1/2 way through the BIP

Here’s the task for revisiting goals:

• Find your original BIP goals post and take a look at what your goals were. Or, if you came to the BIP late or are just joining now, look at the Week #1 assignment to learn about setting goals.

• If you’re feeling up to the task, I suggest looking at the ProBlogger list of 69 questions to review your blog. You can use these questions to look at how far you’ve come since January and see where you might want to go.

• If appropriate, reset your goals. Get rid of goals you’ve accomplished, and add new ones that make sense. Think about where you want to be at the end of the year. Or, if you’re new, set some goals for the remainder of the year. Write a post with your new goals, and leave a link here in the comments or sign Mr. Linky. Stop back to this post and revisit some BIP blogs to check in on their goals too.

Answer the following questions in your goal post, in the comments to this post.

1. What BIP task have you liked most? Least (including ones you have skipped)?
2. Which tasks have been the most helpful? Least helpful?
3. What are the top three things you still would like to work on this year?
4. Are there any blogging-related topics you feel like you know a lot about and would be willing to write a BIP guest task on?
5. Any other comments about the BIP?

So this is assignment #11 and I have to admit, I haven't been all that interested in the last three of the assigned tasks. This assignment does sound interesting so I shouldn't have trouble finishing this one (that is as long as I don't get distracted by something else).

This week’s task is a content analysis of book reviews to get some info about reviews. How long are they? How personal are they? How many paragraphs does the average book review have?

By comparing book reviews written by bloggers to reviews written by professionals, I hope we can come up with some interesting stats to know more about what makes a book review.

Add here’s the task:

* Pick a book review you’ve written that you’re particularity proud of. Then, search around until you find at least one other professional review of the same book. If you don’t write book reviews, compare a review of something else instead.

* When you have some time (I’d say 30-45 minutes) follow this link to a Google Docs spreadsheet (nice anchor text, right?). It should look something like the picture at the right (but hopefully with more lines filled in).

* Fill in your name, blog URL, and book title in the lines. Feel following the columns and answering the questions as best you can for both of the reviews you have.

* Once you’re done, spend some time thinking about what you’ve observed. This can be about the numbers, or it can just be general impressions of the two reviews. If you’re feeling excited, write a post explaining some of your findings and what this comparison helped you learn about your reviews or about reviewing in general. Leave a link back to your post in the comments.

* For extra credit, find a few more reviews of the book you chose (another blogger, or a professional), or pick another book and add the stats for your review and a professional review. The more entries we have, the more I think we can learn.