Friday, October 24, 2014

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.

2 comments:

  1. I liked your blog post. I had never heard of Smitten Kitchen, so I went and visited the blog, and then, somehow, 20 minutes passed and I was feeling really hungry and no closer to finishing this assignment, haha. I really like the name of the blog--it's one of those things where it reminds me of something but I can't pinpoint what it is.

    Anyway, as I was reading your blog post, your format made me realize that I wasn't using one of the "better practices" when I was writing my own blog post... You have everything written out in separated list type things with boldfaced titles. I had written my post out in paragraph form (next time I'll play around with my format). ProBlogger says that it's important to make your blog scannable: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/19/writing-blog-content-make-it-scannable/ So that was a cool thing of you to do.

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  2. As Mary stated, upon completion of this assignment, I realized that I too wasn't using the best practices for blogs. I like the criteria you used however. It's very similar to the 16 rules that I came across in my research of what exactly a blog was supposed to be.

    Being that it's a food blog, it falls in line with the discussion topic this week, and thusly the Food Blog Code of Ethics. Clever. All of the points you used to describe the blog are included in the 16. Minus the "credibility." I think that goes a bit deeper and the 16 is surface criteria.

    Here's the link so you can have a look for yourself.

    http://www.successfulblogging.com/16-rules-of-blog-writing-which-ones-are-you-breaking/

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