Week 7: Viva La Critique!

Guess who! It's Kayleigh here again, and you should know the drill by now. Last friday we looked at the Blogs that received awards this year, to get ideas of structure and content. They were inspiring and had a similar pattern of food! Needless to say I was certainly hungry by the time class was over, a McDonalds was quickly in order. But let's get a closer look at the lesson!

Lesson 7: Peer Assessment and Critique!

What makes your 'ideal' blog?

Seems strange to discuss what a blog should be halfway into the module, does it not? That was my thoughts going into this lesson, and much like the others it followed a similar trend. I'm making my own pattern here, that's cool. Paul explained that he wanted to see how we would cope writing a blog for ourselves without any real guidance or restraints, because he would see a difference between the blogs posted before week 7 and after. Smart cookie.

He showed us various blogs that won awards for 'Best UK Blog' this year. For those interested, I'll post the links at the end of my post. We looked at how they were structured to fit their audience and grab the persons attention because when you click on a website it has approx. 3 seconds to keep your attention or the majority will close it/move on. From what I could see only half of the 'top blogs' had this factor on me. Maybe that's because I don't share the same interest in cooking food as others. I don't know.

How did these blogs get so good?

It's all about the structure of the website, and how you put the content across to people. You might think that writing a blog is a matter of opening a site like this one and throwing down anything in the world but that's not the full story. Of course, you can do that. I've done that a few times myself but as you can expect I never got very far. So what exactly makes the difference? Well to start..

Personalise it.
Your blog shouldn't be empty words on a screen placed there by, what looks like, forced issues. It should be a self expression-al piece. Something that says a little about yourself. Even if you're talking about something you don't particularly enjoy (if that's the case then you shouldn't really be blogging about it but just for this example), you should add your own opinions and emotions into it. It's all about you, not the subject. That's just a little add-in if you ask me.

Structure-ise it.

The way your page is laid out can effect the people is attracts. The trend for blogging profile's right now is a white background with darker text. The simplistic idea that is eye catching and easy to read, though to some this may seem boring but it certainly works! Try and stick to a colour scheme that people will notice and think of you.

Visualisation is also important. People might not understand what you're trying to say, throw a picture in there and suddenly everything makes sense. It's funny what a single picture can do to your audience.

Audience-ise it.

The audience for your blog is an important thing to look at. Who are you aiming at? Who do YOU want to read the content of your blog? Think of it like newspapers, there's many different types in any country you go to. In the UK we have one called The Guardian and one called The Sun. The Sun aims for anybody and everybody. The content is widely varied and is usually the more important stories that have grabbed a high amount of people's attention. They don'r waste time with small stories. Where as The Guardian looks more in depth at any stories it includes, meaning the content requires an older language. You need to think to understand what the paper is trying to say.

So, there is a difference between the hundreds of newspapers out there it just takes a little to see it and compare them. Speaking about language (Ha!) that's my final point.

Language-ise it.
The way in which you write your blog will effect the audience you're targeting it at, or.. Actually the other way around. Depends how you look at it. This blog of mine is made for university purposes. If I don't complete this blog then I don't pass this module however that's not my sole purpose for doing it. I'm doing it to try and help get the same message Paul is telling us out there to my readers!

Looking back at language, it's the same situation with the newspapers. If you write in a basic language when it'll be understood by everyone. The age of your audience relies on the language too. If you wrote your blog in text language, for example 'hi m8 how r u doin?' or 'that is so wicked, cool dude!', then you're aiming for people in your age group as they will be more likely to understand that sort of speak compared to a more mature age group. 

I, myself, actually write/type in proper English most of the time. It's what comes naturally to me and if I type in a different way then it annoys me. Imagine that, a teenager who can type somewhat proper English  Even my parents type in text language, aahh!

The main thing is.. Personalisation!

Have you ever thought of it like this: Do your blog well and you could get work from it. I knew it was an aspect of it but I never thought about it on a big scale and it's true! The blogs who win awards will get various interviews, advertisements and what not to make money from doing something they thought as a pass time. Scary and exciting stuff! I could start a new blog for all my drawing and creative ideas, in and out of University, and that could get me somewhere. I never know until I try!

To finish the lesson we looked at the blogs posted by others in the class, and we'll finish them next week. It was clear to see those who have done blogs before and who hasn't. I felt my blog didn't have anything on the awesome designs they had! I should have got a designer to do it for me. (Not a bad idea..)

Until next time. :)