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!