I recently signed up for an online course at problogger.net called ’31 days to build a better blog’, more out of intrigue than anything else. The course started today and the first task was to create a SWOT analysis and elevator pitch for your personal website… In my case, Sparklife.info.

A SWOT analysis is a strategic marketing term that stands for ‘Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats’ and I thought I would share what I wrote with you lovely people, so that you can get a better idea of what Sparklife.info strives to be…

Mission statement and goals:

Simply put, my mission statement is ‘to help others achieve everlasting relationship happiness through the process of conscious dating’. I’ve written more about this in my first post but it saddens me to see how many people there are out there either in unhealthy relationships, or not getting what they want in their dating lives. If some of my advice on these pages can help even a few people get what they deserve in their relationships, I will have achieved what I intended to.

On a more personal level, getting my thoughts written down helps me to refine and expand my theories, which helps both me and everyone else who comes across this website looking for advice.

Strengths:

The thing that I have over a lot of other people in the same niche is real-world experience. Having worked passionately for so many years as a dating coach and with hundreds of clients in real world situations, I know exactly what is and what is not effective in creating attraction and further down the line, finding true love!

It mildly frustrates me when I come across a website that gives out fallacious dating advice that clearly hasn’t been tested by anyone. The sad part being that there will be some poor soul who will blindly follow such advice like “approach a girl by offering to buy her a drink” or “strictly wait two days to call after a date”.

Weaknesses:

By far my biggest weakness is a lack of formal recognition or qualification. Although I have a lot more experience and knowledge than most practicing relationship experts, the lack of a ‘PhD’ after my name could discredit some of my work at first introduction.

I’ve actually had several e-mails since this site’s launch from random visitors saying words to the effect of, “at first I thought this was just another charlatan giving out unsolicited advice, until I got round to reading some of your stuff and I noticed the distinguished dating companies you’ve worked with”. Not everyone will stick around long enough to discover the latter part of that sentiment.

I’ve actually strongly considered and done in-depth research into getting more specific qualifications for myself, along the lines of psychology or counselling qualifications. The reason for my apprehension for enrolling in any of the courses I have found thus far is that further research into their syllabuses reveals that what is being taught, I either know to a greater depth already through personal study, or is irrelevant to my pursuits. I would literally just be doing it for the title, which to me seems futile.

Opportunities:

Through posting regularly on Sparklife.info, I will not only be improving my writing style over time, allowing me to explain my theories more eloquently but it will also allow me to reach a much greater audience than any work I do in person.

Threats:

It’s been a slight concern for me as to how personal I want to be with my writings. Whilst on the one hand, I understand that people close to me won’t appreciate me being fully revealing on topics that include them personally, I advocate the notion of being fully honest and expressive with my ideas, without holding back information that might be beneficial to someone else. This is something that I will simply decide responsibly as I go along.

Strategies and action plan:

The short-term plan is to write and upload a unique and thought-provoking article to Sparklife.info three times a week. After collating about four year’s worth of notes and adding my latest ideas to the mix, I have a backlog of over one hundred article ideas that will hopefully all get a chance to be written and be useful to the people reading them.

The thing I love most about this medium is the feedback I can get from anyone who stumbles across this website and so far I have received some extremely heart-warming emails from people as far away as Australia about how much they enjoy the site. I encourage anyone else who has opinions based on or opposing anything I write to express them and I really appreciate any comments that I receive.

Service will resume as normal tomorrow with a brand spanking new article.

Much love,

Sam

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Related posts:

1. Sparklife.info six month review – every article listed
2. Sparklife.info Introduction
3. Sparklife.info one year review – every article listed

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 10:31 pm by Samuel McCrohan and is filed under General.
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