Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Blog Best Practices

Choose a blog and analyze the functions and substance of the blog as a form of writing and information delivery. In your opinion, what are the “best practices” when creating a blog to ensure appropriate form, function, and substance? Provide a link when responding to classmates and post your opinion along with your rationale.

            The blog that I choose to analyze for this blog can be located at http://blog.hubspot.com/. This is a blog by Hubspot that is a Cambridge, MA based video production company.
            One of the blogs that caught my eye with this blog is that it deals with some of the skills needed for a high quality video production and the steps needed to be taken. I received my undergraduate degree in Video/TV Production from Johnson University and am currently working on my Graduate degree in Marketing. While working on my undergraduate degree I had the opportunity to do some freelance work with everything from radio spots to two different Christian based feature films. This blog was chosen in that it shows a lot of the skills I learned while working on my undergraduate but in a way that any person can understand without spending the time and money on a higher educated degree.
            The layout of this blog is pretty basic but the authors do give pretty of links with they give a stat or a link to a video or picture that they use. The delivery of the information is well done in that the information is easy to locate without having to search. If you are not able to find something that you are looking for than there is a search box that can be utilized. One aspect of this blog that I found to be a good decision is that they list the contact information and the locations of this business on the footer of each page. The reasoning that I find this important is in that it makes the company accountable for everything that is posted on their page. This simple action, of having a contact page, is one of the best practices to me for the reason stated above and also it gets the companies information out there without the person having to search for it,
            From a design standpoint the blog is pretty standard but this is also important in that the site is not too busy and the eyes focus on where the author means for them to be focused on. As stated above the substance of the entire blog is really well organized by topics and the information within each general topic is straight to the point without fluff.

            When it comes to what are the “best practices” in blogging I do not think that there are set guidelines and therefore this idea is subjective to the person. As long as the information is correct that the blogger is giving than all else should be good. The design of sites is also very subjective but as a standard I do not think there should be too much going on in the page or the viewer will not know where to focus on and will usually just leave. I think that the authors of blogs should also check the links on their blog post to always make sure that the link is not broken and still goes to where the author intends it to go. Also another important aspects that bloggers should also be aware of is who holds the rights to whatever form of media that they intend to use. For any publisher or blogger, getting the right permissions is also the best practice that should always be followed. 

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