Let’s be real for a second — starting and running a blog is not exactly an easy feat. When I first started this journey, I don’t think I realised how time-consuming it would be to build and format everything. Despite doing in-depth research into hosting platforms, I can’t say I’m 100% satisfied with the choice I made. Wix just isn’t as user-friendly as all it’s glowing reviews claimed but anyway, there is no use whining about any more.
Right now, I’d like to focus more on making Rattled reader-friendly. After doing research on whether blogging is even still relevant, and then how to cater your blog to your audience I’ve discovered some interesting information.
For starters, while audiences are still accessing blogging content in 2019, it is how they are accessing this information which has changed. In order to make it more accessible, it is important for blogs to be created using platforms and formats which support mobile optimisation. Thankfully Wix is one such platform, so Rattled has been properly formatted to be optimized for viewing on a mobile screen.
The next aspect of creating a blog with the audience in mind is the written content itself. According to much of my research, people aren’t really ‘reading’ an entire blog but rather scanning through to access the information they are interested in. Because of this, it was important for me to make sure my audience can clearly navigate the blog in a way that meant they could locate specific styles of my work. I created categories to separately group feature articles, creative writing, reviews, academic essays and of course, blogs.
Most of the information I read suggested not being too heavy on word counts, especially since audiences prefer to skim read rather than read the entire post as a whole. I kept this in mind and tried to keep each post at a length that wouldn't take an audience more than 10 minutes to read.
In order to fully engage with audiences, I knew from previous classes for Web Media and Media Theory I would need to include multimedia aspects to my pieces. Unfortunately, I don’t currently have access to any video editing software but aim to do so in the future. For most of the images in my stories, I either took them myself or was provided with the image by my subject.
I found taking my own pictures was an interesting endeavour because I had to improvise and get creative with how I would actually manage this. My pictures were taken using the self-timer function on my phone’s camera, which had been attached to a mini tripod I’d been given but never really had any use for. As the tripod was mini I then had to find a way to take the pictures at the correct height so I ended up using my rubbish bin, which was stacked on top of a small side table which was stacked on top of the stool from my breakfast bench! While a little wobbly, it definitely got the job done so that’s what I think really matters.
When producing anything creative, it’s important to acknowledge who the target audience is in order to help develop the piece. For this blog, it was my intention to make it just as much a portfolio to showcase my written work for possible employers as it is a creative outlet for my thoughts and opinions. I’ll be working towards making this blog as reader-friendly as it can be for my audience, so if you’d like to get into contact with me you can do so here.
Thank you for reading, and welcome to Rattled. I hope you decide to stick around.
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