Blogging & Social Media Issues (c)

How to Make Your Blog Impressive?

Blog design is a multiple criteria decisions. Well-utilised graphic designs in visual interface add flavours to the attractiveness of a blog, making it pleasant to read (Mullet & Sano 1995). In return, readers' emotional pleasure positively influences reader response - for instance, to be more tolerant of usability problems (Preece 2006; Tractinsky 2006).

Image credit: hongkiat.com

Danny Iny, co-founder of Firepole Marketing, has his content ideas

100 nice and beautiful blog designs

To develop better blog platforms, blog designers can adopt the DEMATEL model - a hybrid of factor analysis comprising Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method (DEMATEL). This paradigm simplifies and visualises the inter-relationships between five core factors that influence blog designs: 

(1) Visual Clarity
(2) Interface and Usability

(3) Content and Searchability

(4) Programming

(5) Sociability

Checklist for your awesome blog content

Visual clarity:

• color arrangement                     
• font arrangement                       
• text-and-ground contrast           
• layout simplicity
• stylistic consistency
• readability
• no advertisement banner
  
  image credit: webdesigncompany.net

*Color arrangement, font arrangement, and text-and-ground contrast are prioritized considerations to enhance readability for an overall effect of visual clarity.

Interface & Usability

• aesthetic layout
• system stability
• multiple layout style choice 
• ease of management
• ease of registration
• storage capacity
• friendliness to beginners

Image credit: apro-outsourcing.com

*Multiple layout style choice and system stability should be the first considerations for overall improvement.

Content & Searchability

• content quality         
• content richness
• writing fluency
• customised website address
• ease of searching
  
  

* Content quality (i.e. specialised field or professional content) is the most influential criterion.                                                                       
Image credit: newsoffice.mit.edu

Programming

• open CSS
• open JavaScipt        

 * Open JavaScipt is the way to go for customising blog appearance using code.

Image credit: pectlegacy.com

Sociability

• popularity of the blog platform
• friends' hyperlinks   
        

 *Friend's hyperlink is the key factor that influences your blog platform's popularity.
(Hsu 2012, p. 190)

Image credit: webseoanalytics.com

 Still don't have a clue? Check this out:

Image credit: copyblogger.com

References

Hsu, C. C. 2012, 'Evaluation criteria for blog design and analysis of causal relationships using factor analysis and DEMATEL', Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 187-193.

Mullet, K., Sano, D. 1995, Designing visual interfaces, A Prentice-Hall, America.

Preece, Y., Rogers, H., & Sharp 2006, Interaction design: Beyond human–computer interaction, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Tractinsky et al. 2006, 'Evaluating the consistency of immediate aesthetic perceptions of web pages', International Journal of Human–Computer Studies, vol. 64, no. 11, pp. 1071–1083.

Blogging & Social Media Issues (a)

What Blogs Do to Our Communities

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A malleable and fluid vehicle blogs are, weblogs is a it is a space for bloggers to individualise their voice, and a reflection of facets of their idiosyncratic personality.

Flourishing in rich Internet scales of education, civilisation, and community purpose-driven, blogs rise as a powerful organisational platform for online expression (Carver 2003; Oravec 2002). Blog constructions have been netizens' source of motivation to engage in writing, researching, and analysing online materials. Social cognitions are shaped. Sociocultural values are incorporated to our community lives. In other words, blogging can be a new form of education. Our blended learning initiatives in this course, for example, can develop a weblog-methodology to cater individual mean for students to build and develop individual perspectives 'within an often-overwhelming mix of educational activities' (Oravec 2003). 

Jeff Bullas' 10 Secret Benefits of Blogging

Genres took form, through the passing of time, from poems and biographies to foodlogs, fashionista diaries, and travelougues. The evolving efforts of many volunteer grassroot writers, readers, and patrons are witnessed (Oravec 1996).

The benefits of blogging are nuanced by creative writing leeway afforded in a pool of stylistic approaches and a wide assortment of angles. Such benefits can be utilised in educational contexts to explore social constructivists’ notions, to challenge the orthodoxy, and to demonstrate the growth of social practices (Lave & Wenger 1990; McLellan 1995). 

