What Makes a Blog Great?

Smitten Kitchen is one of my favorite food blogs.  Described as "Fearless cooking from a tiny kitchen in New York City" this is one of the most popular food blogs in the Blogosphere, with over 100,000 followers on Bloglovin.  The author of Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perlmen, writes in a fun and inviting style. Her photos are gorgeous and she has new cookbook, which adds a high degree of credibility to the blog.

According to Burton and Greenstien, blog best practices include focusing on a specific topic, utilizing social media, and developing a system to produce new content (i.e. linking to other blogs) (2011)  I agree with much of what they outlines.  To build on the list provided by Burton and Greenstien I think the most important blog practices you should focus on include:

Well written content - I've stumbled across many poorly written blogs.  They either contain spelling and grammar mistakes or the author's just voice isn't there.  It isn't friendly or knowledgeable or authoritative. It just tends to ramble, never reaching a point. My favorite blogs have a fun and inviting voice that makes me feel like I'm reading something from an old friend. I feel included in the conversation.

Good photos - I am attracted to blogs by their photos. Food and garden photos lure me in, well written content and a strong voice keep me coming back. The power of the image has been noted in several studies.  According to Ionescu, image uploads on facebook result in 50% more engagement from users (2013). Photographs or other good quality images are essential for promoting a blog on social media.

Professional design - No offense to Blogger, since it is kindly hosting this blog, but it lacks the polish and shine of a WordPress site. There are so many inexpensive WordPress themes available, it isn't hard to put together a professional looking site in no time.

Consistent publishing schedule - Nothing is worse than falling for a blog, only to be left with weeks or months of silence. Was it something I did? Successful blogs publish content consistently. They may not publish big articles or recipes every post, but they post something at least a few times a week.

Adherence to the blog topic - It's okay to wander off topic occasionally. Like if you post about food, but once in a while throw up a photo of your dog dressed up for Halloween.  I'm okay with that. But as a rule, I think 90% of a blog should be dedicated to the topic or somehow support it's mission statement.

Credibility - This goes back to last week and our discussion about ethics.  Kovach and Rosenstiel point out the importance of credibility: “Transparency is the best measure of the confidence the organization itself puts in the information it provides”(185).  For me, I am not looking for the perfect blogger, but rather one that is honest and transparent. Even if it is about food.

References

Burton, B., & Greenstein, L. (2011, August 28). Food blog Code of Ethics 2.0 [Web log post].             Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://foodethics.wordpress.com/

Ionescu, N. (2013). Online political communication: the role of image upload on Facebook. 

  Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication, 53-58.

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: how to know what's true in the age of information            overload. New York: Bloomsbury.

Press Release and Facebook Post

 

For Immediate Release:

State College, PA

Joe Paterno, former head coach at Penn State, died this morning at Mount Nittany Medical Center, following a brief battle with lung cancer.  Paterno, 85, worked at Penn State for 61 years, 46 of them as the head football coach.  Known for his conservative coaching style, Paterno is credited with 409 victories on the field, including 37 bowl games and two national championships.  More than 250 college athletes who played under Paterno went on to careers in the NFL. 

Paterno’s accomplishments on the football field are overshadowed in the last days of his career by a child sex abuse scandal.  Paterno was charged with failing to execute his moral responsibility when he did not contact police regarding the allegations of rape by his defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.  Sandusky was charged with sexually assaulting 10 boys over a 15 year span.  Though Paterno was told of abuse happening within his locker room, he never pressed the issue with school authorities.  Following an investigation into the Sandusky assaults, Paterno was fired in November.  

Despite the child abuse scandal that marred his last season as head coach at Penn State, former players, colleagues, friends and family all spoke high praise of Paterno, who was known for his dedication to his players both on and off the field.  Former player Paul Posluszny, now of the Jacksonville Jaguars, said of Paterno “Besides the football, he’s preparing us to be good men in life.”   

A college football player himself, Paterno played quarterback and cornerback for Brown University, where he set a defensive record of 14 career interceptions. He began his career at Penn State in 1963 as an assistant to the head coach.  He took on the role of head coach in 1966.  Never one for the spotlight, Paterno lived in a modest ranch house within walking distance to the football field.  Despite the controversy surrounding his last year at Penn State, rival coach Bobby Bowden noted that “You can’t ignore the great years he had a Penn State and the great things he did for Penn State.”

Paterno is survived by his wife, Sue and their five children.  A statement released by his family summed up how Paterno approached life and coaching. “His ambitions were far reaching, by he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players, and his community.”

  

Joe Paterno, 85, dies in State College. (2012, January 22). Retrieved from ESPN : http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7489238/joe-paterno-ex-penn-state-nittany-lions-coach-dies-85-2-month-cancer-fight

FACEBOOK POST

How Should Penn State Coach Joe Paterno be Remembered? 

Which Social Media Tools Reach Audiences Effectively?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Never has that been more true than with social media.  Sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr are built around images rather than text.  This visual marketing revolution includes more than six billion photos published each month, worldwide (CITE).  Even social networking sites that were built around words, like Twitter, include image sharing.  Pretty pictures, funny memes, graphic mashups guarantee more user engagement on sites.  In 2013, more than half of user activity was image uploads (Ionescu, 2013).  It makes sense that the most effective social media tools are those that capitalize on images.  According to Coleman “….visuals have been linked to increased attention and involvement” (2006). 

To test this theory I selected three social media tools that incorporate some type of image.  First up is a mash-up. A mash-up is a website “that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool” (New Media Tools , 2014). More specifically I created a ZeeMap, featuring some local attractions from Maine (my favorite beach and my favorite surplus salvage store):    https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=1149003&add=1

This tool would be great for listing geographic resources, like support groups, historical societies or health centers.  The images are really just a place holder and hard to see in detail, but they give the individual pins a more finished look which I think would encourage more sharing of links among users.  

Next I tried Tumlbr. I admit, I like this tool much better. It is kind of like a dressed up, grown up version of Facebook. You can post images, audio, links and text and there are no ads to clutter the layout. It is popular with artists and those looking to express themselves in a creative format.  https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dandelionwine76  Tumblr is just ….pretty. However, for commercial purposes, I don’t think it would be the best format for getting a message out.  Users on Tumblr follow personal interests and I didn’t see a way that they would be exposed to other areas, like a “What’s Trending Now…” list that other social networking sites use. 

My freelance job requires that I have an active Twitter account, but I am rarely active on that particular social networking site. Instead, I use Hootsuite to post all my latest articles in one foul swoop to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.   For this experiment I thought I’d try posting a tweet with an image (something I didn’t know you could do until this week’s assignment).  As much as I don’t like Twitter personally, I do think it is effective for relying messages to a large and diverse audience. And as I already mentioned, messages that include an image are more likely to get clicked on.  https://twitter.com/Abt_Restaurants

Images can make people laugh and cry.  They can shock and motivate people to action. You don’t need to think too much when looking at an image.  It can encapsulate a message that would otherwise be ignored by the masses.  This visual form of communication will continue to grow and evolve with social media and I suspect be a major way businesses, organizations and individuals communicate in the future (Ionescu, 2013). 

Works Cited

Coleman, R. (2006). The effects of visuals on ethical reasoning: what's a photograph worth to journalists making moral decisions? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 835-850.   

Ionescu, N. (2013). Online political communication: the role of image upload on facebook . Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication , 53-58.

New Media Tools . (2014, October 8). Retrieved from Aids.Gov: http://www.aids.gov/using-new-media/tools/