B6

I came into this course with very little knowledge on what it meant to have a successful blog. I always thought a blog was something anyone could do if they had a computer and thoughts racing through their minds. I always thought blogging was not professional and I never knew how important it would be in the professional world. When I started blogging, I wanted to find out how to better reach my target audience. My blog is about motocross and my life in it, which is something that I am very passionate about. I wanted to be able to translate my experiences in a way that would grab my audience’s attention and make them have the urge to continue reading. I was not sure how to structure my content in a way that would maintain interest throughout my audience. What I found out during this process of blogging is how professional blogs can be. My initial blog set-up was excellent, and I received a very god grade on it. Although this is true, I did not succeed what I had intended on my first blog post. It did not meet the word count; I did not have any visuals and my content was very scattered an unfinished. Learning from this I had to re-establish what my blog was truly going to be about so that I could get a better grasp of my target audience. There are no blogs that I know of that talk about the things that I did within my page. This was difficult because I had no real reference on how or who I should be writing too. An item that helped me figure this out was the audience persona assignment that we were asked to complete. It was in depth breakdown of everything I was looking for to understand who I was writing this blog for. One I accomplished this and had a firm understanding of who I was writing for is when my content started to gain ground in my opinion. I was focusing on finer details and how I wanted to portray my life through racing. I would say this blog was personal because I talked about the biggest adversities that I have had to overcome over my years in the racing industry. Adversity such as almost losing my life at a young age and being told that I would never ride a motorcycle ever again. I learned from this experience that a blog can be very personal and well done if the content is structured correctly. A blog is not just a random train of thoughts that someone has on any given day, but it is a more personal way to connect and learn through other trials and tribulations or the beautiful experiences people have in life. I also learned that I was able to write differently through my blog. Once I found out who I was writing it for it was almost like I was talking directly to that individual. As I continue through the blogging processes, I hope to learn much more than I already do. I hope I can get a better understanding of audience personas in the future so that my blog is strong from the start. I would also like to explore different types of blogging such as information blogging, travelling or perhaps the greatest places to eat in Washington. That is what blogging has taught me through this course, there is so many things to write about that people actually want to read and know. This is important moving forward and I hope that I am able to explore new categories and reach a wide range of different people.