A Guide to Blogging

Introduction: I am a veteran blogger who focused primarily on a horror movie related blog. Each week I would watch a few horror movies, read online articles about horror movies, research events in the horror film industry, or create lists of horror related material. These would make up the majority of my blog posts per week. I would like to thoroughly outline the process and ideas to become a successful blogger. Understanding these ideas will grant you the concepts of becoming a reliable blogger.

Brainstorming: Begin considering the main topic for your blog. The central theme should have a connection to a topic you personally find interesting. For example, I thought writing a blog about movies would interest me. An even better idea is personalizing your topic even more. For example I specifically focused on horror films. Another example would be books and narrowing it to only mystery novels. A broad view keeps ideas fresh, but you will find blog readers more interested in more explicit topics. After deciding on a topic you must consider what you hope to accomplish from this blog. Keep in mind who your readers are and what they will want to read. Your goals should not only meet the expectations of your readers, but your own ambitions as well. You are the one writing the blog after all.

Developing: Eventually, once you decide upon a topic, you’re going to have to create the blog website itself. I suggest joining one of multiple sites that will host your blog. These sites are user friendly and aid with your blog management. Templates and URLs are also easily accessible with these websites. Another good feature is the archives that these websites use to keep all your posts secure so you can easily reference back. These websites also make it easier to visit or find other blogs with similar and different interests. Members of a blog host site can more easily leave comments and feedback as well. A host website that I used was at www.blogger.com . The important thing to remember is that blogging is a community activity and you want the community to interact.

Composing: Once your blog’s website is looking clean and fresh, you should start writing posts. Your posts should contribute to your overall topic or theme of the blog. For example, if you’re posting about television, making a post on a new show is completely relevant. You can also stretch your imagination and get a post topic from relating to personal events. If you’re writing about television a possible topic would be your disgust towards the price of a new television set. Developing ideas may stump you at times, but there are multiple other brain catalysts to get one brewing. Think about the reasons you’re interested in your topic. Consider making a list of your favorite aspects of your topic. Reflect on the possible new arguments you can bring to the online community regarding your topic. Respond to others and their blog posts.

Posts: Make your initial posts relatively modest in length. No one wants to read an extremely lengthy post when you have relatively no credibility yet. That should be one of your first goals. Gain readership of other bloggers who may agree or disagree with you. Hopefully they respond to your posts and you in return can post on their blog for more feedback. Another thing to keep in mind is making the post interesting to other readers. On my horror movie blog I made sure to add my own personal analysis to my reviews to help contribute new information to the community. Fresh new thoughts and ideas are the most important factor to gaining readership.

Information Gathering: It is important to gather credible and reliable sources for your information. If you feed nonsense to the public, they will eventually catch you and prove you wrong. There are multiple reliable sources in books and on the internet. It is really important to cite quotes or where information is coming from so the audience knows you are not creating rubbish. Another benefit is if the information is faulty, you can prove to your readers that you were not the one who initially created the misinformation. Creating hyperlinks to articles can be a great addition to any post. Bloggers like clicking and reading new information on topics that interest them so post credible articles that you feel snuck under the radar of others. Not every article or website should make you send up flares though. It’s important to remember you want to create new information. Recycling old information or refurbishing dead arguments is a flagrant error.

Developing a Voice: When you’re composing any written material, there is a voice with a tone. For example, the guide I am typing now has a very instructive and educational voice to it. If I were to insert more commands it would more likely sound demanding or authoritative. When you write you should note how your words read back. Your sentences may be incoherent or add extra tones to it such as unwanted sarcasm. Whether you want to be funny or serious, this heavily relies on your tone of voice. Consistency is almost as important as credibility. Writing satirically about terrible movies entertaining you is a great idea. However, if in one post you start speaking seriously about good movies being awful. Confusion among readers may begin. Remember you’re trying to convey your ideas into text. No one can read the thoughts in your head.

Pleasing Everyone: You’re most likely writing this blog for your own personal enjoyment. You are running the blog on your own terms. No one can force you to change anything, but you will encounter other bloggers with advice and constructive criticism most likely. Don’t fear changing a blog approach that doesn’t seem to attract new readers. Obsession over gaining new readers may drive you to break unspoken rules in your community. It’s important to look at other blogs and see what rules they abide by. In closing I’d like you to remember my “Five C’s” I briefly mentioned throughout this guide in order to appease everyone within your blog community.

1: Credibility: Make your blog believable and honest. Gain trust from other bloggers.

2: Consistency: Make you’re blog a fun routine. If you really enjoy an aspect of your posts continue it. The tone of your voice should remain constant, but ever improving.

3: Criticism: Allow people to criticize your work. It’s the only way you will be able to improve. Criticize other bloggers constructively. Do not attack another blogger, but give advice to improve their message.

4: Cautious: Be cautious about what you put out on the internet. You don’t want to say something controversial and then have angry readers start mailing threats. Anonymity is the best when on the internet. Another thing to be cautious about is comments. Do not insult or attack others.

5: Creativity: Most of all, you need to be creative. This blog represents your own individual thoughts and ideas. It also should be introducing new topics and ideas to your community. This is also where you can have the most fun generating all sorts of different posts.

Bloggers' Guide to Success!

There are many things to think about when writing a blog. A blog is all about your opinion on something and everyone knows that everybody has different views on things. So if you are thinking about writing blogs be ready for harsh comments or people being completely random who don't agree with you. But that is only the small bad side about blogging. Bloggers get a lot of satisfaction out of their blogs since they are able to get feedback from their readers and be able to comment back to those readers.


Step 1: Come up with a Goal for your Blog


You could come up with many different goals for your blog depending on the subject that you are writing about. For example, I blog about cars and my goal is to give my readers good general recent information about the cars and the automotive industry. I test-drive cars and write blog about my test drive describing the car as perfect as I can. Having a goal will help you get frequent readers since it keeps you from going off-subject. Another good idea is to write your goal on a paper and keep it next to your computer so every time you are about to write your blog you know what to do.


Step 2: Make Your Own and Original Voice


The voice that you take in blogs is one of the most important things in blogging. Usually a blogger's voice goes hand-in-hand with their personality. Having a nice and intelligent voice will get you a lot of audience. Then again there are bloggers who create a huge reputation and gain many readers by having an extremely critical voice. By that I mean the type of person who only likes things his or her way and no one in this world can ever make then think otherwise. It is very important to keep your voice the same throughout your blogs so the people that enjoy your blog will coma back knowing that they will enjoy reading your blog even if it is on a totally different subject.


Step 3: Coming up with Ideas

First of all you have to choose a major subject that you enjoy reading about and talking about. Then you would have to come up with ideas for each of your blogs. There are many different ways in which you can come up with ideas for your blogs. The way that I come up with ideas for my blog is that I watch either TV show or even youtube videos related to my subject. Sometimes I also read magazines or simply surfing the Internet until I find something interesting to talk about. Something else that will help you become more successful in writing blogs is that if you randomly come up with a great idea to blog about, you should always write it down anywhere so you don't forget. This happened to me a couple of times when I some awesome car would zoom by me so I would write down the cars name and later research and write about it.


Step 4: The Writing Process and Getting the Readers ATTENTION!

Now once you come up with your idea and researched it for a bit you simply start typing. The thing that will help you most to get your reader' attention is the title of your blog and your fist sentence. Make your fist sentence explain what your blog is about without giving too much detail. Write you first sentence in the way that it will basically make your reader continue reading. Once you start typing do not stop, no matter what! Even if you have a spelling error wait until you are completely finished with what you want to say before you start reviewing what you wrote. It always helps me to publish by blog first then right away read it. I do this because I want to see what my readers are going to the see and I also want to make sure that all the pictures are lined up correctly etc. Something that helps a lot in drawing attention your blog are pictures. Reader will see those pictures and most of the time they will go back to read your blog to see what you had to say.

Step 5: Include Outside Information

Its very important to include the source from where you got your information from in your blog. It also makes it easier for your reader if you place links in your blog to other websites where they can read more about the subject that you were talking about. Especially other major blogs since if you reference other blogs they will know you referenced their blog and they might reference yours which will bring you tons of readers.

