Best Practices = Great Blogs

Throughout the past few weeks, we have reviewed many different ethical codes that journalists follow when writing content. Best practices are something journalists should always have in mind when creating and writing their blogs. With that said I have consider very carefully what I feel are the best practices for blogging.  They include the following:

Presentation/Style: It is important in a blog that the presentation and style of the blog is engaging. Pictures, videos, and info graphics can help make a blogs style really pop to help engage the viewer to read and be interested in the blog. This is a must have, without this a blog can fall short and not interest a reader very easily.

Frequency: It is very important to post your blog on a specific day or week so the readers are familiar when to expect your post. Without this readers may have a hard time distinguishing when your blogs will be posted and not posted. This is great, what I like to call, customer service in the blog department.

Engagement: Without engagement how else are you supposed to get readers to take interest in your blog. Things like allowing them to comment and interact with your blog really make for great conversation and interaction between the writer and readers.

Honesty/Accuracy: Accuracy is key when creating a great blog. It is important that your readers are able to trust the content you put out to them. Without that trust your blog has no followers and readers that trust your content. Honesty produces accuracy when writing a blog, which is key to blogging success.

One of my favorite blogs that I read weekly is the MaxLove Project blog. Max’s family members write this blog, as he began undergoing cancer treatment after his devastating brain diagnosis back in 2011. The MaxLove project, widely known due to his relationship and appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, began writing a blog to share Max’s experiences, create a sense of hope, and to share stories in hopes that they will alleviate any pain other families and cancer patients may be experiencing.  This blog would fall under an organizational blog in terms of type. Although it shares personal experiences it is directly related with the MaxLove project organization.

I have taken the time to analyze one of my favorite blogs and here is what I have found:

In terms of presentation and style, the MaxLove Blog brings in huge pictures and graphics to immediately capture the readers attention to draw them in.  They also include catching titles and sub headers before heading into the archive of blogs. The frequency of this blog is 4 times a month. There is not a set day that a blog may come out, however it is known that the blog comes out once a week each month with a theme attached to it. The engagement ties into the function of the blog in terms of how items that are incorporated into the blog to grab more attention of the readers. Finally, honesty and accuracy is spot on. According to our Module 8 overview, “Blogs combine text, images, video, and audio with links to inform and entertain readers. For writers who hope that their content will become widely read, the cultivation of an audience of regular readers is as significant as the blog-writing itself” (SNHU, 2014 ). Overall these are shared experiences and are noted to the reader that not all results and experiences will be the same for each cancer patient. They felt that by sharing these experiences accurately with timelines of treatment and success as well as how much the community has embraced the blog to help those that have cancer around them.  This blog shares educational information but also ties into a personal level as well. In terms of functionality and substance, this blog covers the necessary best practices to be successful. The appropriate form, function, and substance are all check offs in this wonderful blog! Overall, I believe that this blog follows all of my best practices and asks all the right questions in terms of what the reader wants to know, understand, and read. This has resulted in a very successful blog campaign. Feel free to check out my favorite blog below. Enjoy!

Blog Link: http://maxloveproject.org/blog/

Resources:

DiPadova, A. (2014, October 22). MaxLove Project Blog. Retrieved October 23, 2014, from http%3A%2F%2Fmaxloveproject.org%2Fblog

SNHU (2014) Module 8 - Overview. COM 510-X1509