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.