What skills have you gained regarding writing to an audience?
When writing articles for a weblog I quickly came to realise
a few things. The first was that readability played a hug roll, having large
blocks of text was an instant turn off and therefore they naturally needed to
be broken up so that the audience would remain interested.
Regarding my target audience, I tried to keep my range as
broad as possible so I kept the format of my writing and how it was broken up
in a professional looking sense but also casual looking enough so that it would
not immediately turn off readers.
In my writing recently I had begun to write things as
statements or factual documents as I have been writing nothing but assignments
but when writing for the weblog I tried to keep my audience in mind the whole
time. I wrote as if trying to provoke discussion, I did this by using open
ended statements that also hinted at a direct answer, leaving room for
community input into the conversation.
What skills did you gain regarding design?
My goal for design was to keep things simple, but also active
looking by adding colours, pictures etc, so that it would remain professional
but not boring looking.
I tried to break up the text with paragraph spacing,
relevant pictures and titles making the article much easier to read and
understand as well as enjoyable.
For my general blog design, I chose a simple design that
placed the sidebar on the right with a short snippet of text and leading
picture for each article in the centre. By setting things out this way I gave
my audience more options to chose from straight away, this was an important
skill to learn because I was able to understand how an audience will likely
respond to my content based on the initial visual impression as well as the
rest of the visual content on the blog.
What is your view on blogging?
For a period of about eight months I used to run a blog
myself that specialised in all things anime related, reviews, discussions and
industry movements where all apart of my blog and from that I learned the power
of blogging.
In short my view is a positive one, it allowed me to
interact and engage in discussion in a semi-professional environment and
improved my writing skills and knowledge of the internets functions
considerably.
Blogging itself can be a powerful tool, however it does take
a considerable amount of effort to run a successful blog and therefore shows
that it is not all that different from a regular news or social media website
with the except that you retain all the control.
Blogging is widespread and seems to blur lines with professional
news mediums in many ways as of late, which in turn brings about more and also
less opportunity in the industry. The reason I say this is that with so many
options of news and entertainment becoming readily available with blogs it
draws attention away from less specifically targeted professional outlets in
and therefore less jobs are required. At the same time, blogs and the like have
in many case lead to the creation of professional businesses so it’s a two
sided coin.
Overall I have gained many skills in this assignment,
through understand my audience, to the format of my writing to the appearance
and design of my blog I believe I am a much more knowledgeable person having
completed this assignment.
