Writing an Effective Blog

A hobby of mine is writing and recording music I write. My stage name is Jude Davis and is the name I post songs under. I have a blog that I started for the sole purpose of getting new people to listen to my music, but it hasn't been very effective. A recent blog of mine for this class about recruiting for the basketball team at Utah State elicited a response from a stranger who is not in this class. It made me think about what makes an effective blog.

The posts I've written on my Jude Davis blog have been very short updates about songs I've been recording or writing. I realized that posts like these will not attract people to my blog. Writing posts about subjects that people can relate to will attract readers, as shown by my post about basketball recruiting at Utah State.

In the future my Jude Davis blogs will be about specific subjects that people will find interesting, such as reviews of albums, concerts, etc. The music I record is just a hobby and I don't expect to do anything with it beyond that, but it would be interesting to hear what people who don't know me think of it, and a way I can find that out is by writing a blog that people will be attracted to.

Source: http://judedavis.blogspot.com/

LinkedIn's Appeal to Business People

I recently completed a presentation on the networking site LinkedIn. I didn't know very much about LinkedIn before preparing the presentation so everything in my research was pretty new to me. I found LinkedIn to be a very interesting concept and ended up joining as a result.

LinkedIn is a social networking site that caters to business people specifically, unlike the popular social networking sites Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace, which cater to everybody, specifically young people. LinkedIn provides a way for people in business to interact with each other and it has a wide variety of applications, groups, etc. that are specifically directed toward different aspects of business.

I'm glad I found out about LinkedIn because it has and will help me to get in touch with people who can help me in my professional career. I have already made contact with several people in my future line of work and have received advice and help on how to proceed in my career after I graduate in December.

Sources: http://www.linkedin.com, http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/-/539444/681968/-/s0yn7m/-/

Being Open and Clear in Communication

I follow college football and basketball recruiting pretty closely. I particularly pay close attention to recruiting by Utah State's basketball and football programs. It's interesting to me because college sports are very similar to businesses, and coaches are like salespeople when it comes to recruiting. Coaches have to sell the program, themselves, the fans, the university, etc. As fans we see the actual games, which are without a doubt the most enticing part of college sports, but no team has a a chance of sustainable success if a coach is not a good recruiter, or salesperson. Vaughn Autry is currently a high school player who had given a verbal commitment in August to play on Utah State's basketball team. Recently, it was announced that Autry's scholarship offer was not valid and shortly thereafter it was revealed that he would be playing on scholarship for Montana.

I recently stumbled upon an article discussing the recruiting process Vaughn Autry went through in relation to Utah State. The article mentions Autry made a verbal commitment to Utah State after an assistant coach told him he would be a starter on the team and told him he could have a scholarship. Autry started filling out paperwork to be able to visit Utah State on a recruiting visit, but fell out of contact with the coaches because, according to him, they did not return his phone calls or emails. Autry was soon informed by an assistant coach that an official scholarship offer was never made and that Utah State had decided to go in a different direction. By this point, a lot of the schools who were previously interested in him had lost interest and Autry had to start looking to for another school who would offer him a scholarship. He eventually settled on Montana. Stew Morrill eventually called Autry's father, Steve. The following is an excerpt from the article, in Steve's words:

"He said, I'm sorry, we're going in another direction, going after a junior college kid," Steve said. "I told them to stop offering so many guys."

Steve claims Morrill accepted some of the blame and said that he had already told his assistants to stop offering 15 kids.

"He told me, we didn't mean to hurt Vaughn," Steve said. "I told him, it's the principle of the whole thing, of being honest.

"I understand they want to get the best player, but they should've been honest with us."

This article demonstrates the importance of open and clear communication. In defense of Stew Morrill and his assistants, the article seems quite biased and only gets the Autrys' point of view. However, whether there were misunderstandings between the Autrys and Stew Morrill's coaching staff, it is obvious to me that the root of the problem was poor communication. I don't know exactly what happened in this situation, but I imagine neither party had ill intentions, and if more effective communication was used, the problem probably wouldn't have happened.

Source: http://www.westcoasthoopsreport.com/articles/detail.php?id=518&