Weblogs empowers individual voice in a personally-tailored mean. Blogging has steered netizens toward substantial communication modes transacting a wide array of perspectives on PESTLE issues (political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental), at the same time countering the rising commercial twist of the Internet.

Image credit: http://www.jeetbanerjee.com/

References

Carver, B. 2003, 'Is it time to get blogging?', Library Journal, vol. 128, no. 1, pp. 30-33.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. 1990, Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

McLellan, H. 1995, Situated learning perspectives, Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 

Oravec J. 1996, Virtual individuals, virutal groups: human dimensions of groupware and computer networking, Cambridge University Press, New York. 

Oravec J. 2002, 'Bookmarking the world: weblog applications in education, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, vol. 45, no. 7, pp, 2-7. 

Oravec J. 2003, 'Blending by Blogging: weblogs in blended learning initiatives', Journal of Educational Media, vol. 28, no. 2-3, pp. 225-233.

Blogging & Social Media Issues (b)

Microblogs & Weblogs - Friends or Foes?

Image credit: jimeae.wordpress.com

Microblogs are becoming an overwhelmingly fashionable form of social media. Similar to blogs, users post content and share information via networks followed; Different from blogs, microblogs accommodate faster updates by confining post size and content format (text-and-picture only) within an easy mobile updating support system. These design differentiations and ease of use creates new means for users to accumulate, 'like', and 'share' information at one finger tap on the buttons.

2014's Hottest Social Media Sites

2014 Social Media Trends

Network Structure Characterising

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Information dynamic in weblogs and microblogs is realised via social network interactions - which information is spread, influence is exerted, and social recognition is constructed. Microblogs' network structure impact the information through the friendship networks reciprocity of those 'following', being 'followed'. Blogs, less of a declared set of ‘following’ relationships, falls short of actual user  \interactions; yet, blogs are comprehensively more diverse in participation patterns (Lento 2006; Librn-Nowell 2005), network dynamics (Adamic & Glance 2005; Kumar 2004, 2006), and information diffusion (Gruhl 2004).

Posting Quantity & Speed

Weblogs are less consistent and a poor fit in the trend of user contribution distributions (i.e. number of posts per month). Microbloggers contribute more than webloggers with higher magnitudes of posting contribution and consumption. The ease of new content updates allows microbloggers generate succinct information, compared to long-winded, bombastic blogging contents.

Image credit: aaai.org

Navigation Patterns

Microblogs differ from blogs not only as a channel of self-expression and conversation, but also its capacity for reference and Web navigation - thanks to its  mentions (tagging another user via the @username convention) which links route to other users (Yang 2010, p. 352). Nevertheless, weblogs have more space for adding URL links which navigate to other posts. Implicatively, weblogs serve as an internal blog for content consumption and Microblogs an outward and mono-directional one (see Figure 3 & Table 2).

                                                                        Image credit: aaai.org

References

Adamic, L. A., & Glance, N. 2005, The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: divided they blog, Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on Link

discovery, Chicago, Illinois.

Gruhl, D., Guha, R., Liben-Nowell, D., & Tomkins, A. 2004, Information diffusion through blogspace, Proceedings of the 13th World Wide Web.

Kumar, R., Novak, J., Raghavan, P., & Tomkins, A. 2004, 'Structure and evolution of blogspace', Communications of the ACM, vol. 47, no. 12, pp. 35 - 39.

Kumar, R., Novak, J., & Tomkins, A. 2006, Structure and evolution of online social networks, SIGKDD.

Lento, T., Welser, H. T., Gu, L., & Smith, M. 2006, The Ties that Blog: Examining the Relationship Between Social Ties and Continued Participation in the Wallop

Weblogging System, Paper presented at the WWW Third Annual Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem.

Liben-Nowell, D., Novak, J., Kumar, R., Raghavan, P., & Tomkins, A. 2005, 'Geographic Routing in Social Networks', Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences, vol. 103, no. 33, pp. 11623-11628.

Yang, J., & Counts, S. 2010, Comparing Information Diffusion Structure in Weblogs and Microblogs, Proceedings of the 4th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, In ICWSM.

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