This document provides guidance on developing an effective blog or website. It discusses choosing a platform and template, focusing on user experience, using headlines and hyperlinks strategically, and addressing ethics. Developing an authentic voice and civic identity through blogging is emphasized. Key ideas are that blogs and websites are flexible forms to showcase one's work and discover ideas through writing. Through blogging, people can gain visibility and career opportunities by expressing themselves as digital authors.

1. CREATE to
LEARN
Renee
Hobbs@reneehobbs
Introduction to Digital Literacy
Chapter 7
Blogs and Websites
Pages 109 - 124

2. Who Blogs?
HOBBYISTS PART-TIMERSENTREPRENEURS

3. Developing a Personal and Professional
Voice
• “Voice” emerges in the course of the composing process, a
by‐product of the writer’s focus on content, purpose, diction,
style and audience
• The “voice” we use as a writer will depend on our purpose and
goals for expression and communication as well as the genre and
form of our work.
• Readers easily recognize writing with a strong voice and that
certain techniques are associated with voice, including
elaborated details, sensory language, striking words, and
repetition.
• In every case, the quest to express an authentic self through
writing is a challenge. Too often, it’s easier to simply repeat or
restate what others have said, doing what is expected, familiar, or
socially appropriate. This may not be truly authentic expression,
however.

4. • Hyperlinks are a strategic device used by
the author to connect one digital text to
another.
• There are two types of hyperlinks: External
links are links to content outside your own
blog or web site, while internal links are
links to content within your blog or web
site.
• Hyperlinks for many purposes:
• to connect texts to each other,
• to offer a form of citation,
• to provide additional information,
• to define unfamiliar words,
• to promote or market products or
services,
• to display the relationships between
ideas.
The Power of
Hyperlinks

5. Google’s search engine uses the quality of hyperlinks
to determine a web site’s relevance and quality.
Search engines use algorithms that consider the
popularity of the linking page, the relevance of the
content between the source page (your blog) and the
target page (the document you link to), and even the
anchor text you use to create the link. When you use
hyperlinks effectively in your blog or web site, your
work moves up in the page ranking process, making it
more findable online. Hyperlinks therefore are also a
key feature of the economic structure of the Internet.
Google take into consideration the number of web
sites that point to it. External links are like a “vote” for
the quality of that particular web site, increasing its
trust-worthiness.
Hyperlinks and
Google

6. Designing Your Blog or Web Site

7. Choose Your
Web Site
Platform
There are a variety of free web site
platforms. To decide which is best for you
and determine which one you’d like to
use, you must explore them. Each web
site builder has advantages and
limitations and your choice will depend
on whether you are looking for the
easiest to use, the most stylish and
professional, or the most customizable.
• Wordpress
• Weebly
• Wix

8. Choose Your
Template
• A template is the design frame or structure
where your digital content will be placed.
• Your decision about a design should consider
your purpose, the type of content you will
be sharing, and your target audience. If
you’re creating a blog, your purpose is likely
to be more on the side of personal
expression, while if you’re creating a web
site, your purpose may be to inform,
entertain or persuade specific groups of
people, your users or audience.
• Because more than half of Internet users
now access content from mobile devices or
tablets, check that the template you use is a
responsive design, which automatically
adjusts the layout in order for it to look good
on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile
screen, regardless of the model or size of the
device.

9. Choose Your
Template
Considering These Issues:
Content Width: Some web site design templates use the
full width of the screen while others use boxes to house
the content.
Header Design: Some templates enable you to show a
static image with no content, which is ideal when your
web site relies heavily on images that don’t require much
explanation. Other web site designs use a static image
with content that might include a headline and a
supporting paragraph that help your reader understand
your web site’s purpose.
Menu Bar: The navigation bar ıs the road map that helps
people find the content they’re looking for. You may
choose your navigation bar to be fixed and at the top of
the page if your content is long and requires scrolling.

10. Focus on User
Experience
User Experience Techniques in the
Design Process:
• Use contrast and size to signal importance. Important
things on your web site need higher levels of contrast
between light and dark elements.
• Use color to communicate feeling. Don’t design a web site
using your personal favorite color. Instead, consider the
psychological meanings of color, as red indicates
excitement, blue seems peaceful, and green signals
naturalness.
• Use images of people to appeal. More than any other kind
of image, people pay attention to images of people. Try to
get the eyes of the person in the image to be looking
where you want people to look on the web page.
• Use F‐ and Z‐patterns to support online reading. When
people read, their eyes move across the page in familiar
patterns.

