Hi my name is Jayne Corso and I am the Community Manager for AEA. There are many reasons to start blogging: to share your work and strategies for evaluations; to become an evaluation through leader; to become a stronger writer and explain your thoughts—the reasons can be endless. I have compiled a few tips to help you create an effective blog that resonates with your followers.
Hot Tip: Content
First, identify themes, concepts, or trends that relate to your audience or other evaluators. What topics will you highlight in your blog and how will your blog stand out? For example, will your blog focus entirely on data visualization, or trends in evaluation? Once this is decided you can start working on the details.
Next, decide how often you are going to blog. Is your blog going to be a daily blog, weekly blog, or monthly blog? When making this decision, you must look at your content resources and your available time. What can you commit to, and how and from what sources are you going to gather your content?
Hot Tip: Writing
When writing a blog, you want to be aware of tone, length, and formatting. Write in a conversational tone, using personal pronouns whenever possible. You also don’t want your blog to be too long. Typically a blog post is 1,000 words or less. In addition, you want to break up long paragraphs or text. Try bullet points, numbered lists, or visuals to make your post more interesting.
Hot Tip: Call to Action
An important aspect of blogging is starting a conversation and obtaining your follower’s feedback. Invite your follower’s to provide their opinions or questions in the comments. This allows your post to have a longer shelf life and helps you engage with other evaluators.
I look forward to reading your blogs on evaluation! Please share your tips or questions in the comments.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.