Step 6: Connecting to your Audience

To make a one time reader turn into a frequent reader you have to connect to them. Mostly this done by having a good voice. But also you can connect to your audience by always replying their comments, even if it is an argument keep discussing it until you both reach an agreement. But honestly that is not always the case since there are people out there that are not open minded whats so ever. They people will curse and say horrible things if you write something that goes against their belief. But that should not scare you away from writing blogs since that is basically the sole purpose of blogging, to get feedback from other people who are interested in the same thing you are.

Dos and Don'ts

Do try to write frequently and Don't write too many at once...space them out.

Do reply to people's comments on your blog and Don't curse at your audience...no matter what (unless they talk about your mom of coarse).

Do try to get the most recent news to write about and Don't write about things that other have already written about.

Do put pictures in your blog, they make it much more appealing to your readers.

Do always place links to your sources and Don't plagiarize!

Do always review what you wrote and Don't forget to spellcheck!

Guide to Music Blogging

Music blogging to some seems too easy, listen to music throw in your input and publish it. Wham bam and you’re done, but really it has a process and you need to know a few things before you get started. When starting out you need to let people know what they are going to be reading and how you are going to present your input. This gives right off the bat, three possible outcomes for the person. 1) they won’t read your blog, 2) they will be slightly intrigued and will come back only if they have nothing else to do, or 3) they will be an avid reader and make many comments ( a FAN). None the less you will be stepping into a bigger world than you can think of called the Blogosphere. If you aren’t prepared you will surely not get the attention that you want. So here is some advice for music blogging.

Development and Endurance

Starting out is a major part in the building of your blog. When making anything, there needs to be a foundation. In the blogging world this is your Mission Statement. A mission statement is what you will be presenting and how you are going to present your stuff. I had trouble with this because I like to change the way I write or present information just because that is how I am. In my mission statement I told the audience that I would bring them this and I couldn’t follow through because I ended up changing what I did. What I can say if you do like to change things up a bit then tell the audience that you could change the way you write or present ahead of time, a fair warning. Now I (as in it might not mean a lot to others) think that the way your blog looks is a big part. You want to grab the attention but not so much that you take away from the writing but something that is your personality. The endurance part of writing is keeping up with the blog. I am a multiple offender of this rule. I would take big breaks in between and it affected my audience. They expected weekly posts and sometimes I didn’t deliver. Also, endurance can mean your views, if you start one thing you got to finish it out. Otherwise you will be labeled as a hypocrite. If you do change your view on a subject make it known by writing an extra post letting your audiences know that you have had a change in heart. This will be accepted in the blogging world.

Coming up with Ideas

This can be easy or it can be hard, it is totally up to you. If you are creative then it is an easy obstacle. Creativity brings in different aspects and views. If you do the same things in every post, then it gets repetitive and boring. Bring diversity to the table and you will bring in a more diverse audience. If you are one of those “by the books” people, this can be difficult. Coming out of your shell will be hard. The point I’m trying to make is that music isn’t a day-to-day thing. Yes, new things happen everyday, but new bands don’t. Take for example my situation, I just wanted to write about ROCK but it quickly got slow and repetitive. I wasn’t getting comments and in the end I changed, took a look into different genres, and went with it. And it worked. I no longer had to struggle with coming up with ideas they simple came to me, just by exploring.

Writing Processes that Work

Writing Processes is kind of like coming up with ideas you need to be diverse. Try different things, that don’t mean change your views just change the way you write it. If you use the same words and pattern then people won’t be interested, your audience wants changes. That is what keeps them coming back.

Attention Getters and Connection

So how do you keep there attention? Easy you combine “Coming up with Ideas” and “Writing Process that Work” and you will be able to keep there attention. That is not all you need to do but you need to do what I like to call “Testing the Chords” you try something if it doesn’t get attention then simply done do it anymore. If it gets stuff stirring then it’s a winner you have your hook now all you do is follow through with it. You will need to change your hook once and awhile but it works if you bring different thoughts or concepts to the table. Get them to agree or disagree with you. You are looking for a reaction. Reaction is attention. What I did was ask questions, Example “Who is the best Rapper”. When people agree then they will tell you if they don’t they will tell you. You need to be the one who sparks the reaction. This will eventually create a connection with your audience. They will be with you or against you. It doesn’t matter either or just that they are connected to you.

Your Voice

This is the biggest step in blogging because this is you. Your audience will look at you through your writing. Your posts equal to your personality. You have to be careful when establishing your voice because it can make you or break you. You need to think your voice through. Don’t rush it because once you got it it’s with you till the end. You can’t change either. If you change it looks bad, it looks like you are weak and that you can be pushed from side to side. You have to sit back and think about your voice and in the end it has to be real and genuinely yours. Good Luck.

Greetings Future Bloggers!!

Greetings and salutations to all of the fledgling political bloggers reading this posting. I was once like you, a fresh-faced blogging virgin who had never even considered setting up or contributing to a blog. Hopefully after the pseudo-sage advice given here you too will soon have the confidence and credibility to post as a master blogger.

The first step in setting up a blog is figuring out what on earth it should be about; what the purpose or theme of it should be. If you are taking the time to read this you have apparently chosen a politically themed site, or at least one related to it, good choice. I say this not as a hidden compliment to me or to all of the other politically minded people, but because it is a topic where there is constantly something to write about. There are literally hundreds of niches in politics that you could chose to write about. You can chose a specific topic or generally cover everything or even just a certain genre of politics. Personally, I tend to cover international politics and human rights if you were looking for ideas. In addition, no mater what niche or genre is chosen, politics is a topic with constant changes and information. There will never be a lack of material with this topic.

Material. Choosing a particular topic to write about is the most difficult part. The key is to find something that you actually can write about, something that interests you, impassions you, and puzzles you. It can be about anything and everything. Start looking and book-marking other sites that could give you ideas or something to reference to. Various newspaper and reporting sites always inspire me (i.e. The Times, The Post, CNN, etc.). Also, news sites from other countries can also be highly informative. A useful site for international papers is onlinenewspapers.com. It indexes news sites from virtually every country. Also, when researching news sites or other blogs it is important to reference them in your post. Obviously you got the story or idea from somewhere so give credit where credit is due. Not referencing or linking to the original is an easy way to lose credibility in the blogging community. And surprisingly enough, linking and referencing is not hard to do at all. Simply type the word or phrase that the reader would click on as the link, highlight it, and put in the website URL.

When it comes to writing processes and approaches to actually writing a post there is no right or wrong way to go about it. Everyone has a different process. Its all a matter of finding what works best for you, what feels right. Go ahead and try many different methods and processes until you find one that fits best with you. Personally, I work better with deadlines so I often set some for myself. I have also found certain places where I am inspired to write. For me, it is usually in a place where I can still focus and concentrate to write, but there are still people around inspiring me with their actions and conversations. This may work for you, or it may not. It really does depend on what makes you comfortable and inspires you.

Now I said choosing what to post about is the most difficult part of blogging. Second to that is figuring out how to catch people’s attention and connect with your audience. One of the easier ways to do this is through a relevant title to your post. Often, the title to the post is what comes up in a keyword search. Therefore it is easiest to garner attention to your site through topic searches in search engines. If your posting title is interesting and relevant you will most likely get more hits on your website and your post. It is once people are at the page that they will decide if they will return to the site. Most readers prefer to read blogs and posting that have some level of credibility to them, and that seemingly connect to them personally. Credibility in the blog community takes time, but it can be achieved. Instrumental to this is responding and commenting on other blogger’s sites and postings. It will get your username known and respected, as well as generate interest in what you have to say.

Connecting with readers is a bit more complicated. It is all about the voice used when writing. Sure, many people often imitate a style of writing that they encounter and like, but it is often the original voices that truly connect with their readers. Your writing voice is all about letting your personality shine through. This is not the IRS. Things can be fun, satirical, enraged, and passionate; the list is endless. Simply put: be yourself. Most people, especially other bloggers, can tell when someone is not being authentic. Those people usually don’t have much traffic on their websites. Like I said before, it is all about experimentation and time. Through trial and error you will find your voice. It will start coming out without you even realizing it. It just takes time (a massive cliché yes, but it is true).

