[MUSIC] Hello everyone, in this video we will be familiarized with some useful guidelines and tips in order to write a blog post, another form of writing that scholars prefer while writing for popular media. We will examine aspects of audience style and strategies to publish a blog post in this video. It is useful to understand what form of writing a blog post entails. A quick definition of a blog post tells us that it is a single piece of content published on a blog, which is an online platform for publishing written content. There are many kinds of blogs focusing on diverse genres of writing, such as fiction blogs, poor three blogs, blogs on travel writing, blogs on recipes, support group blogs for a specific medical condition, personal blogs and so on. However for our purpose, if we are planning to write about our research, we will be required to publish in what is called an explainer blog. That is a blog where posts provide an objective and rigorous explanation of a specific topic in question. Before you embark on thinking of writing a blog post, it would be crucial to know the lay of the land and explore the kinds of blogs that are published in your discipline. We see here for instance, some examples of well known blogs on international relations. International affairs, pecunia et belem, war on the rocks are just few samples of blogs which focus specifically on international relations related issues. It would be important to do a thorough search on the Internet to get a sense of the kinds of blogs that are published in your specific discipline. As we think of writing a discipline in specific blog post, quick caution about the audience for this form of writing. We have already learned that the audience for writing in popular media is much more diverse and vaster than an academic audience. However, while thinking of writing a blog post for a discipline specific blog, we have to tweak this understanding a little and remember that since the blog is meant for a specific discipline. We are again looking at a slightly more specialist audience. The IR blog for instance, might attract readers who are scholars in the discipline, diplomats, foreign policy analysts, bureaucrats, strategists, officials and international bodies like the UN and NATO and so on. Writing an explainer blog post for a specific discipline also shares an important characteristic with academic writing and writing an editorial. That it has to be evidence based, hence providing facts, data and references is of paramount importance even in this form of writing. As we begin to think of the structure of a blog post, the crucial aspect to remember about a blog post is its length. Blog post like editorials are also brief, ranging from 500-2500 words. This is a vast range and discipline specific explainer blog posts might ideally be between 1000 and 1500 words given that they need to provide evidence to back up their arguments. However, it is always good to check the submission guidelines of a blog if you want to contribute a post to an established blog. Similar to an editorial, a blog post also benefits from a clear topic and also a well thought out headline which will attract readers to your post. Posts should not cover too many topics that focus on a single well articulated topic which can be followed through in your post. Organizing your post is of paramount importance in order to make it reader friendly. A lot of literature on writing, blog posts strongly recommends giving appropriate headings and subheadings if possible in your post, so that it is neatly divided into sections. Another useful way to organize one's writing is by ensuring that you write shorter sentences and have more paragraphs in your post. Remember just like in an editorial you're expected to keep your language relatively jargon free. Although given that you're addressing discipline specific audience in a blog post, you should make sure that you do go through some of the older posts to understand the acceptable level of specialist language in that particular blog. An important difference between writing and editorial and a blog post is the fact that you can provide data in a blog post in the form of visual material as well, like images, figures, crafts, and so on. This will make your evidence more effective in terms of communication. Also, please remember to insert references in your blog post via hyperlinks so that the readers get an easy access to the reference material. You have used All these strategies are important because they increase the readability of your post, does also increasing the chances of it getting more views or internet traffic. A lot of scholars do not only submit their blog posts to an established block to be published, but also run their own blogs and regularly post on their blogs. While the technicalities of creating your own blog are complex and at times expensive. An easier route that many choose is to publish a blog on a large public platform like Wordpress, medium tumbler blogger and many more which are free. You can search online for several such public platforms where you can set up your blogs. In this video we have seen some basic guidelines of writing a blog post. We have seen that a blog post shares some characteristics with an editorial essay and with the genre of academic writing but also has crucial differences with both these styles of writing. Thank you. Yeah.
