Overview
I decided to analyze A Broken backpack by Melissa Giroux. The topic of the blog is traveling and tips on how to backpack around the world. The purpose of the blog is giving travelers advice on where to backpack in various regions of the world. Its purpose is also giving travelers advice on how to backpack efficiently throughout various regions of the world and reviewing very exciting places in the world as well.
Analysis
The layout of the website is very nice. The blogger uses neutral and bland colors like a white background and black font for the words. The header is fairly simple. It contains a picture of Melissa smiling and gives information about her. The blogger’s title is also unique for many reasons. It is located in the upper center of the page which has a unique font that stands out from other parts of the website. There is a cursive red B that is the middle of backpack and broken which is one of the reasons why the title stands out very clearly. The sidebar was hard to find but found it on top of the page. It had a black background with a white font color. The sidebar was mostly for more information readers can go to in order to ask serious and more in depth questions. It also included social media accounts she has like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The sidebar also had an about me tab and stated policies readers have to adhere to. The information about the author was easy to find.
There were not a lot of widgets on the website. The only widgets throughout the website was Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook which was also easy to find as I mentioned. The footer was the same as the sidebar, by having the same links on the sidebar. First thing I saw was an about me tab which made it easy to learn about her experiences and about why she decided to be a blogger. Melissa Giroux was a social worker from Canada and then started backpacking 2014. She backpacked through the Canadian Rockies until she made it around to Australia to backpack. After her Australian adventure, she started to backpack Southeast Asia where she fell in love with the region and now lives in Mali for a little more than a year.
Content
The most popular posts are about tips and how to backpack in certain regions of the world. The blogs are very well written and prepared for many reasons. Melissa gives an introduction to the readers and then has a table of contents if some readers want to skip certain parts of the blog. I think that is the best feature in the website because it allows the readers to find information in the blog posts at their own pace. The third part of the blog is a video explaining the fun attractions to visit. All of the pictures and videos are created by her and original. Melissa allows readers to book certain activities she recommends to her readers who want to travel to a certain region of the world.
One thing Melissa has to improve on is audience interaction. The blog posts do not allow the audience to interact with the post through sharing online through facebook or other social media accounts. The only way the audience can interact with her is through a “contact me” tab or submitting a comment relating to a blog post. There are no social media sharing buttons for each post and it is hard to find the subscription button on the website. Melissa needs to create a subscription button and commenting section for her readers.
Conclusion
Melissa has done a lot of great things that can be seen throughout the blog, but she also has things to improve on. This will allow her to gain more social media attention and readers. Her writing is very informative and interesting, preventing myself and others from getting bored with her posts. She also offers advice that is completely different compared to other bloggers. Melissa gives advice about how to travel on a budget where to travel and other ways to travel throughout the world. One example of this is a tab where recommends places to volunteer for accommodations. Melissa has to improve on audience interaction. She posts a lot of information about herself and blogs but very little about how to contact her besides an email. Melissa needs to create a comment section for each blog post in order for readers to communicate with her and others. She should also allow her readers to share blog posts with social media outlets to gain more readers from these outlets. Having shared posts on social media outlets is practically free marketing and probably give more readers.
COM 125: Social Media 