English Writing Assignment
pooh461
BlogLecture.pptx
Creating a blog
ENG1210 | South College
What is a blog? (Web + Log = blog)
Blogs Defined
Blogs are written for the general public, not for an academic audience. Anyone can write a blog for any reason and they may or may not have the credentials to write on that topic. You may have seen these range from fashion to “mommy blogs” to foodie posts.
Blogs are often very personal genres of writing with a much more conversational tone. You can use "I", you can talk to your audience, you can tell personal stories as long as they are connected to the topic.
You may even be more familiar with a variation called a “vlog,” or video blog (like a person who gives insider looks at amusement parks, etc.)
TOPIC and/or genre Approach
For the overall blog, not a single post, choose a topic you are passionate about, whether that is a subject matter in your career field or a personal hobby or interest.
Before you launch a blog, research to see if the market is already saturated. If there are 6 million blogs about Disney already, made choose a topic where you have less competition.
Similarly, if you wanted to write a home organization blog about the KonMari method, what would drive an audience to your page versus the blog of Marie Kondo, who invented that method?
Consider what voice you will bring to the topic. There might be 1,000 blogs about vampires, but is there one that blends comedy and fangs? If not, maybe that’s the unique take you have to offer. A blog is a place to express your style in combination with the information you provide. Every blog you post on the site should have a clear angle that matches this overall tone and genre.
Even niche can be good
You might think your topic is too oddly specific or no one would like a blog that mixes the academic and the entertaining, but those blogs already exist! Pop Sonnets take pop music and transforms it into Shakespearean sonnets (how specific is that?!). It also has several hashtags and keywords.
Another tumblr blog only captions pictures of ugly babies from the Renaissance. While the purpose of these is obviously comedy, there are lessons to be learned about the difference between the spirit and tone of a blog and an academic essay.
Yours will not be this pictorial, but there’s also something to be learned about how these visual blogs look on the page. An audience will make judgments about a blog due to its style and even the quality of the page in terms of looks. Consider what will encourage that audience to keep reading.
SEO & Driving “Traffic”
One of the most difficult parts about creating a blog is driving traffic to that blog, or finding an audience. How can a you ensure that yours is the one people click on when there are so many other blogs out there?
People drive traffic to their sites through social media networking and sometimes even paid advertising to get to the top of the search engine results. However, you can use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, like the ones covered in free chapters here to benefit your results, such as keywords. Wordpress also provides great advice on getting more views/traffic.
In professional blogging, businesses often require the keywords explained above, so those blogs come up when people are searching for similar terms. Consider what keywords you would use in your blogs to gain a larger audience.
Additionally, on SEO: keywords not only drive traffic to your site, they also help you organize your ideas and stay focused on the blog post's topic. You can reuse the keywords in your "thesis" and "topic sentences." <--looking for ways to explain what might be a foreign concept to them in more familiar terms.
Consider using a Headline Analyzer like this one to see how efficient your blog titles are. This tool measures how well the title of your blog entry encourages clicks, shares, and likelihood of ending up in search results. It’s a tool many SEO writers use.
Example: If you use the title, “10 Ways to Throw a Pinterest-Worthy Party for Kids,” you might score a 66.
If you write, “10 Pinterest-Worthy Parties That Will Even Make Your MIL Happy,” you would score a 72.
Blog Titles
Audience
Before you get started, ask yourself who your target audience is. Who do you think will read it? Who do you want to read it? Some aspects of this you might want to consider are demographics, like those pictured to the left. Defining this helps you determine the tone of your approach, what the audience is looking for, what they like or dislike, and how you can provide solutions to any problems they may have. You may have seen this before framed as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Length
At minimum, blogs are 500 words. You want to convey enough information for someone to use their time to link on your link. Less than 500 words really can’t tell the reader much.
Since you are beginning with an essay you are going to pare down and modify the tone of for a new audience, the aim should be 700 to 1000 words.
Since blogs don’t have the traditional tabs to begin new paragraphs, you want to make sure you don’t have one long block of text, but paragraphs with spaces between each paragraph/change in thought.
HYPERLINKS
There is no reference page on in-text citing in a blog.
Instead of citing in APA, as you would for a traditional paper, you will include hyperlinks (pictured here). Instead of pasting an entire URL, you will post a hyperlink to the source material within the sentence of the blog in a place that makes sense.
For example: Microsoft Office has a tutorial on how to embed hyperlinks into a Word document.
This symbol.
Blog Set-up
Consider a Monroe’s Motivated Sequence approach to your blog posts. Unlike in paper, keep paragraphs short and punch– no longer than 5-6 sentences. The layout could look the diagram to the right, or you can follow this method:
Start with a hook and an introduction that gets the reader’s attention.
Outline the “big promise,” need, or problem you can solve for them.
Give the audience fixes/solutions for the problem.
Explain how their world will be better if the problem is resolved. Describe what that future looks like.
Conclude and give the audience a “call to action” to complete.
Finding Images
You might be used to simply saving or screenshotting any image you like from the Internet, but there are copyright laws that prevent you from using any image you want on your blog without paying for it. Rather that going through that, you can also find free, stock images to use Shutterstock and Pexels.
As you might with a presentation, you want to choose a visual that is not just for the sake of having a visual. Instead, you want to use an image that adds depth, emotion, or understanding about the subject– much as you would use a gif in a text or tweet. The tone of the image should match the tone of the subject matter you are writing about.
You do not have to limit the visual to pictures, but you can also use graphs, infographics (example on the next slide) and videos.
Infographic example
As you can see, you can diversify blogs with more than just a stock photo. Infographics are a great way to visually display a lot of information without placing in the text of the blog where an audience might skim over it. Since audiences are very visual, this may be more effective.
You can make your own for free, or search the web for free infographics that might’ve already been created about the subject you are writing about.
This infographic, for example, condenses data from several sources about Millennials and technology, but also includes the author’s breakdown of how many times Facebook, Twitter and Myspace were mentioned in the first seven seasons of the CW show Supernatural.
Using the virtual space/visual appeal
In Word, right click the image and select “tight” so we can see how the image would look with the text in a blog. The final results look like this.
After you place it, you can shift and resize the image.
This should be pleasing to the eye and not be too crowded or leave too much white space.
Even in word, make it look like a real blog
For example, using the “Styles” tab and selecting “Intense Quote,” can make this headline that looks like a blog banner/headline for the overall website name.
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