5 Components of an Effective Blog

Choosing a Topic

Your task is to create a blog post that presents a topic or issue for a specific audience and for a specific purpose. The choice of topic or issue is yours.  Your blog should be designed with 5 components in mind:

Topic/Issue - Choose a topic that has some meaning for you; something that you have opinions about, and feel that other people will be interested in reading. Try to narrow your topic so that you avoid overly general discussions. For example, if you were to choose “road rage” as your topic, it may be too broad for you to create a meaningful post. If you were to narrow the topic to: “road rage in the GTA,” or even, “road rage in my neighborhood” then you will be able to present the issue, provide examples and suggest possible solutions in a more direct way. Your topic or issue may be related to society, pop-culture, politics, science, identity or spirituality. It may try to deal with “serious” issues, like gender equality or “gun-violence,” or it may deal with less “serious” issues, like “the way celebrities use twitter” or “new fashion trends for 2019.” Again, the topic or issue should be something you are motivated to write about.

Research – Your blog must present an element of research. This will help you to establish your credibility as a writer, and also puts your discussion into a larger context. Are you agreeing with arguments about your topic that already exist? Are you disagreeing with arguments that already exist? How will you place your argument into the larger context on the issue? Your research will also help you to define your topic, as well as to provide your reader with links to other information on your topic.

Story (narrative)- You are required to use some aspect of storytelling in your blog. Think of the articles we read this term that used “story” as examples that helped illustrate a point. Your story element may be seen as the frame for addressing your topic. For example, if you start your blog by describing an event that happened to you or somebody you know, you can refer back to the event throughout your discussion. For example, if you tell the story about the time you were involved in a road rage incident, it would create interest for your reader while establishing an emotional appeal. Once you go on with your research to provide a context for what road rage is, or offer statistics on the frequency or psychological motivations behind road rage (logical appeals), you could then relate your research findings back to your story. What ended up happening to you after the road rage incident? Was anyone hurt? Did the police get involved?

Thesis/Solution/Opinion- You need to write with a purpose. You need to decide what you want to do for your audience. Entertain? Persuade? Inform? Describe? Regardless or your purpose, you need to think of your main point in writing. What is your opinion on this topic/issue? What solution do you want to offer? For example, is student debt too high? If this is your topic, what is your opinion and what solutions do you suggest to solve the problem?   

Design- The choice of how you present your blog is up to you. Here is a guide to the minimum requirements:A proposal is a plan or suggestion that you put forward to be considered by others. Think of your blog proposal as a "brainstorm", or a planning guide for your blog. You can always change your topic, but by creating a proposal, you will demonstrate that you have considered your topic from different angles. Please follow the planning guide below to create your blog proposal.

1. Topic- State your topic.

2. Purpose - State your purpose for writing. What is your opinion on the topic? Why are you writing? State your possible solutions to the issues that you will raise.

3. Audience - Who is your target audience? Who are you writing for? Find and post a link to at least one cites that you feel your blog could be published on.

4. Research - What research questions will you ask in order to look for answers. (Possible questions: What facts do I need to support my overall discussion? Do I need to define any terms/ideas? Is there a counter argument to my opinion that I need to summarize?