To me, a good blog is all about passion, and an exceptional design of course. Readers want a blog that speaks to them through dedicated, intense, and intelligent writing about a favorite topic.  Readers also need strong visuals to back up the written section and to make skimming simpler. A blog has to be easy to read and be about an enjoyable subject.

Take  deadspin.com as an  example (a sports, parody blog). A reader will first look at headlines and pictures before taking the leap into an article. The current headline is “Madden Fumble Lasts More Than 9 Minutes,” and contains hilarious animations of players unsuccessfully trying to pick up a football. This immediately catched my eye and proceeded to waste 9 minutes of my life that could have been used to work on this blog post.

Deadspin is full of obnoxious articles that are enjoyable to read. This sports blog does a great job of including images and clips to catch one’s eye and makes the website pop. In “Why We Love Beautiful Thing” by Lance Hosey, Hosey states that the human brain is drawn to beautiful designs. The same can be said for a website. A website that is beautifully designed with photographs and appealing headlines will draw more readers.

Espn.com is another example of a fantastic website. These articles are more serious and informative, but are still very interesting and easy to read. The writing itself, is very strong  for the avid sports fan. Writing is  extremely important to any kind of website or blog. In “Organic Writing Uprising: Third-order Thinking in the Digital Humanities” by Sean Michele Morris, he compares the writing process to the growth of an organic plant.

“There is not one right way to evolve. Growth is determined by the encouragement and critique of the community.” In the same way that a tree may grow, a writer and his or her writing will continue to improve over the course of a period of time.

My hope is that over the course of this blog, my writing will continue to grow in the same way.

Online writing has changed the world of writing and what it means to be a good writer. Blogging allows anyone to write in any style about anything they want, and this has opened the door to new information and new ideas. But what makes a successful blog?

Multimodal

Blogs allow writers to integrate pictures, videos and links into their writing, and this adds a new dimension of understanding to readers. This allows writers to support their ideas with pictures or other online articles, and this creates communities around similar ideas. In Digital Writing Uprising: Third-order Thinking in the Digital Humanities, Morris explains “As our writing practices become more and more digital we discover that immense collaboration is possible.” By integrating others writing into your own, blogs allow information to be shared across a broader audience.

Design

One of the most important aspects of a good blog is a good design, one that is inviting to people, one that draws people in. This comes in the form of the pictures you use, to the font and placement of tabs. As Hosey said in Why We Love Beautiful Things. “Instinctively, we reach out for attractive things; beauty literally moves us.” Without a good design, even the best written blogs will be passed over.

Content and Emotion

Honesty in writing is hard, especially when posted to the Internet for anyone to read, but it makes for a really good blog. People are moved by passion and emotion in writing, and it will keep them checking back weekly. The best blogs tell a story, whether it be about your family, your struggles and triumphs in training for a marathon, to your world travels, people want to read an honest story they can follow.

In a world of constant information-sharing and communication, the number of blogs out on the internet is incredible and exponentially growing by the second. There are countless blogs that generate millions of shares and views each day, allowing the blogger to convey his/her opinions to an open audience and kickstart conversation about topics the author feels are important. However, there are a limited number of blogs that actually achieve this type of public exposure. Indeed, there are reasons why these blogs are so successful, and I will do my best to articulate what I think makes a “good blog”.

For me, the most important element of a successful blog is it’s ability to create a sense of community amongst it’s readers. Brian Carroll’s “Blogito, Ergo Sum” outlines the necessity of community building in blogs perfectly: “community-building is an essential element of successful blogging… Bloggers should actively think of ways to engage readers, to begin and continue conversation, and to create and sustain loyal audiences” (Carroll, pg. 154).

When I think of successful blogs with active and loyal readers, I immediately think of Barstool Sports. While the comments sections consist of bored 20-40 year old men at work (or “Stoolies”, followers of the blog), bloggers for the site do a great job cultivating a sense of community by posting content, although raunchy and overtly offensive to some, that readers can relate to and enjoy discussing. With the tagline “by the common man, for the common man”, Barstool appeals to college-to-middle-age men looking for their opinions to be heard on topics ranging from sports to popular web content.

Barstool also excels by publishing what the bloggers believes to be the truth and doing it vindictively, key elements to Blood’s and the SPJ’s codes of ethics (Carroll, ppg. 158-60). Bloggers on the site share the same method of conveying their opinions (crude humor, blunt and offensive statements) and stand up for what they believe to be true.

During the NFL’s recent “deflategate”debacle involving the New England Patriots, Barstool bloggers posted constantly to voice their dissent regarding the NFL’s decision to suspend Tom Brady, and even went to court hearings to try and uncover the truth. As Sarah Murray states in her article, “millennials’ trust in traditional institutions and leaders is declining… Instead, they put more faith in the wisdom of the crowd, accessed via social media” (Murray, pg. 12). The blog denounced the NFL’s commissioner, and by vindictively voicing it’s opinion to readers, cultivated great support for their cause.

