Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Reflections On Creating An Enthusiast Blog Pt. 2

Now that I had decided on the topic of my blog, it was time to begin customizing it. This began by creating a blog title, description, and authoring an "About Me" paragraph that could not exceed 500 words. I decided upon the title 'Up In Smoke" because I thought it was not boring, and may draw in a reader. For my blog description, I decided to keep it simple. Even though our this description could be up to 1200 words, I feel that the four words I chose to use ("Its My Time To Quit) perfectly describe what my blog is all about. Also, my "About Me" section provides more information to the reader about my blog. It tells why I decided to quit, and what the intentions of my blog are. I also tried to convey my personality to the reader through my this section.

As I prepared to author my first post, I considered who my target audience would be with this blog, and how I should tailor my blog accordingly. I wanted to make my blog interesting to all people; smokers, non-smokers, and in particular people who have or are trying to quit smoking. Based upon this broad target audience, I decided that the content of my blog would be a combination of information/material. I would document my own personal struggle with quitting, detailing the methods I was trying, how they were working, etc. Hopefully this documentation of my struggle would be interesting to people, but it would also provide structure and continuity to my blog. My posts and their content were to be based on my day-to-day experience in quitting.

I also decided that with my blog I could create sort of a resource center or reference for other people trying to quit. I felt that if my blog simply recounted my own daily efforts to quit, it may be kind of boring and wouldn't be very useful. I decided that in addition to documentation of my process of quitting, I would post detailed information about the options that exist for people trying to quit smoking. This way, not only would my blog detail my effort, it could potentially be useful for an audience of people who share my struggle and goal to ditch nicotine.

I feel my blog reflects this "two-pronged" function. It contains both details of my efforts to quit, and I also feel it is extremely factual and informational concerning the function, effectivness, and worth of quit-smoking options that exist. If my blog were to exceed 4 posts, it would continue to be presented in this manner: a combination of a documentation of my efforts, along with researched, scientifically-based information. Furthermore, in authoring my blog I aimed for a writing style that is clever, funny, interesting, and not too dry. I also included pictures that I found to be funny and sensical in relation to the content.

After creating a "rough draft," of our blogs, which featured our title, description, and About Me, it was time to enter the revision, fine-tuning, and completion phase of creating an Enthusiast Blog.

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