Expert enough is a blog that focuses on helping you with “the lost art of becoming good at things.” Their goal is to help you gain a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things; “to inspire you to learn more, do more, be more.” The blog was founded, and is currently co-edited, by Corbett Barr and Caleb Wojcik in October of 2011, and is written by them and other contributing authors. The name stems from the fact that you don’t have to know everything about a subject to be considered an “expert” to some people.
Expertise isn’t an absolute. Think of it as a scale, from 1 to 10. If you’re a 3, there are plenty of 1s and 2s out there who you can teach, and probably better than people with more expertise.
Expert Enough uses a minimalistic blog design, multiple authors, and informal language to show the reader that being an expert at something is not necessary to being successful in life, just knowing more than the average person can make you seem like an expert.
The blog’s style, overall, is extremely simple. It has a white background with black font,, the occasional green font, used sparingly for emphasis (such as when an author would normally bold a phrase), very few pictures, and an author bio. There is a common formatting throughout the whole site for all articles: Author picture and bio in the top left corner, featured image in the top center, the body of the article is always centered, and a social media plug for Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon to the right side of the article.
The use of such a simple design allows the reader to focus on the article, along with the only other prominent thing on the page, a large advertisement for one of the blog’s creator’s new project, Lifestyle Business Weekly, which is placed at the bottoms of the page. There are no other advertisements on the site, placing extreme focus on this one. This was most likely a choice made by Barr in an attempt to emphasize the articles to drive home what the specific article is saying and to promote himself, since he is the owner of a web-based business, Fizzle Co., along with the Expert Enough and Lifestyle Business Weekly projects.
Another rhetorical device used by the blog is the use of multiple authors. This helps to illustrate the fact that you do not have to be an expert at everything. The authors come from many different fields and backgrounds “we are experts at a bunch of things, not just one”. Expert Enough has in their archives 187 articles with almost as many authors.
The authors do not appear to only write for Expert Enough and many have their own projects whether they be running a blog, owning a business, or like one author, flying a medevac helicopter in Alaska. Some of their background is in writing, however, most of them do not have a career that involves them sitting in front of a computer writing their lives away. In essence, they are “expert enough” to write an article explaining their chosen topic and not sound foolish or idiotic.
The last main rhetorical strategy used by the authors of the blog is the use of informal language. While all of the different authors have their own writing style “every author has their own secret of success, their own sources of inspiration, their personal tricks to attract and hold their readers”, they all have a very casual manner in which they present their articles. While reading an article on Expert Enough, you get the feeling of watching a TED Talk. The chatty banter and quick wit of most TED Talks is abundantly present while reading these articles. This gives the reader a sense of closeness with the author and helps them retain the information better. This closeness makes the articles feel more like a conversation with a close friend rather than a lecture or sermon.
These three rhetorical strategies help to convey the purpose of the blog, becoming an “expert”, to to the reader in a way that is simple, clear, and effective. This leaves the reader the tools to help them become an expert in their topic “Expert Enough. Just enough to be dangerous.”
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