Integrated Marketing Communications

Tutorial… blogging!

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what is a blog?

“...a blog can be a record of someone’s life or a reflection of what is happening in a certain area. They are often hybrids of a diary/guide and offer commentary and personal opinion.”

“[a] collection of posts…short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal…with the freshest information at the top.” Meg Hourihan, 2014

A blog is a truncation of the word ‘weblog’…

• This module requires a focus not just on the module content, but also on your professional development, see module learning outcome 4 and the Graduate Attributes, linked to the Universities requirements and QAA

• The blog content has direct links to what is taught in this module, and in the previous comms module, you have to take those concepts and consider them in a range of contexts.

• You are being assessed on your knowledge, reflection and critique of marketing communications used in practice, presented in a professional blog format.

• Blogs are “social” media vehicles used by the majority of organisations with an online presence and are something that many marketing executives are tasked with developing

Why do we have to write one?

Good blogs are...

up-to-date

interesting

knowledgeable

Informal…

engaging

…but professional

The inverted pyramid…

…is a concept used by journalists and blog writers…

The most fundamental facts appear at the beginning of the blog…

…this is the who, where, what, when and why – ‘keywords’

…then additional details and elaboration important to the story

…finally any background or supporting information

Michael Gass, 2013

Your blog should not…

be too casual, impersonal, irrelevant, informal way…

…be unnecessarily controversial or offensive

…be pointless, always have meaning!

…ramble or waffle, get to the point!

…attack anything or anyone

The most popular blogs in the word are…

1. Huffington Post… (110m visitors per month)

2. TMZ… (30m)

3. Business Insider… (25.5m)

4. Mashable… (24m)

5. Gizmodo… (23.5m)

…why?