While the content of Barstool Sports may not represent the views held by the majority of internet users, it is a great example of how to run a successful blog. The framework for retaining and cultivating viewership (the essential aspect of successful blogging), as well as vindictively voicing “truth” are what I hope to be key elements of the blog I will be writing for this class.

The Internet is ever-growing, anything can be posted, changed, or even turned into a blog. There are blogs on endless different topics like, cute animals but also weird animals and the strange things they do. This can lead to hours spent mindlessly searching the internet for a blog catered to exactly what someone may want or someone could even use Stumble Upon. A site which can allow them to search thousands of blogs and websites at the click of a button. Even though there are so many blogs out there they are not all good blogs.

Bloggers must be careful when designing a blog because visuals play a huge part in the readers experience. Visuals can determine if the blog is seen as a creditable source, they can set the mood of the blog, and ultimately draw in readers. In an article about beautiful things posted by the New York Times, Lance Hosley mentions the “Golden Rectangle” which is a rectangle where if you remove a square from it there will be another rectangle and so forth. The “magical” proportions Hosely discusses are found to be visually stunning and draw people in. This “Golden Rectangle” can be found in many famous blogs that are pleasing to the eye including; Tumblr, National Geographic, Stereogum and, the Desmog Blog. All of these blogs have very blocky designs with only rectangles and squares. They seem to avoid circles yet the blocks don’t distract from the content of the blog. All of them have something else in common, they are multimodal using digital media to draw reader’s eyes to the different articles and content they have. There is something about the way these blogs look that gives them a trustworthy feel when the visuals have nothing to do with the actual validity of a blog. Since visuals will either draw in of deter readers content is what will ultimately keep readers returning to a blog, content must be interesting or if it’s a boring topic make it interesting! For example Hyperbole and a Half  writes about proper grammar, a somewhat boring topic, but keeps people reading with her use of comics.

In addition it is important to keep the blog organized can mean different things. Like it can be categorized, or follow one specific subject. Too many topics can be overwhelming and stand on the line between social media and blogging. Buzzfeed is one of the blogs that has many topics organized into categories and sections with a homepage that hosts the most popular stories from each section allowing readers to explore from there.

These suggestions are just that, suggestions blogs come in all different categories, colors, and confirmations but whatever blog you choose to make just remember, as some might say, if it exist there is probably a blog about it.

Photo: Mike Licht, Flickr, “Blog OMG”

After having studied in high school and university and after having experienced several experiences, I have learned that if you want to reach your goals, you need to follow steps. According to the Oxford Learners Dictionary a step is one of a series of things that you do in order to achieve something. Series of things, stages, steps. Every important achievement requires a gradual and constant process. Learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to write. We learn by trial and error, we learn practising, we learn following steps. That is the reason why I believe that creating a good blog requires to follow crucial steps. We should read several documents, develop our style, be aware of the audience and create a connection with the reader. 

First, we need to read not only several blogs, but also different material such as novels, essays, articles and some theory that help us to write clearly. I think that reading these pieces helps us to discover tips for writing well and for developing our style. This second step is also related to practice. A good way of developing something is to try as many times as possible. Just write, read out loud, modify, add and remove. Include quotes, videos, images, songs and attractive material. In doing so, you are shaping your style of writing. You are designing your style, the one that makes you feel comfortable while writing. While we keep reading and shaping our style, we should be aware of the people who read our thoughts.  According to Sean Michael Morris, “words are active”. We can not control the way in which our message will be modified or shared. But, we can be careful with word choice, quotes and every content that has our name at the bottom. I think that a blog written by ourselves reflects many aspects of our personality and we should pay attention to choices and details. Finally, we should be able to create an atmosphere that makes us feel comfortable as writers and provokes something similar to the reader. Many people have access to our words, but if we want to create and keep a good blog, we have to keep them interested in our message. So we continue reading, developing our style, being careful with our words and sharing our views in an appealing way. When our words run smoothly, we feel satisfied, and our readers enjoy our blog. Brian Carroll explains why community-building is an “essential element of successful blogging.” As bloggers, he express that we should “actively think of ways to engage readers, to begin and continue conversations, and to create and sustain loyal audiences.” We should be always involved and ready to interact with our readers; proving them reliable sources, answers and comments. 

Read, create, be careful and catchy. Following these steps of reading, being creative, careful and catchy will lead us to build a worthwhile piece of writing.

http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/step_1

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/digital-writing-uprising-third-order-thinking-in-the-digital-humanities/

http://blogs.dickinson.edu/wrpg211/files/2014/09/Carroll-Chap7.pdf (page 152)