LibGuides: Blogs, Journals and Other Writing: Blogging generally

Additional information about creating a blog

A blog is a general term used to cover a variety of writing which appears online, usually in an episodic way or as part of a series.

Blogs can be personal, academic, used to promote a business or product (s) or engage a user-group, so make sure you create you blog in the way that is required for your assignment. Always keep to the brief.

Structure: again, check your course instructions – you may be given prompt questions to help you record your experiences and research. A blog typically uses an engaging or intriguing prompt or question as a headline to draw a reader in. It states the most important idea or conundrum at the start and then explores it in more detail. A blog can be open-ended if leading to another post.

Before you start writing

Think about why you are creating a blog: Is it to develop your ideas; to develop your understanding; personal reflection, etc.

If your blog is for an assignment, check the guidelines. In particular: word limits; frequency; timing; style and tone.

Writing regularly on a theme provides opportunities for your mind to generate different perspectives. In the time between posting, your brain may still be working away at an issue, and you may then find ideas forming more fully the next time you sit down to write.

You may be required to write a reflective blog as part of a research project. This is to encourage you to give thought to one or more aspects of how you: conceptualise the task; plan your work; apply learning to new contexts; and evaluate what happened, drawing lessons from the experience so that you do things even better next time.

Plan your blog out first.

You will be assisted through the process of making choices to customise your blog. There are a number of common features you should think about when designing your own:

Title should be clearly visible in large font across the top of the page
Author this should be obvious, at the top of the page
Links be sure to add a description of your links to other websites so your readers will know what they are linking to
Widgets decide whether to include social media channels (e.g. Twitter feed) on your blog page
Post content posts can be text, images, movies, links or a mixture of these. The most popular blogs use a combination of text and multimedia content to keep readers interested.
Post title each blog post should have an informative, clearly visible title that informs the reader about the contents of the article

A blog can be a good place to be curious and speculate but don’t ask too many rhetorical questions.

Use your privacy settings

Depending on the tool you are using, decide how to publish each blog post - be it private, restricted access or public.

Private This means that the post (or the whole blog) can only be seen by you
Restricted access This means that you decide who will be able to read your post (or the whole blog). You may be able to password protect the blog.
Public This means that anyone will be able to read your post (or whole blog).

Unless you are required to share your blog with peers, it is usually important that materials that contribute to a graded assignment cannot be seen by others prior to it being assessed.

References

Adapted from: COTTRELL, Stella and Neil MORRIS. 2012. Study skills connected: Using technology to support your studies (Palgrave study skills). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan