Blog Improvement Plan (Part 5)
Here is the second half of the blog’s purpose.
The instructions for the final paper in the capstone course were:
Submit a two- to three-page paper providing a brief rationale of the following components used in the creation and development of your Blog:
Purpose (part 1)
Design
Content
Audience (part 1)
Audience (part 2)
Here are the comments from students in the class (COM 480):
“The second blog I viewed was Calvins. Calvin your blog is interesting also. I liked how you credited all of your sources. I also liked how you added graphs to support your ideas. I did feel that your blog did not have a personal, or fun, touch to it. I know this is suppose to be a professional blog, but I think that you can make it a bit more interesting. I think that you will lose people if they are just reading facts and not having a little entertainment to keep the readers interest. Remember this is just my opinion. It was still a good blog and very informative.”
Morgan Johnson
“Calvin,
I'm not a blog expert, but I think your blog should reflect a bit of your personality into it. Bring your material to life by adding color. I do like the graphs you used in your post about media technologies. I would also suggest maybe keeping your post short and concise to the subject matter. Even when I read blogs outside of this class, I want something to the point. Overall, I think you are off to a great start.”
Kritina Clairborne
“Calvin,
The looping of the pictures is an excellent touch to your site. Your text in your blogs seem to run together. Maybe switch the colors text per each blog. This will help with transition between each blog post. Given the grey/black color scheme. You may want to shorten up your reference block. As it takes up a good majority of your page. ”
Terrence Matthews
Instructor Comments on the blog improvement plan:
“Calvin,
Once again, you have done excellent work. Keep it up. I'll be hearing from you.
Mr. Sexton”
Purpose (part 2 of 2)
Rather than appeal to a wide audience, I will take Emmy Award-winning blogger Felicia Day’s advice and aim the blog’s content toward a niche audience and use the strength of the Web to tell my story (Garfield, 2010, pp. 261-263). Although each phase of production will have slightly different audience (e.g. the technically inclined will be more interested in the equipment and application during production, while educators might be more interested in how each subject’s interview supports the film's thesis), the overarching purpose of the blog is to attract supporters for the documentary.
After attracting supporters, the blog will call them to action (Bosko, 2003, p. 313). Short- term goals for action include reading about the film, reading about me, watching the clips on the blog and looking at the related slide shows. Short-term goals feed into the larger goals of increasing interest in the film, spreading word of mouth about the film and ultimately, financial support through sponsoring/attending a screening, participating in fundraising, purchasing a copy of the film, or offering to distribute the documentary. Faidman and Levelle point out, “People fund people, not ideas,” so the larger goal of the blog is to assure the niche that Calvin Thomas has the drive and integrity to bring the documentary to the finish line and any resources they commit will be well invested (Faidman & Levelle, 2008, p. 69).
