The World of Blogs

The three blogs I visited fall under the following genres: education, lifestyle, and interior decorating. All three of these genres are of interest to me, and I had a great time browsing through them.

I have been keeping up with Lauren Conrad's blog for quite some time now, and it's one of my favorites! She posts a perfect mixture of fashion, motivation, lifestyle, and fitness. Her intended/implied audience is women, most likely between the ages of 17 & 30, seeing as her content deals with a somewhat modern day lifestyle. The overall tone of all her posts is very motivating, which implies that the readers are desiring some sort of change in their lives. Her posts are written in assumption that the audience needs help with some aspect of their lives, whether it be fashion, cooking, DIY, decorating, ect. There are many writers who contribute to this blog who are all a part of the "Lauren Conrad Team", and a technique they use in many of their posts is a short personal narrative. For example, if they are explaining how to make DIY hand soap, they will start out by saying how fantastically it worked for them in their personal lives, and how everyone else should try it too. As with any other form of social media where people have control over how their lives and words are perceived, these writers do seem like they want to be thought of as hardworking, creative, beautiful, and even slightly "perfect". Everyone naturally writes about their own best attributes, and while there is nothing particularly wrong with that, there are also a few issues. When women who truly want to improve on the subjects written in Lauren Conrad's blog read these personal narratives of "perfect" women, it ironically ends up bringing them down rather than motivating them as it is supposed to. As long as the reader understands this to be the case, and reads through the lens that no one is truly perfect, then there is no issue with writing this tone.

While browsing education blogs, I came across this one called Edspresso. Naturally, I thought the  name was cute, but as I kept reading the content began to peak my interest as well. I found it was neat to read about breaking news going on in the education world, because I think it is important to be well informed, especially within your field of work. Seeing as this blog is somewhat of a portal to many other smaller, more local blogs, I think the intended audience is teachers everywhere. On their home page is a drop down menu with multiple different references to more specific blogs, which I think is a great tool to reach so many teachers. This blog is formatted like a news source, which is nice and pretty easy to navigate. I think the writers of this blog simply want their readers to view them as informed, and a reliable source.

Lastly, I found a blog centered around interior decorating, called Coco + Kelley. I am so passionate about decorating, and creating the perfect little space that this blog was one of my favorites I found so far. It contains cute DIY home projects, like this desk organizer  as well as "room of the week" inspiration pictures. The only thing that bothered me about this blog was the format; I think it could have been more organized and easier to navigate.  I think the writers of this blog are simply speaking to anyone with even a spark of a passion for decorating, and they want others to see them as creative, smart, and good at what they do. These days, there are so many different options when it comes to home decor (as seen here below), that anyone can take a gander at it and personalize it in a way that fits their lifestyle.      

Now that I have sufficiently gone over my word limit for this post, I will sum it up as briefly as possible: 

Blogs as a form of writing are unique in comparison to other genres because they are more casual, personalized, and unique. They can cover such a wide range of topics, yet still be classified as a "blog". Blogging gives everyone equal opportunity to show the world their thoughts. Through my own personal blog, I desire to write words that are motivational but not demeaning, thoughtful but succinct, and truthful without any doubt in my own confidence.