{"id":147,"date":"2013-09-07T14:10:38","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T18:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/?p=147"},"modified":"2014-10-14T12:45:05","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T16:45:05","slug":"what-can-blogs-do-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/2013\/09\/07\/what-can-blogs-do-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"What can blogs do for you?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Freshman year of high school I got my first computer and suddenly my entertainment options on the Internet seemed limitless. No more would I be restricted to sending email chains and browsing YouTube on my dad\u2019s computer. Now hours of fun were only clicks away. In those first few months I explored everything from Hulu to my town\u2019s poorly assembled web page.\u00a0 My only exposure to blogs was from accidentally clicking on a link.\u00a0 Blogs carried a stigma of unprofessionalism. I could clearly imagine the bloggers fingers caked in potato chip crumbs droning away at a keyboard writing about their favorite video games.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=make+love+not+warcraft&amp;hl=en&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=CnYrUrnkDrOu4APFnYHAAQ&amp;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&amp;biw=900&amp;bih=532#facrc=_&amp;imgdii=_&amp;imgrc=7pZZnxoIynVmdM%3A%3BxkMeAWMzl8otuM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.gamerdna.com%252Fuimage%252Ffull%252Fwow_dude-jpg.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjoshdale.gamerdna.com%252Fimages%252Fwow_dude-jpg%3B1440%3B900\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-148 aligncenter\" style=\"font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-12.17.39-PM-300x191.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2013-09-07 at 12.17.39 PM\" width=\"300\" height=\"191\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-12.17.39-PM-300x191.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-12.17.39-PM.png 587w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why should I listen to that guy, and what did these blogs have to offer me?<\/p>\n<p>In the five years since I first began exploring the Internet, it has evolved greatly. Text interspersed with photos, film, and links makes reading blog\u2019s a much more interactive and enriching experience. There are blogs that capture all of my interests. I can be just as entertained reading about someone biking, and someone performing titrations in a lab.<\/p>\n<p>One unifying aspect of the blogs I read is that credibility is paramount to my experience. A well-qualified and knowledgeable author will keep my attention. A well thought blog should include an about the author page as well as the author\u2019s contact information. I recently started reading a high school friend\u2019s blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/andybromberg.com\">andybromberg.com<\/a>.\u00a0 This simple, elegant layout clearly showcases both an about me, and a contact me section.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-1.47.00-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-149 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-1.47.00-PM-300x287.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2013-09-07 at 1.47.00 PM\" width=\"300\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-1.47.00-PM-300x287.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-1.47.00-PM.png 604w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Andy writes that \u201cNot only is learning my full-time job as a university student, but I love to pick up new skills and knowledge in my free time. You\u2019ll see a lot about my attempts to learn on this blog.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His effort to reach out to the audience and place himself on their level agrees with Brian Carroll\u2019s statement \u201cThe everyday person voice of many blogs encourages identification versus the dispassionate, clinical voice if traditional media.&#8221; A good blog should establish a personal connection for the reader and give the reader a sense of what qualifications the author has.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite blog is titled <a href=\"http:\/\/what-if.xkcd.com\/\">What if?<\/a> \u00a0This blog aims to answer reader\u2019s outlandish questions through well-researched physics while also staying approachable and humorous. The blog itself utilizes many of the methods for good digital writing in Brian Carroll\u2019s <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Writing for Digital Media<\/span>. The author always writes with the same voice. He manages to be incredibly factual, but there in humor in every facet of his writing. The questions he answers are incredibly absurd while also being scientific, such as \u201cWhat would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury?\u201d The layout of the blog also utilizes layering a concept that takes into account reader\u2019s desire to scan, not read some pages. Key words and phrases are in bold, and bulleted lists are sometimes used to clearly display information. The top of the page has a header with a larger font that draws the eye to the title, and the subhead.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-2.29.35-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-152 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-2.29.35-PM-300x166.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2013-09-07 at 2.29.35 PM\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-2.29.35-PM-300x166.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/files\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-07-at-2.29.35-PM.png 956w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Clever and applicable illustrations further attract the reader and make otherwise dry physics entertaining. Hyperlinks on certain words link to the sources the author used in his research, which gives the reader the choice to further pursue the topic. The site does not have any advertising, and best of all is consistently updated every Tuesday. This scheduled posting time ensures that I check What If? at least once a week, which is the best sign of a good blog.<\/p>\n<p>As I begin making my own blog I will try to utilize all the aspects of the blogs I enjoy to read, in hopes that one day a person with ten minutes of time to kill will come to my site.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Freshman year of high school I got my first computer and suddenly my entertainment options on the Internet seemed limitless. No more would I be restricted to sending email chains and browsing YouTube on my dad\u2019s computer. Now hours of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/2013\/09\/07\/what-can-blogs-do-for-you\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1785,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[109923,89362],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-blog-archives","category-what-makes-a-good-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1785"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wrpg211\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}