Blogs design and strategies

Semester C has blown by so quickly, WOW. Over the past 9 weeks I have been focusing on writing and organizing my blog posts on a range of topics related to media, audience and place. This course was simple but challenging in a way that the blog topics were quite prescriptive if compared with other courses, it allowed more freedom. In the beginning of semester, I thought this would constrict me in my creativity. However, as the time passed by, I was encouraged to interview an older generation person which ended up being my dad, it also motivated me to observe people of kind for my ethnography research. I found that I had a strong, individual say when it came to posting weekly topics. After getting back the first part of this assessment [Writing in public 1], I reflected on it and I went for it, I tried to create content for my audiences. I also evaluated the strategies of building readership.

This semester I have experimented a lot in terms of the design of my blog and the aesthetics of my writing. I haven’t used Adobe Kuler but it was used as a reference in my colour combination. The colour palette that I choose is pink and white, it gives a vibrant and neat look to my blog site. The pink colour highlights the Category and white colour is the background, for a clear read. In the beginning of semester, the category sections were messed up. Now I have arranged each course into a section for example, Sem C includes BCM240, BCM310, and BCM332. So it’s easy on the eye and the audiences can easily search what they are looking for.

For my blog site I choose headings as a Cherry Swash font in regular and normal size, I didn’t change it into bold because the font itself makes it look special, and for the base font I choose Quattrocento Sans in normal size. I wasn’t able to change font for every blog, as its not allowed. Once you choose the font style, it’s the same throughout the whole blog. Same goes with the letter space, line spaces and line length. However, one thing which was allowed was having enough negative space, it allows some space around the text for the comfort to read. So to separate articles, enough space was used.

If you ask me, I would say a long scrolling is very time consuming as the new blog is stacked on the previous one. I have used a pointer so that people can quickly divert to a particular part when the pointer is clicked. This pointer set allows easy and convenient search to go to any part. To shorten the look of each page, I have applied the “Continue reading tag”.

Throughout my blog posts I was using a professional voice with a conversational tone, it was effective as it gave a unique style to it whilst also allowing the readers to feel as if they are actually talking to the person who is telling a story, rather than feeling like they are reading an essay that was posted with the thought to be marked. Laura Spencer states that having a conversational tone is the pivotal point to every blog because it makes the blog more relatable, credible and easier to understand (2015). In this blog “Dad’s Memories of TV,” I used a conversational tone so it allows me to let the audience feel like my story is relatable.

However, whilst writing in public, I did struggle with having more audiences to comment, like and read my posts. To overcome this challenge, I embedded my Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn with my WordPress account.

Once I started posting on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn the amount of visitors that came to my page began to increase, not only Hong Kong people visited my site but people around the world, like USA, Australia, and Ireland were visiting my page. I also started to add tags related to my topic to attract audiences outside of the BCM240 hashtag.

Over the 9-week experience of blogging I slowly began to understand the importance of acknowledging the ethical standards of whatever I post within all of my blogs. In the beginning of this semester I would include any photo that I searched from the internet and paste it on my blog post. I didn’t know or didn’t realize that I needed to be granted permission to use images. I have slowly altered in the way I post content into my blog, Pexels site allows me to use images that I want. It is my go to place to find good creative common licensed photos.

I hope with the feedback that I am going to receive from tutors and students I can grow from here and go up to somewhere better. In the future, I am thinking to upgrade the WordPress for more functions and improve in the design of my blog. As well also keep in mind about the ethical standards of using a specific image. After graduating I will consider writing blogs of my interest such as travel, lifestyle, makeup and skincare.