Lastly I will leave some small pieces of advice; hopefully these will help at some point. Never shy away from a topic. There is really no good, bad, or off-limits topic in politics, as that is the nature of the beast. Also, never be afraid to offend someone- no matter what you say about any topic, someone somewhere will be offended. It is simply a fact of life. That being said, while not being afraid to offend someone try not to intentionally alienate groups of people. Meaning, posting angrily, taking a hard-line position on something and putting down those who disagree with you can often lead to backlash. Most importantly, as I said before, use your voice. Be funny, creative, witty, or whatever emotion seems to go with the angle you are taking on the piece you are posting about. Unlike what you see on C-SPAN, politics can have humor in it. It is about real people, written by real people, being read by real people. Lastly, enjoy what you are doing. There is really no point to having a blog of any kind if it is the bane of your existence and you get no enjoyment out of it.

I hope at least some of this will be helpful on your new journey to become a blogger. Good Luck!

Blogging

I am hundred and ten present sure all of as know what blogging is one way or another am also sure that majority of us has heard of different definition of it too. I have too. Of all the definition I have heard of blogging, my personal favorite is from the Blogger; the blog sphere that is owned by Google. “A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules. In simple terms, a blog is a website, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis.” Well now that we know what a blog is, let’s talk about the process of writing blogging.

The theme

For sure for any thing you do you have to have a purposes isn’t. Well, then there had to be A reason for why you want to bog too. The reasons can be many for instances, to entertain yourself, to inform others, or for marketing purpose. But whatever your reason is it would eventually relate to your theme. The question is how do you pick your Theme? My suggestion is first identify your interest and passion, because remember you have to talk about It and if you have no Interest in it, it makes had to make it natural. The other way you can pick your theme is to fine something that is popular and ongoing topic. The risk to this theme is though it can be very competitive because most others would blog about it too.

The Idea

Remember when I said pick a theme that you are most passionate about. The reason I said this is because sometimes if you don’t have interest to it. It is can be hard to come up with things to write about. But let's say you are in this situation that you don't know or you run out ideas to write about.
When I found my self in these situations I usually look the internet on related topics and read some articles or blogs just enough to come up with an idea of my own. Or the other thing I do in these conditions is to give it time until some thing come to my mined. Well let say both of the methods didn’t work for you. What then? Sorry, at this point I would stop trying and forget about blogging and get on with life. I am just kidding. The Other thing you can do to solve this problem some times is to read some ones blog article on a related themes and to give your comment or opinion about the article on your blog page.

The Writing

OK! I have an idea of what I want to write about, I am ready to grab a pen and let it out. When I rich to this point I usually take blank piece of paper and write a rough draft more like a free write. With out no worry about the word choose or the grammatical error. When I am done with the rough draft I would gave my self some times before I go back and revise it. Then I would go back an revise until to the point that I am satisfied.

Need More Content?

When this is happening gating outside sources of content and inspiration is advised. In doing this the key point to Keep in mind is that, always to find credible sources otherwise you would also loss your creditability, which I am sure you don’t want to happen.

The Hook

The secret to this is always to be honest and transparent. Your readers are already interested to read your article because of the topic. The question is how to keep them? The way to keep your readers is to be passionate and sincere about what you are talking about also knows what you talking about. A Blog that is passionless and dry tend to not attract any one. I mean who want to read something that the author himself doesn’t believe in.

The Voice and Staying Connected

Being consistent is a key thing in blogging. When I say consistency is both in your topic and voice. Readers like to know what to expect out of what they are going to read to some extent. So if you constantly change thus to aspects of your blog you will end up loosing the respect of your readers. In addition to thus two key points being updated helps two.

You should also know:

-That if you are interested in blogging you had to enjoy writing and reading.
- That when you plan to blog be welling to learn and take criticism.
- That if you want to blog you want t to have more time and be willing to work hard.

Music Blogging

Writing and maintaining a music blog is really quite the challenge. After all, how does one put into words the way that something sounds? One can always write about musicians and various points of interest, but one will also need to write about the music itself, and it's rather difficult to describe something that is entirely intangible. So, here is the low-down on writing a music blog, Goggin style.

Developing and Sustaining a Theme, Mission, and Purpose

As with any blog, you will need a purpose. Without a defined path to follow, your entries will be jumbled and inconsistent. The posts should be unified under one flag. After all, a solid hill is stronger than a pile of pleasing boulders. To develop your purpose, just pick some aspect of music that you really enjoy and would enjoy writing about. For example, music of a particular genre or perhaps a specific instrument. You can write about more that just specifically that aspect, of course, but it is probably best not to stray too far out of the general theme of your blog lest readers be turned away when they feel that each post's topic has become too arbitrary.

Coming Up with Ideas for Posts

Coming up with ideas for posts on a music blog is usually not terribly difficult. After all, you wouldn't be blogging about music unless it interested you. A good way to start is simply to browse through your music collection until you notice something you feel like writing about, such as an artist you've been listening too a lot lately or perhaps a particular album. One easy idea for a blog post is to review a CD you've just purchased or a concert you've just gone to. There are pretty much as many musical topics as you can think of.

An Effective Writing Process

When you actually begin to write your blog post, you'll need to have a good way to go about doing so. If you are going to be writing about a band or a song or anything like that, it definitely helps to listen to that music for a while before beginning to write. Close your eyes and block out everything but the music. Think about how it makes you feel. Think about the images it produces in your mind and the memories it reminds you of. Listen to how the different instruments come together and how the vocals fit with the rest of the composition. Now, try to put these feelings into words in your blog post. It is a formidable challenge to do this but you will get better with practice. I find that it also helps to listen to the music as you write about it. Just make sure that you don't end up spending a whole bunch of time listening to the music and forget to write anything.

Including Outside Information in Your Blog

It is rarely a bad idea to include information from external sources. The obvious place to start when looking for outside information about a band or some other music related subject is to type said subject into Google. This will almost always give you the Wikipedia article and often the band's official website. From there you can find plenty of information and possibly links to more sources. It is a fine idea to put a link to the band's website in your post so that readers can go directly there with ease.

Catching People's Attention

A very important part of any writing is catching the reader's attention, and in the cutthroat world of blogging this might make the difference between life and death for your blog. To begin with, I like to put a picture at the beginning of each post. But this won't do anything if nobody goes to your blog in the first place. To catch people's attention you basically need to tell people about your blog. This is tricky, since most of the ways to do this are considered “site pimping”, which is essentially going “hay guys check out my website” and is a big no-no on the Internet and will not earn you any respect. Really, you either need to have a logical situation to tell people to go to your site or just put a link to your blog in some passive place such as your signature on a forum. The best way to get people's attention is word of mouth, which is pretty hard to generate on purpose.

Connecting With Your Audience

o connect with your audience you will need to know enough about music that you will be able to write about it in a way that readers will both understand and appreciate. It is definitely important to know at least something about the bands, genres, or whatever it is you are writing about. If you know how to play an instrument this will obviously help quite a bit, especially when describing a particular song, since you will better be able to explain how the composition fits together. Providing the ability to listen to the music you are writing about in a post is always helpful to your readers, so that they are able to hear for themselves what you have been talking about. However, don't let that induce laziness. You should still describe the music enough that readers can get a feel for the music even without the option of actually listening to it.

Developing A Voice

A strong and unique voice is very important in blogging, as well as pretty much everything you do in life. It will set you apart from the rest of the herd and will earn you more attention. If you write about something in a good voice, people will probably pay more attention to you than someone who says the exact same thing but in a boring way. In my experience, the single best way to develop your own voice is simply to write the way that you think. You could also assign yourself a blogging personality and try to write from that angle.

DO:

• Listen to a song at least once prior to writing about it
• Write about things you don't like in addition to what you do

DON'T:

• Put your provided song file on some clumsy hosting site that requires registration for downloading
• Make generalizations such as “all songs of ____ genre are bad”

Blogging about Politics

TAKE A STAND!

