It is the year 2017 and everywhere you look you can find a blog catering to your interest. Blogs can be about literally anything, ranging from fashion, travel, food blogs to politics. Anyone can write a blog as well, but what makes a blog good is its audiences. Bloggers write their blogs to capture the attention of their viewers or readers. Unless you are writing a blog solely for yourself with the intention of never having anyone reading it, then you care about whether your blog is keeping the interest of its subscribers. There are 2 key things that come to mind when thinking about what makes a blog good.
The first is image, image, image:
The layout of a blog is a key component to how successful the blog will be. In Lance Hosey’s article Why We Love Beautiful Things he says “that good design often in very subtle ways, can have such dramatic effects. After all bad designs work the other way.” Readers are attracted to well-designed blogs because humans’ beings are instinctively attracted to beautiful things. Beauty can capture its audience and keep them captivated. If a blog is poorly designed they lose the ability to keep their readers as engaged as possible. A bad design has the capability of ensuring that readers will be distracted, lose interest or decide not to read your blog at all due to the poor design. That is why the layout of your blog matters, to keep the interest of the readers you should keep their eyes as well as their minds satisfied.
Another key component of what makes a good blog is it usefulness to the audience. In Sean Morris’s article DIGITAL WRITING UPRISING: THIRD-ORDER THINKING IN THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES he says that “ Our writing is in a state where every text begins at meaningless, until it finds harbor and use elsewhere, becoming meaningful only by association.” I believe that Morris is saying that a blog is only as important as its audience. It finds purpose in the use of its readers. If your digital writing is not being viewed and read by others than your writings are essentially not important. In the digital world, you are writing not just for yourself, but for the audience. The audience determines the importance of your writing. Remember you want to keep your audience engaged.
In the end two of the most important components of a good blog are the audience and the design. There are other key component to a good blog, but these two things are high up on the list.
I really enjoyed the sentences: “In the digital world, you are writing not just for yourself, but for the audience. The audience determines the importance of your writing. Remember you want to keep your audience engaged.”
This stuck out to me because at first I found it to be a bit aggressive, saying that one’s writing is not important without the audience determining that it is. However, as I began to think about it into further depths, I realized that there is a difference between writing and digital writing. This is exactly “Consider the Audience” is stating: “Web writing is also inherently about seeding the development of more opportunities to circulate student work while still foregrounding the difficult navigation of the public/private that accompany them.” When writing digitally you are writing for your work to be seen. Otherwise, you would be writing somewhere private such as a journal, diary, or private blog where only you can see. When writing a public blog you are clearly writing to gain an audience. This audience must be considered at all times in order to build and maintain a community who have a similar passion.