Practices for Creating the Best Blog You Can

            The blog I chose to research and study was The Nature Conservancy blog, and the link to this blog is http://blog.nature.org/

            This blog jumped out at me as I was browsing, and I like it for a multitude of reasons.  The main reason is because I try to do everything I can to be environmentally friendly.  I am an avid nature lover to begin with, and I also enjoy photography which happens to be one focus of this blog site.  This collection of community writings covers quite a broad spectrum of topics, but all of them relate to science and nature.  Information found through this blog has varying levels of importance, but all of the information is posted for the good of the planet and probably valid. 

            First and foremost, any blog that is presenting information, should do so honestly.  Any reader will want to read an honest thought, rather than a copied idea.  I think information delivery through a blog is more effective when there is a photo or a visual element to relate the words to.  I know it helps my retention when I analyze more than one type of data.  I think it can make the blog better when it has catchy headlines, and formatted similarly to the journalistic style of writing.  The reasoning for this is partially because humans are familiar with that style, and journalism tends to present the most pertinent information first.  Readers need to be drawn into the blog just like they need to be intrigued by a story or article.  It is a bit like fishing, because the author of the blog needs to put out bait words hoping the reader’s mind will devour and keep the reader attentive.

            When the writer emphasizes the substance, and presents it to the appropriate audience the story is more likely to be successful.  The writing should also correlate the work with different data platforms such as graphics, photos, illustrations, or graphs.  The visual element needs to be just as powerful as the message in the story though.  The reader may first become interested with the graphics then want to read the blog.  Either way the organization should be neat, uniform, and not too colorful or it can be distracting.  Blogs as a whole are judged mostly by opinion, so many perspectives exist about how a blog should be.