When it comes to discussing politics on a blog the one thing that comes before all others is taking a stand on every issue. If you are considering starting a blog on politics first ask yourself why you are doing it. Finding a purpose for your blog is critical to locking in a constant audience. If you are like me chances are you want to share your opinions and see what people have to think. The one thing that I made sure not to do was constantly summarize the news, people can get news from the mainstream media much easier and with far more credibility. If your purpose is to offer news or facts that are not mainstream then by all means do so. When trying to come up with a purpose make sure that you find something sustainable and have a plan for coming up with new posts. The idea of coming up with a purpose for your blog is pretty self explanatory but I would also advise you post some sort of a statement describing your purpose just so potential readers can have a quick look at what they are in for.

Keep it Moving

A blog like any work of literature needs to flow, without new posts and new ideas your reader base will wither away. When it comes it comes to politics getting ideas is pretty easy, watch the news, read the paper, browse other blogs. At any given time there are always some hot button issues that people want to hear about and by observing the mainstream media you can home in on those issues. By offering posts on current issues you can keep your blog relevant. For instance, talking about the morality of stem cell research in relation to abortion may have been an extremely relevant a while ago but now with the new research that is coming out the issue is no longer as relevant. While throwing in some posts about issues relevant to you is always fine make sure to keep your blog in tune with the rest of the world, it is simply good kairos.

Style

We all have our own writing style and it grows with us as we go through life. That being said, stick your style and don’t attempt to sound like another author (unless satire is your game). As far as your writing process goes I would recommend first finding an issue that you have an interest in. Next do your research, try to determine the facts and understand the points of view that others have about this issue. Once you have the facts and understand the issue form an opinion based on the facts and write you piece. I would advise writing it on a word processing program such as Word and then copying it to your blog so as to catch spelling and grammatical errors.

Citations

Unlike most research papers blogging makes citations easy with the ability to link facts directly to their source. While it is still appropriate to say something along the lines of “according to……enter fact” so that the reader does not have to follow the link to determine credibility, the ability to do so is always a plus. When it comes to facts I find that good sources are new providers such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post (just some examples there are many more including non-electronic sources such as books). When citing opinions the realm of possibility becomes far greater encompassing many other sources including the myriad of other blogs on the internet. When posting most of my facts come from come from modern news sources I prefer my supporting quotes and concepts to come from classical literature and long dead people. Although this does breach the idea of good kairos I discussed before I find that many of this sources are beyond question and when it comes to the quotes unlike quoting a living human the character of the dead is well known and unchanging (for instance quoting Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho on June 10th about his opinions on homosexuality would have lead to a lack of credibility in an article). By no means am I saying not to quote the living, just be careful how you build your arguments around those quotes.

Keep’em Reading

If you don’t care about people reading what you are writing then a journal is probably a better idea for you. With a journal you can still jot down your ideas and you don’t face any criticism about them. On the other hand blogging is not just about having an idea, it is about bouncing that idea off of others all over the world and possibly allowing them to cite you in their arguments. This in a way relates to style, as a writer you need to connect with an audience by catching their attention and maintaining it. The key here is to develop a clear and consistent writing voice. Think of your favorite writer, composer, director, sculptor, painter, musician, architect, or singer. For most people it is the style of a person at their particular trade that creates favor. So it is for the writer as well, while you shouldn’t fear the evolution of your writing over time switching between writing styles for every different post (baring outstanding reasons) can create distaste from readers who cannot grasp your message clearly in your new style. For instance writing in iambic pentameter this week and then switching to haiku’s next can create disfavor, if all your posts are serious with the exception of one satirical post it can be confusing to readers. Point being, pick a style and stick with it, use writing styles and wording that speak to your target audience and then focus on your ideas rather than your conveyance.

Key Points

All of the above were some key points for your blogging but first and foremost remember to pick a topic that you enjoy, nothing would be more detrimental to the success of your blog than for you not to enjoy it. Pick a topic you care about and have enjoyed for some time rather than a spur of the moment idea (Don’t make a blog called “Why I hate cops” five minutes after you get a ticket, you will lose interest and it will flop). Most of blogging is learn as you go and these are just some pointers, my advice would be to set your topic and tone, start typing and just let the ideas come as you go.

How to Blog About College

Over the past few months I have become a part of an online community that has caused me to notice occurrences in my everyday life that I probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. I have been blogging about college life at Purdue University. My blog was dedicated to giving useful information to others about Purdue and about college in general. I learned many things about writing and about college that I believe could be worthwhile advice to others interested in becoming a part of this online college community.

Developing a Purpose
When developing a purpose for your blog, you have to ask yourself what it is you are trying to accomplish. Do you want to be the parent figure who gives wise advice about finding meaning behind life in college? The older student who offers small yet practical tidbits to the somewhat lost college freshman? Or would you rather be the university secretary, providing information about recent campus events and happenings? Whatever your purpose may be, defining it clearly and having set goals about what type of information you would like to provide to the online community is necessary before beginning to blog.

Coming Up With Ideas
I don’t mean to scare anyone away from blogging on the topic of college, but coming up with ideas is definitely the most difficult step to master. After struggling to come up with ideas, I finally came up with a list of great places you can look for topics dealing with college life.

· Researching tips online and trying them out makes for a great blog post. You can tell your community what tips for being successful in college worked for you and which ones didn’t, and then you can add your own advice on top of that.
· Blog about personal issues you are having with friends, parents, or roommates. Providing original solutions to common problems is always welcome in this community.
· Share academic tips and ideas such as study habits or good advice on classes and professors.
· Document recent happenings on campus; this could include athletics, performances, etc.
· Share unusual discoveries you have made such as great places to eat or little known places you can park as a freshman.

The Writing Process
The writing process required for being a successful college blogger doesn’t need a lot of planning. Basically, once you get an idea, go with it. After you establish a solid idea or topic, it makes the most sense to write about what you found and then relate it to personal experiences. Also, organizing your writing will help you stay on topic; it’s easy to stray to other college related subject since the topic is so broad, but you will keep your audience’s attention much better if you keep it simple and structured.

Including Outside Info
It’s fairly easy to incorporate outside information into your college blogging. Looking for articles online dealing with things such as college tips, health, stress, test taking, etc. always helps you back up your ideas with researched facts. Looking in school newspapers for information on campus events will also help you become a more reliable source of information. Lastly, there are lots of books dealing with college experiences and tips for how to be successful in college. Using these to back up, or even challenge, your own idea always makes for an interesting post.

Catching the Audience’s Attention
Finding a way to grab your audience’s attention is one of the most crucial steps in creating a successful blog about college. First of all, you have to realize and understand the fact that your audience is mainly college students, and that college students as a whole are not very motivated to read something that isn’t terribly interesting to them. Their attention span for boring paragraphs is nearly nonexistent. You have to come up with topics that appeal to this age group, and complement these ideas with appealing language – simple, interesting, and not too overly descriptive. Having a unique website name and interesting names for your posts also catch a reader’s eye. Make sure the post titles give a good idea about what the blog is about so that it will show up in searches, and also make it interesting so readers will click on it before the other choices that may pop up. Another hint on catching college students’ attention: don’t use too many words! Words get tiresome and boring; instead use pictures, bullets, or short paragraphs to break up information and make it more appealing.

Connecting with the Audience
If you can catch your audience’s attention that’s great, but you have to be sure that you can keep it. The key to getting a reader to read an entire post and come back for more the next day is to be able to connect with your readers. This discourse community thrives on new knowledge, so providing your readers with new information will always bring them back for more. In order to truly connect with them you have to find the perfect balance between being a parent figure and a friend. Although you want to be informative like a parent would be, you also want to put yourself on the reader’s level so that they can really connect with the information you are giving them. Giving them advice or information on topics that they really care about will allow them to connect with what you have to say. The best way to do this is to try out all of the advice yourself before you blog about it. This will help your audience recognize that you are just another college student who has the same priorities and thoughts that they do, and they will start to see you as more of a mentor or friend instead of someone just telling them what to do, as a book or informative website might.