11. F and Z
Pattern

12. Choosing Typefaces
and Fonts
• Designers use the terms typeface to describe the design
of the letters and the term font is used to refer to the
particular size and weight of the letters as you choose to
display them.
• Typography is an excellent way to depict a visual hierarchy
to help the reader recognize what’s most important.
• In general, designers suggest that you use no more than
two fonts on a page. Most recommend a serif font for
headlines and a sans serif font for the body text. The
strategic use of bold, italic, and color elements can also be
used to help the reader skim and scan more effectively.
• People read the information at the top of the page most
carefully. That’s why headlines, subheads, concision, and
careful organization are so important.

13. “About” Pages
• People use the About page of a web site to identify the
author and purpose of the page.
• You should be make strategic choices about how much
transparency to provide about your identity depending
on your purpose and the context of your work.
• A red flag of warning should be alerted in your mind
when you come across an About page that does not
provide the names of people who are responsible for
the web site.
• Because users make judgments about the veracity and
quality of a web site based on the construction of the
About page, being transparent about your identity is
generally wise.

14. Killer Headlines and
Powerful Subheads
• Users make a decision within 20 seconds after arriving at
your web site whether to continue to read or to escape
and find other content elsewhere.
• Killer headlines use outrageousness to inspire a reader’s
curiosity. Headlines like “Why I Regret Getting Straight A’s
in College” and “How Formal Education Killed the
Passionate Career” attract attention by going against the
grain of popular opinion that college is beneficial to
success in life.
• Subheads provide visual organization to help a reader
see the structure of your ideas. They’re not just labels,
however; when used well, subheads inspire curiosity,
communicate your personality, and evoke emotion.

15. Clickbait and Online
Economics
• Clickbait relies on emotional arousal, a term used by
psychologists to refer to content that engages our
deepest, most primal emotions.
• Clickbait grabs your attention. You click on it almost
automatically. Sensational content usually has one of
more of the sex, violence, children, animals and UFOs.
• Web sites create promotional articles for advertisers
which are then published across a variety of online
social media platforms.
• Online advertising today includes sponsored content
where advertising material resembles editorial content.
This content shows up on your social media feed,
leading to a careful integration of advertising with its
surrounding content.
• The goal is to make the advertising look like the other
content supplied by your friends, outrageous clickbait
content can seem out of place, calling attention to itself
as advertising, which then diminishes its effectiveness.

16. The Ethics of
Blogging
1. Voice your opinion.
2. Be critical of everything, even your self.
3. Use your power for good.
4. Tell the truth.
5. Your opinion is your opinion.
6. Be transparent about your allegiances.
7. Reveal your sources.
8. Give credit where credit is due.
9. Preserve intended meaning.
10. Admit and correct your mistakes
immediately.
Ethical Principles for
Digital Authors

17. Developing a Civic Identity
through Blogging
• The concept of citizenship has shifted as
social media enables a wider range of
participation in democratic process.
• Five Process of Civic Responsibility:
1. Access to media;
2. Awareness of authority, context, and
credibility
3. Assessment of how media portray events
and issues
4. Appreciation of the diversity of
information, dialogue, collaboration, and
voices that exist online
5. Action to become part of the dialogue

18. Activity:
Create Your
Blog or
Web Site
1. What does your blog or web site title communicate
to the user?
2. What three adjectives best express the tone or
feeling of your blog or web site?
3. Why did you select the template you chose?
4. Why did you select the images you chose?
5. How do you use headlines and subheads to structure
the content?

19. Key
Ideas
• There’s no better way to develop our voice as a digital author than
to maintain a blog or build a web site.
• Blogs can be used as a digital diary or a platform for social activism:
the focus is on what we know, think, and feel.
• When we blog, you make time to think about our thinking, and we
use writing to discover and reflect upon our ideas and emotions.
• When we build a web site, we think about our audience and their
needs, organizing content to make it easy for people to find and use
it.
• Because they are highly flexible forms that can incorporate all
other forms of digital media, blogs and web sites can serve as our
digital portfolio.
• All the work that we create as a digital author can be housed in one
place.

20. Speak
Up!
• Through blogging, people can gain visibility that leads to career
opportunities.
• Because some companies will give bloggers free stuff in exchange for positive
mentions, even young bloggers may be aware of how their blogging and
online communication can communicate a certain stance that will attract the
attention of marketers seeking brand partnerships.
• As a form of writing, blogging is a personal journey of discovering your ideas.
• Learning to express yourself on a blog or web site is a process that takes
stamina and courage.
• Bloggers have complete freedom as digital authors, +but “writing without a
safety net” may be stressful because without editors, “you are standing
alone, with your ideas out there, with no one else to fault for those ideas.”