Blogging: The Guidelines of Purpose, Design, Content and Audience

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Blogging:  The Guidelines of Purpose, Design, Content and Audience

            This week we learned about blogging and actually set up our own blog.  When writing a blog there are many different aspects that have to be considered and guidelines to learn.  It is not just writing a bunch of words and ideas and sharing them with random people.  The blog must have a purpose for being written.  It has to have an appealing design to attract people to read it.  The content has to be interesting enough to keep people coming back to read it.  You also have to figure out what people or audience you are trying to reach and be able to make the content pertinent to that audience.

            Before you can choose a topic you need to figure out what your purpose is for writing the blog in the first place.

  What do you have to say that is important enough to you that you want to share it with others?  For instance in this class we will be sharing what we have learned in our Communication studies, building a portfolio of our work.  We will be sharing this blog of our portfolio with our professor for a grade, but more importantly we will be able to share it with prospective employers when job searching.

            For both audiences we need to make sure we use the type of design that not only makes it look better but makes it function better (The Blacklight, 2012).  Learning tips on how to make a better design will make it easier for people to access the blog, which will also make it easier for them to come back more often, which is what you want (The Blacklight, 2012).  
            Some important tips are choosing the right fonts and controlling the fonts.  Not only do you want to use normal, clear fonts but you also want to use no more than three fonts at the most (The Blacklight, 2012).   Using the right colors and the right amount of colors is important (The Blacklight, 2012).  You do not want to use bright flashy colors for a more reserved business such as banking or financial institute. 

            What is really important is the content. You want to grab the reader’s attention right away by telling a story or joke, be empathetic, or tell an interesting fact or statistic (Hubspot, 2015).   Next you want to tell the purpose of your blog and how it is going to help the readers with a problem they might be having.  This will establish a connection with them which will keep them reading (Hubspot, 2015). 

The content must also be well organized so that the reader is not intimidated by the amount of content.  This can be done by using sections, lists, or tips (Hubspot, 2015).

            It is important to have a clear understanding of your target audience before you begin to write (Hubspot, 2015).  You have to put yourself in their place to figure out what they want to know about, and what they will relate to.

            Even when you use these guidelines for writing a blog, knowing your purpose, a design that is eye catching, content that is compelling and an audience that is wanting to know what you have to share, there is a lot more that goes into having a successful blog.  As we go forward in this course we will learn more steps to improve our blogging.  Stay tuned to more exciting blogging know how to be posted in my new blog.

References

The Blacklight (2012) 26 Blog Design Tips for Non-Techies and Non-Designers: Retrieved from http://thebacklight.com/blog-design-tips-for-non-designers/

Hubspot (2015) Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-write-blog-post- simpleformula-ht