Developing a Voice
The voice you develop while blogging in a college experience based community will depend mostly on what your purpose is. Although you could choose the route of being the educated, formal, informative blogger who has tons of information to share, I found that readers in this community respond better to an educated yet personable voice. Having a strong and simple blogging voice will make your blogs seem realistic to readers. Also, having a unique voice will make your blogs stand out from others and draw more readers. A good way to do this is to blog in a similar format each time, along with using similar language each time to present your ideas. Being very consistent with your writing style will also help you develop a steady voice.

Do’s and Don’ts
Overall, the biggest thing to be sure to do while blogging about college is to connect with the college students. People in this age group want realistic advice that will actually help them accomplish something. One thing to be sure not to do is to be too formal in your blogging. This will turn college students away because the last thing they want to be doing in their free time is reading something that sounds like another textbook.

Guide for a Sports Issues Blog

The way to go about developing and sustaining a purpose for a blog is to make sure you know what you are talking about, that certain topic of choice and how you are going to keep people’s attention on it. Personally, I tried to make personal connections as often as possible to the stories or topics that I was writing about. Then, when I couldn’t make a personal connection, I gave statistics and made sure that the topics were well researched. Researching the topics was a big way that helped me develop a purpose, or theme, for the blog. It made everybody realize that I knew what I was talking about and that they could trust what I said about a topic. These are a couple of the different ways that I developed a purpose for my blog.
There are many different ways that I came up with ideas for my posts. Generally it is a very well known athlete that is always coming up, such as Michael Vick or O.J. Simpson. I also came up with ideas by looking through the top stories, and just a few hard to find ones, on sports sites such as ESPN, yahoo, and fox sports. Then, with stories like the Greg Oden one, where it talks about him being done for his complete rookie season, I would make a personal connection. On the rare occasion that I watch the news, I’ll watch the sports section and listen for an interesting issue to crop up and write about that. Or typically when I’m in the dorm, I’ll have one of three things going on: music on my computer, or on the television either a movie or more likely some kind of sports show, like sports center or pardon the interruption. I would watch these shows then research them further and then put all the ideas onto the computer and try and pull them out into paragraph form from there.
I don’t have too much of any writing approaches. I am not the type to take and write down all of my ideas on paper, then decide what goes where before I write the paper, or whatever it might be. I typically just go and find out a little about what I’m going to write about and then just start writing. I follow the guidelines as I go and try and keep it in order from there without being too repetitive at all. So as I said before, I really don’t have much of a feel for writing approaches or processes to help me do an assignment. I just, as some would say, go with the flow.
There are many ways that I include outside sources while I am writing about my blog topics. I, of course, use the quotation marks every time I use a quote from an outsider. I also, quite often, take the web address and make a link to it at some point in the blog. I usually do this when I make a reference to the website, such as “according to ESPN sources,” I would just make a link to it right there where it says ESPN.
I know this is pretty much the same way that I develop and sustain a theme or purpose for the blog, but the way that I catch people’s attention is to make personal references to the topic I am writing about. People tend to comment that this is an effective way of getting a point across to them, and that it makes it look more like I know exactly what I’m talking about rather than generalizing because of what someone else says, or even worse, guessing. And again, like the developing a theme for the blog, I also research the topics very in depth. Again, it makes it look as I know what I’m talking about, or at least care enough to research the topic with depth, not just trying to guess at what people want to hear, but giving them the facts.
I connect with my audience by giving my opinion more often than not. There are some topics that I just cannot find somewhere to fit in opinion, as if I can’t find somewhere that it would make sense for it to be. An example of this would be in the blog about the death of Washington Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor. That is an example of a blog where people are just to more likely want to know what happened, and how it happened, rather than hear about a personal experience, due to the fact that hearing about someone getting shot from a personal experience is not necessarily something that most people want to hear about.
I develop a voice in my blogging community by simply using common sense and not talking trash to people, for example, giving someone a bad comment on their blog, therefore pissing them off and making me known as someone who would talk trash about you blogs right off the bat. That is one of the best ways to develop a voice, being polite and knowing what you’re talking about (i.e. - my well researched topics). The general do’s and don’ts are relatively simple. As I said before, don’t talk trash to the other bloggers, especially on their blogs, and definitely don’t start out thinking you know everything about the community you’re within. That will get you more mistrust than anything in a flash. Now as for the do’s, that’s a little bit tougher. You have to start out slow, take it easy for a little bit, and work your way in to the top of the community. Everything that I learned about the genre I pretty much just told you. It all has to do with the do’s and don’ts and then how you develop your voice in the community. Those things right there are what help determine whether you’re meant for that specific genre. Now for my specific genre, sports issues, I learned that I have to be much more specific when it comes to choosing the topics. I can’t pick any general sports story, I have to make sure that it’s an issue throughout at least one sport, if not the whole sporting world.

Guide for a Good Football Blog

Guide for a Good Football Blog

Through the course of this semester I have learned many new writing techniques through blogging. For those of you that have never blogged or wonder what kind of writing style is acceptable in a blogosphere, this piece is for you. Coming into the semester, I had never written on a blog, or to be honest knew much of what they were. For me, I had to write a blog discussing any football related topics. The trick writing a good football post is to develop a purpose. One thing you need to do is to enjoy football and/or watch the games. If you enjoy the game, then the purpose for posting will come easy. Also, watching the games or reading about the latest football news will create topics to discuss. I started to struggle towards the end of my posting because I thought I had discussed all that could be talked about, but really there isn’t really an end when football is in season. After you figure out what you want to post about, develop a process. Through trial and error, I found that summarizing a game or event and then giving your own personal opinion was the best route. When I first started blogging, I would just do a play by play of the game, but readers do not want that. The reader can just as easily turn on Sports Center and see that. The reader wants the writers own personal opinion towards that certain topic and overall it creates a better blog with more people voicing their own opinion. When posting the blog, if you want to include information that you may have read or heard, you just credit that person or article. You don’t need to make a big deal about it. An example of this is from one of my posts on “Wednesday WideOuts” talking about the murder of Sean Taylor: “As you read on Irish's post, football star Sean Taylor was murdered a few days by an intruder breaking into his house and shooting him.” Next thing you need to worry about while posting is catching the reader’s attention. I discussed this earlier with the style of post that I prefer. The reader does not want something that they can catch anywhere else, they want something new. When you are writing, think of good words or phrases that will make the reader want to read more. It is also just as important to connect with your audience. Connecting doesn’t necessarily mean agree, but just understand what they are saying. For instance, one blogger may say something about how much they love the New England Patriots and then go on to give examples of why they like them. Me being a fan of the Colts, I wouldn’t agree with that, but I could connect with the blogger because he may say he likes them because of Moss or Brady. Lastly, you need to develop a voice. I still struggle with this because I may say how dumb one thing is but later in the post I could understand why it was done. Basically, just be consistent. Another thing that is very important in a football blog is to not be a bandwagon fan. If you root for a team at the beginning of the season, then root for them all the way through. Don’t root for a team until they start losing and then change to another team. I mean yes, you can credit a team when they are playing better than normal, but don’t completely change your opinion on your team you first started out with. An example of this is the Purdue Boilermakers. I talked about how they were doing good towards the start of the season, and how they might end up to be something good this year. Once they started losing, I started to post about where the errors were being made, and what needed to be done to fix the errors. The main error they have is Coach Tiller. I then started posting about other teams, but I didn’t completely lose track of where or what Purdue was doing. Another trick that I found helpful was to listen to your peers. Talk football with some of your buddies and see what they are thinking. Some of your buddies will create topics that will turn out to be your best writing because they have a completely different thought of things than you. You may not agree with your buddies and write about that. Write about what they said you don’t agree with and write why you do not agree with it. Another thing that I think helped my blog out were the readers. The readers would tell me things to change or to add. This made the post’s better, attracting more readers. The more readers you have looking at your blog the better! You never want just a few people coming and going, traffic is the key. Lastly, I think the key to a good blog is to post often. When readers check out your blog and see the same post they did two weeks before, they will not come back but when they see new things coming up all the time, they will comment or post with a reply. Overall it is interesting to see what they think and to post back. Almost like a long distance chat.

