The blog I close to analyze is Hungry Runner Girl. This is a blog written by a woman named Janae about some of her favorite things: running, food, and her family. She writes in a very informal manner to create a feeling of friendship and closeness with the reader. The overall style of the blog is bright and fun, making it feel somewhat like a Facebook page. The author also shows her credibility through posting her running times, work out plans, and pictures of her runs and workouts.
The specific article I chose to focus on is “22 (My Favorite Number) Tips to Help You With Your Long Runs and Sunday Stuff!” I feel that this article represents the author’s style the best because it has the running tips the reader would expect and the updates on seemingly random parts of the author’s life that make the posts feel like they are updates from a close friend. To further this feeling of closeness at the end of her articles the author posts questions for the readers to respond to. This article’s questions involve running, favorite numbers, and the last question is “What was the best part about your Sunday?”. This coupled with the author responding to a lot of the reader’s comments really drives home the feeling of friendship.
Another stylistic choice the author makes is that she commonly uses lists to convey information to her readers. This is very effective because it breaks down information that could be hard to remember all of into smaller chunks that are much easier to process. In January, the author wrote eight out of the almost daily articles that were written in list format.
The other choice the author makes to help people feel close and makes the blog feel like a Facebook page is that she talks about her family, mainly her daughter, and her personal life in all of her posts. In “22 (my favorite number) tips to help you with your long runs and Sunday stuff!” her daughter is mentioned a few times “Brooke might be a weather woman when she grows up because she goes straight to the window each morning to check out the current conditions.”, along with the author’s parents ”thanks again Dad for all of those runs”, and other relatives “My niece treats me real well and makes sure I am nice and cozy”. This insight to the author’s life makes the reader feel like they know Janae and Brooke ( the author’s daughter) very well.
The author displays her credibility all over the website. She has her marathon times and sponsors on the side bar, pictures in most of her articles of her working out, and refers to her bachelors in health science in her “About me” section. She does mention however that even with her degree that she is “by no means an expert” and the reader should “Do what is best for YOU and your dietary/exercise needs”. She says this due to the fact that running can cause injuries and she does not want to be held liable for someone’s potential injuries.
A stylistic choice that the author makes is to include a lot of pictures in her posts. This allows the reader to visualize what the author is writing about and helps to reinforce the Facebook-like feeling of the rest of the blog.
Overall the author produces a very successful blog. She does a good job of conveying her running, general fitness, and personal experiences while still portraying her personality and keeping it relevant to the readers. You can tell that the author is very passionate at what she does and that in turn makes the reader very passionate and want to continue reading the blog.
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