Tremblay computer engineer by profession, slanted towards Internet development and marketing by interests.
I strongly suspect when I with Ben read each other’s post we get same click in the heads. I am visual person so I see click. Ben may be hearing click or smelling click (maybe tasting?) but click is the same by nature.
That is click of seeing blog shaped by personality . Blog in a niche where you want to be, without looking at traffic or earnings potential. It’s foolish to look for schedule, pillar posts and linkbaits here. Ben posts when he has something to say and about what he wants to say.
Design
Design changes on frogstr are epic tale. Like in prince saving lots of princesses so he can choose the cutest one . I pun Ben lots about it but really he manages to pull of great thing – no matter what wild swings of color and navigation are on frogstr this month – they always obey very particular priorities order:
- Content
frogstr_heading
- Brand
frogstr_logo
- Unimportant
[todo:try to find navigation and take screenshot]
It’s not one of those mind-blowing themes but I think frogstr designs are very artistic . A lot of whitespace, a lot of color spots, plenty of thin typography and close to none secondary stuff. Something produced by light and fast strokes without accounting few months worth of statistics to determine which color footer links should be.
Content
It’s hard to predict what topic exactly will land in your RSS next with this blog. There were some changes of course (few themes and one domain ago) but that’s history. If you interested in online marketing, branding, SEO, social networking or anything roughly connected with these – it will be interesting read.
Plus secret ingredient so many bloggers totally fail to understand – one thing at a time . Yeah, none of those “10 fluffest fluff” posts that do well in social media, who cares that very few will actually bother acting according to such advice.
Dark side
Another ongoing pun is dark side vibes . That’s my variation of warning bell. Ben is rather experienced in what he blogs about. And taking topics in account that experience includes occasional knowledge that is kinda grey hat (after smileys light it up).
You won’t pick up anything really bad at frogstr. But if you are starting to get ideas about using some… questionable things Ben posted about as cheap shortcuts then dark side vibes is my last warning before you step out of light and self-destruct.
Overall
In my opinion frogstr is an antidote to all that crap tons of low quality marketing and MMO blogs are trying to feed you. It’s valuable information delivered by nice person in very digestible form . Without sales pitch – doesn’t get better than that.
Twitter http://twitter.com/bentremblay
Ben Tremblay #
Rarst #