Blogging about the Pig Skin

Blogging for football can be very fun but also very hard. The biggest thing that you need is to stick to a theme. Now I found that I didn't really stick with a theme as well I as should have. If you do start a football one and want readers to keep coming back make things routine for them. The big part that I tried to get going was at least three post and have them spread out so that the reader should always get something new when the reader comes back. This is one of the hard parts about blogging. You need to keep the reader coming back. Think of your blog as a morning paper. The ideal blog would have something new everyday such as a paper has new articles each day. The blog should also stick to a pattern such as a paper does. If you can successfully do this you will have readers coming to your blog almost every day.

Drawing a Blank?

When you can't think of anything to write about when you’re doing a football blog start watching TV. Now you can just go to any ole channel you should go to either a channel that is showing a game or hit up ESPN. Another great resource for information would have to be either SI.com or ESPN.com. You wouldn't believe how much stuff they have on there that no one knows about or stories that are so random that they never make the mainstream media. Another great source for ideas is very basic. YOUR FRIENDS! Now this is given you have friends, but most of your friends will have some sort of interest in a football team or have an idea for a post, I have personally used this method quite a few times.

Putting the Pieces Together.

Now when you do finally get the idea of what to write about you need to start writing. Now many people have different approaches on how to write and all of them are probably right. That is the fun thing about blogging; you don't need to have a certain writing process. You can be like me and just throw out all your ideas onto the web page and sort though and find what you want to be on there or you can make a detailed outline of everything that you wanna write about before you write it. Like a said before there isn't a wrong way to put together your blog post. The biggest thing is just do it. Have your blogging schedule and stick to it.

GOT YA!

Catching people’s attention is huge. Usually you will have a blog and there will be many other posts on it. So to make sure that readers check yours out you should do some of these steps. People like pictures. Now I know this sounds stupid but the majority of people would much rather look at a picture then read three lines of a story. I know its an old saying but a picture does say a thousand words. Another great way to get readers attention is interesting titles. If the title is boring the reader will most likely not even give the post a chance because they will think that they post are just as boring as the title. Also CAPS is also a good way to get attention but try not to use it too often because readers will just think that you are yelling a bunch.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Your voice is another really fun thing that a blog gives you. There are thousands and thousands of football blogs out there. What makes your so different? The biggest thing will be your voice. To be honest most football blogs that I have read are all the same. They will give you a rap up of the game and then will give you some stats then maybe throw in there two cents. The biggest part of the whole blog is the two cents. Make it known what you think about the game. Let be known who you think made a horrible call and who is over rated. Controversy is good, but make sure that you can back it up. People love to argue, so give them some thing to debate. Throw out some bold statements, if you do this you really will start to see your true voice and the readers will really enjoy your writing.

Do's and Don'ts

Again the big thing about blogging is that there is no real set of rules that you have to stick to. No one is really telling you what to write about and how to write it, but do keep in consideration these things that I have learned. When writing a football blog you will have bad weeks. What I mean by this is that you will have weekends will you pick four games and none of those games will turn out the way that you said they would. This really is one of the harder things about writing any sports blog. You have to make sure that you are creditable, but we all are human so you will make a mistake. I found the best way to cover it is come out and say that u messed up. By doing this you must also say why, this at least gives the reader some insight on why you thought the way you did. Don't be so opinionated that you digress from what the blog is about. I know this might sound like I’m contradicting myself but don't start to ramble about some view that you have that has nothing to do with your post. Readers don't wanna hear it. Try to keep up on your post, like a said before if you want a good blog, treat it like a town paper and keep it up to date. In going along with the keeping it up to date, don't bring up a game that happened more then two weeks ago. Nobody wants to hear about old news. The biggest DO would have to have fun blogging. If you don't enjoy blogging stop, blogging is a great resource so that millions can voice what they have to say and people can read it. So just have fun with it.

A Baseball Blogger's Guide

When you decide that you want to start blogging, and you decide what you want to blog about, you will need to find your place in the baseball discourse community. So what exactly is a discourse community? Well according to Henry Jenkins’s in his writing Spoiling Survivor – The Anatomy of a Knowledge Community, online communities are “defined through voluntary, temporary, and tactical affiliations, reaffirmed through common intellectual enterprises and emotional investments” (Spoiling Survivor 27). The paper is designed to help you develop a good, effective blog, so you can become part of the baseball discourse community.


Developing and sustaining a purpose and mission for you blog

The first step in starting a blog is to determine what you want the purpose of your blog to be and what you want your readers to get out of it. You might want to solely report game highlights, or you might want to only give predictions, or you may choose to do a mixture of both. Really, it’s all up to you. Everyone’s blogs are different and everyone brings something unique to the discourse community.

Your main goal is to decide what kind of audience you want to attract. Once you have done that, then you can write a mission statement based on how you want to grab their attention and also how you want to keep them there. You always want to remember to stick by your mission and try not to go off the beaten path, because this may result in a decrease in readership to your blog. To prevent this, it is a good idea to go back to the mission statement periodically to make sure you are still producing what you intended. It is important to write accurate posts so your audience can get the most out of your blog.


Stumped?

I have found out that one of the hardest things about blogging is finding ideas to write about, especially in the off-season. When the season is going on you can also write about game highlights, players’ personal performances, and any controversies that may have occurred. However, when the off-season comes around you might get stuck and develop a case of writer’s block. I have found some ways to help you get over this dilemma from my personal experiences. Some issues that you can talk about are any current trades or position moves that a team has made. Another idea would be to talk about any historical events or past accomplishments that a team has experienced. One of the easiest issues that I have found to write about is evaluations. You can form long, detailed posts by evaluating different positions, a team’s offense and defense, a team’s coaching staff, or a team’s administration.


Effective writing processes and approaches

I think that it is important to know exactly what you want your audience to get out of a post before you actually write it. You may need to write out an outline or rough draft, or you might be able to do this in your head, but it is to lay everything out. I found my posts to be most effective when I do this because then I don’t go off on a random tangent. Once I have laid everything out, I start to write, and I don’t revise my paper until I am done writing the complete post. Then I proofread my post twice. I first proofread it to check for ideas and to make sure everything makes sense. Then I go back and check for any grammatical errors or sentence structures. Once I have done all of this, I finally feel confident enough to post it online.

The main trouble that I found myself running into was the fact that I would have a great idea but I wouldn’t know how to put it into words. When this happened, I would just insert a rough draft of my idea into the paper and make it bold. This way I knew that that part wasn’t finished and that I needed to go back to fix it. I found these ways to be the most successful ones in order to produce a noteworthy post.


Incorporating outside information and sources

Obtaining knowledge regarding new occurrences is very important to the discourse community because it helps to keep the community close and involved with each other. Jenkins describes this when he wrote, “What holds a collective intelligence together is not the possession of knowledge – which is dynamic and participatory, continually testing and reaffirming the group’s social ties” (Spoiling Survivor 54). To do this, you need to find a few credible sources for you to tie in information from. For example, you may want to have one of your sources be a team’s official website or MLB.com. You can also use other blogs, but just make sure that they are credible.


Catching people’s attention

When writing, you will want to remember to make your blog interesting from the very beginning. Your main goal is to get readers’ attention, and then you want to keep them there. If you don’t have what they are looking for from the very beginning, they will go elsewhere to get their information. This is why it is important to also have an effective voice, which you will learn about a little bit later. One way that you can gain a reader’s attention is by including pictures. This is especially effective in a baseball blog because your readers will be able to view action pictures from the games and they will also be able to see pictures of certain players and fields, which is beneficial if they were unaware of what they looked like. You may also choose to use quotes, which is another good attention getter.


Connecting with your audience

A very important issue that you will want to make sure happens is that fact that your audience stays connected and interested in your writing. In order to do this, it is a good idea to look at your stat counters. By doing this, you can obtain very useful and valuable information. As a blogger you will be able to see which posts and ideas got the most attention from your readers. Once you know this, you can decide which subjects earned the most traffic and you will want to write more about those posts or write more posts like that.


Developing an effective voice

Finding a voice in a desired discourse community is very important, because it defines you as a writer and it also characterizes what you believe in. Having a significant, noteworthy voice will decide whether or not a reader will take the time to read your thoughts and opinions, and will hopefully keep them coming back for more. George Lakoff’s thoughts on the importance of a voice is explained in Don’t Think of an Elephant! when he states that its important to have “language that fits your worldview….The ideas are primary- and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas” (Elephant 4). Another important aspect is that you will need to consider is how your audience will interpret the information that you are giving them. Frank Luntz stated in the Introduction to his writing, Words that Work, “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear” (Introduction xiii). So basically for your baseball blog, you want to develop an enthusiastic, knowledgeable voice that uses very descriptive and passionate words. You want your audience to find your posts exciting and interesting and if you keep writing good, credible posts, I guarantee that they will keep coming back to your blog to get the latest baseball news.


Some FYIs

Something that is very important to writing blogs in consistency. You will want to make sure you keep your posting consistent and in a timely matter. You also want to make sure that your voice stays consistent. You want your audience to know that they can come to you for the latest news and highlights. You also want to make sure that you use trustworthy sources so your audience is confident that your writing is credible. However, the most important thing to do is have fun with it. If you are bored or just plain not interested in what you are writing about then it will show right through. Find things to write about that you would talk to your friends about. Your posts will flow much better and if your audience sees that you had fun writing it then they will have fun reading it.

A Football Blogger's Take

In a day and age where it seems that football has overtaken baseball as the American pastime the age of web 2.0 emerges with it. Now it's not just the Tony Kornheiser's, the John Madden's, and the Chris Berman's who get a voice. Now all of us get to share our takes and opinions to the whole world. Having a voice does not make you correct, though. The opinion that the Internet has given us can give us a good or bad reputation, depending on how we express, back it up, and present them. This is to help the many who need a slight tip to improve your blog or maybe those who are just starting a blog on football and need a crash course. So, go ahead and take a bit of advice on the art of football blogging.

Passion - Love What You Write

If you want people to love what they read, you have to love what you write. People can tell this very simply in how you defend your opinions and how you articulate them. Don't be lackluster about this; this is what really will set out your blog from others. All of this begins with your mission statement. This is the basis of all of your attitudes and what you will provide to your reading community about football, in a written statement. Show great passion in this vital piece and you are on your way to success in the blogging society. Sustaining your mission statement is just a matter of staying true to it. Live and write by it and it's beliefs.

Find a Process That Works For You

A blogger has a system that he uses for each piece of writing. I found that mine is very unique, as is likely for everyone in a slight fashion. The first thing to do is find a topic, first go to a website that you like the best that pertains to sports. Then look at the top stories and just write about whatever story strikes a chord with you. It could be an off or on field story, it makes no matter. I found that I worked best on emotion. As noted above, passion is a great way to write a good blog. With this passion you write what you really feel. Passion alone won't get you a good piece of writing, however. Remember to write what you feel but don't write illogically. If you have a gaping hole in your logic, no one is going to want to read it, which refers to a credibility factor. Make sure to make sense in your writing and definitely read over what you have written when you are finished. After you have finished then you finally add the title. This is the attention catcher so make it short and cute, that works for me. As I found out many times, the perspective of the third person had trouble reading my writings. This brings up another part of finding your process. You have to try and edit your process as I did when I began to ask a third party to read my work before posting. This resulted in better writing and a firmer grasp of how an audience read my writing.

Be a Nerd, but a Funny Nerd

An essential aspect of a successful football blog, or any blog for that matter, is the credibility of yourself. So know your stuff! Sports make it really easy for you to include outside information because of statistics. Get all of your statistics right and double check everything. After all, you are on the Internet so it's not that hard to go to whatever your sports website of choice (i.e. ESPN.com, cbs.sportsline.com, or SI.com, my "bread and butter sites") is and look it up. However, there is a little happy medium to this aspect. You need to ration your stats, don't be a stat freak. Good commentary is vital to the football blogger's triumph on the net. You have to be funny in what you say while keeping in mind the topic at hand all the while throwing a few stats that help prove your point and thus your credibility (Hopefully that sentence doesn't overload you, so go ahead and read it again slower this time). I think this one from my archives might present a suitable example. I think you will find a good combination of hardy, interesting stats mixed with solid commentary. This is a great way to connect with your audience.

This Just in: Being Current and Fresh Does a Blogger Good

I can't stress enough the importance of being up-to-date and current. If you take something that just came to light and do a little piece on it you will find great success. Especially if you hear the talking heads on ESPN.com making the same points you made two hours after you posted. Can you say insta-cred? This can be through a post game analysis very shortly after a game had just been completed, like this example. If you aren't able to get a computer right after some of these explosive stories hit, you can advance your opinion and better back them up with facts. The Mike Gundy blow up is an excellent example of this as I am better equipped to advance the subject. This after two days of shows and articles discussing the topic. But you really hit the jackpot (although I hate to say so based on the subject) when you get a story that hasn't been hit hard yet. In a couple of hours there will be hundreds of stories on the Internet regarding the subject. The Sean Taylor death was just this in that he died that Tuesday morning and come a few hours later I already had a post on my blog regarding it. This before many shows and articles had even come out regarding the tragedy. This leads me into my next topic.

Take a Story and Explore It


See what is not easily seen, and make it interesting. Sometimes to put yourself apart from the thousands of football blogs you need to think outside the box. As you read the Sean Taylor post you might have noticed that I took something from it that not many would see in it. Not only did I write about the obvious affect it will have on his team and the players and coaches that make it up but the league as a whole. The Darryl Kile death was referenced in it as well. This shows a great example of the affect a death has on both a team and the league. Credibility is built off of such references.

Most Important of All

Two more very essential things you must know. 1) To become a better blogger you must write, WRITE, WRITE!!!! A seasoned blogger is naturally going to be a better blogger than one who just started up his first blog. 2) Take pride in what you write and you will become a better blogger. Showing signs of not caring tells your readers that you don't care about them. I hope this helps and your journey to blogger super stardom doesn't stop until you are on top of the blogosphere.

Blogger's guide to Media Blogs

“Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great!”

Based on Chief Gusteau’s signature quote from the movie Ratatouille (If you haven’t watched one of the most loving computer animation movies of 2007, be nice to yourself and watch it), I believe the same concept can be tied into writing. So here it is my phenomenon observation:

Anyone can write media blogs, but only the ambiguous will be read.

It’s a long stretch? I think not.

Writing is something everyone can do. Regardless of the grades you received in English class during grade school, you can still create appealing weblogs. Anyone who has a voice will attract attention across the web. But there are differences between an amateur blog and a professional blog. Follow the guidelines below as you blog and you will find the numbers on your Statcounter shoot out of the roof.

Discover then blog.

It is impossible for anyone to run out of topics to blog about when it comes to celebrities and/or today’s popular news. Blogging about the pop culture is different than any other sort of blogging. If there’s a channel that only reports celebrities, the show will run for eternality. Since there are stories out there, it’s your job as a blogger to go out there and search for them. Places to search for juicy stories and gossips are any of the celebrity magazines, TV shows and popular celebrity blogs. If you feel like you’re out of stories to blog about, then you’re certainly NOT doing a good job at scavenging hunt.
There’s also a difference between finding a story and finding the story. Blogging about popular news is one thing, but what most readers grave for is discovering rare news. It might be hard to find them, but once you wrote a few of them on your website, the number of many returning readers will increase.

Blog. Discover. Repeat.

To have the most desirable blog, you must an active updater. Pop news, especially ones about celebrities, is most people’s addiction. If you wish to bring your weblog to a higher level than those hundreds of armature’s blogs, you must update your entries daily with fresh hot news. This progress takes a tremulous amount of time, hence explains why most of the popular celebrity blogs belong to those who careers in it. Surf around, google for popular celebrity blogs and you will find most of them belong to young trendy authors who basically live off their website. But if your purpose of blogging is for entertainment, update your website every 2- 3 days will get you a decent amount of returning readers.

Be active.

The difference in writing blogs about pop culture and other topics is the spontaneous voice it delivers. When blogging you should pretend that your writing is the script for the MTV News. It’s also important keep in mind who your audiences are. Most of the people who read celebrity blogs are those of 16 to 30. Knowing the age range for the readers, you should blog in their voice and tone. This is a great way to build yourself a strong relationship between the readers and you. Once you have a solid relationship, you words and idea would be highly respected.

Sound smart. But not TOO smart.

Being active in your blog is one thing, but without the correct vocabulary it wouldn’t be easy to obtain that voice. Choosing the appropriate vocabulary in your blog is easy. Knowing who your audiences are, you should obtain a basic understanding of their vocabulary level and talk using their words and sentences. Avoid choosing sophisticated terminology in your blogs might not be the appropriate thing to do. If you sound too smart, your blogs will come out dry and boring. It’s those witty and slangs that make up an idea pop culture blog. But don’t go over the top or else you may be judged as unintelligent. The main key point is to write like the readers communicate.

For best results, apply with your formal writing skills.

As I mentioned in the beginning, writing this sort of blog is different from writing a formal essay paper because it requires a more active and social approach. For example, add some short and sweet sentences to have the hyper effect. However this doesn’t mean you should ignore the basic principles to writing. In fact, writing any blog requires more attention in paragraph organization and content. Since the writing revolves with mainly personal statements and commentaries, it’s crucial to have a strong balance between actual commentaries and personal intakes.

1. Introduction paragraph should have the main focus of the entire. Usually a picture and couple sentences of summary would do the job.
2. Middle paragraph is where all the criticism, critiques, and personal statements comes in. Be careful and don’t overwhelm the readers with too much detail to the commentaries or else the entry will become dry. Remember that media news spread fast, so most readers are more likely to be interested in what you have to comment rather than re-reading about the incident. Also have a strong organization because you don’t want to have your readers become frustrated filtering out the dry information and your witty comical comments.
3. In the Conclusion paragraph, it’s best to end the entry with a chic. It’s hard to obtain this if you’re rarely exposed to people’s media blogs and/or celebrity-based documentary TV shows. The key is to read more and learn the way they talk.

Remember the Golden Rule

Yes, it will still apply even when you’re online. This type of blog requires high criticism in a humorous way. If you’re being too judgmental or just plain harsh with your words, you will either be extremely loved by rational readers or utterly despised by sensitive readers. It’s really a 50/50 chance for your reputation to either rise or fall. Bottom line is, if you write anything that’s profane about celebrities, you will face the consequences. So please, criticize as much as you want, but keep it rated R. Foul languages not only will offend many readers, but it will also cost your credibility as a blogger.

General Dos and DON’Ts.

Do keep blogs to a medium length. If it’s too long, most people will end up only looking at the pictures.

Do have pictures for your blogs. After all, pictures are worth a thousand words.

Do make some predictions. Making predictions and/or betting on celebrities’ next big move is every fanatic fan’s joy of fun.

Do add amusing criticism but don’t over do it.

Do have outside sources if your story is found on some other websites (You can just add a hyperlink at the end of your blog). This way it will encourage readers to believe your story.

Don’t forget to add your sources please.

Don’t get too serious about your blogs.

Don’t be offended by some of the comments from readers. You need to keep in mind that not everyone agrees with everyone’s opinions.

It might seem an awful a lot of information but once you start writing your entries, all this will come to you. Remember to write every blog with passion and you will be getting many positive feedbacks!

Guide to: An Entertaining Entertainment Blog

The entertainment community is a very unique place to blog. It is current, fun, and informative. I have been writing on an entertainment blog, for about three months now, and I have had many new experiences to share with current and potential bloggers. While some of the basic writing principles apply to writing a blog post, I have found several differences.

The first step is deciding what topic you want to blog about. Once you have decided on a topic you have to establish a theme that will carry throughout your blog. All of your topics should be related to the blog’s overall topic. All of my entertainment posts have contained information regarding the news, celebrity happenings, or just funny stuff. When you are trying to establish a theme, think of what the readers will be interested in. The biggest goal for a blog is to please the readers because without them the blog goes no where.

Once you have established a theme for your blog you need to get ideas to write about. Keeping up on the news and looking through articles online gave me many ideas. Some sites I like to look at are etonline.com and theinsideronline.com. Even though I look every day the articles are hit and miss, but you will never know something is out there unless you are always looking. Readers love to see the same topic discussed on more than one blog so using other blog sites is a great idea. I look at perezhilton.com as part of my daily article search. Perez is an avid blogger with the latest and greatest stories in the entertainment business. Perez has a very unique voice that cannot be duplicated so it is fun to tie in my ideas with his, mostly as a follow up to his blog. Also just watching television is a great way to find things to write about. There are a lot of shows that are very popular right now and fans are interested in what other people think about them. I watch “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Desperate Housewives” every week so I decided to start writing about the shows because I like watching them and that makes reviewing them fun. I quickly learned that friends may be your biggest influence. I have a friend who is always surfing youtube.com and she has found some very funny stuff. When she thinks something is funny she just wants to show it off to me, but the first thing I think is, “I wonder if that would be a good topic for my blog?” Don’t be worried when this becomes a common question after only a few short weeks of blogging.

After finding a topic, you have to make sure readers are going to want to read the blog. I think creating a catchy title is very effective. I like to include the topic but do a little bit of play on words. I wrote a blog titled “Desperate for more,” and the blog was about “Desperate Housewives,” but it also implies that viewers are hooked on the show. I found an entertaining YouTube video that was titled, “The Seven Stupidest Women Car Crashes” so I titled my blog “Crash and Burn.” Also including photos or videos attracts readers. While skimming a blog page, I am personally drawn to pictures on a page full of words. Also providing several links off of your page is helpful. I like to reference other sources on my blog because then the readers can get more information if they want to. This allows them to go to outside sources, which will keep them reading your blog.

Throughout the entire blogging process I have found a few effective writing techniques. I start by skimming the articles, as I stated before, and decide if it is something I am interested in. If it keeps my attention and I think it is entertaining enough to be in the blog I start to plan out the blog post in my head. Not all bloggers will have a word limit but I tried to make sure my posts were 200-300 words. This is a reasonable length because it allows me to include a balanced amount of fact and opinion. When picking something to write about I also consider if the readers will be interested. I think the planning process is one of the most important steps because you have to ensure the quality of the post. When writing a blog the best way to keep readers coming back and keep it up to date is to post frequently. I try to post three times a week. It is best to post as frequently as possible but make sure they are spread out over the entire week. Leaving a day or two in between each post is good because you will get more readers throughout the whole week rather than over just a few days. At the beginning of each post make sure you briefly explain why you picked the topic you did so that readers realize what they can get out of reading it.

Developing and maintaining your voice is the part I had the most difficultly with. I found through my blogging that practice really does make perfect. I struggled in the beginning to find the right amount of opinion to include without being offensive. When you get discouraged don’t give up. Sometimes it helps if you don’t focus on your voice when you are writing. When the words come naturally the blog flows better.

There are a few odds and ends, mostly dos and don’ts, that I want to include to help you get on your way. First, make sure you enjoy blogging because if you don’t it can begin to feel like a chore. When you get bored, your writing gets boring and your readers stop reading. Do include facts, but don’t forget your opinion. Do let your personality shine and don’t act like someone you’re not. You also need to be patient because your blog will not be an instant hit. Everything takes time so don’t give up. Be open to constructive criticism from the readers; don’t act like you are perfect. I received a comment that was very negative and I deleted it on impulse, but later I realized it was probably more helpful than I thought. Not everyone will agree with your opinion and what hurts you only makes you stronger. In the end, write about things you are interested in, use a natural and appealing voice, and readers will come with time. Don’t worry about checking your blog multiple times a day, it will become a natural habit!