Writing and speaking are both ways of output and delivering messages. However, compared to talking, writing is more difficult and requires more professional techniques, training and practice. Writing can be of different kinds that can be totally different from one another. Blogs, as one of the varieties, is getting more and more popular among the internet surfers due to its great convenience for knowledge-sharing and communication.
For most people, they just read blogs out of a wide range of reasons (nine reasons from the best research completed in 2020 on what attracts people to blogs). However, believe me, more reasons are out there for you to embark on the journey of becoming a blogger (ten reasons you should start blogging). With blogs, your voices can be amplified and heard by more people, and you can literally share to the globe any thoughts of interest, even including reasons for not blogging.
It takes hard work, practice, domain expertise and some inspirations to write a good blog. Although good writing cannot be achieved overnight, we do have some ways to improve blog- writing skills efficiently and effectively. One way is by collaborative learning which requires one to exchange honest critiquing opinions with a partner regarding each other’s blog. This is exactly what this blog is aimed for.
How to work as a team, and furthermore, improve team productivity has always been a deep topic worth discussing over and over. As business analysts candidates, students from the UCDavis MSBA program have been attaching good importance to delivering greater wholistic team value. In this blog, I will rip apart one particular blog Decoding Team Productivity regarding the GRPI team model with the aim of providing the author some useful suggestions for further improvement.
Article Structure
The blog mainly contains two big parts. The first part is theory which addressed the importance of team work and then introduced some team productivity models like FSNP (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing) and GRPI (Goals, Roles, Procedures, Interpersonal relationships). Based on the theory, the author summarized the internal and external factors that would influence team effectiveness. Around the factors, the second part was unfolded which was about the author’s past and current team experiences in the workplace and program practicum.
Suggestions for further improvements
Highlight the theory base more clearly.
I can see that the author knitted her blog around the GRPI model and influential factors. However, it was not clearly stated in the beginning theory part that GRPI was the model used. It would be a more strong opening if the author could compare different team models and then came to the conclusion why GRPI was a good fit. Besides, throughout the blog, the correlation between her experiences and the model was not addressed.
Employing domain academic knowledge is powerful and supportive which is a great advantage that shouldn’t be masked by simply not stating and selling enough to the readers.
Be more focused and structure the parts.
It’s apparent that the author was ambitious to touch upon all the influential factors by giving her own experiences. The drawback is the blog is general and neither of the factors was illustrated enough to be convincing. I see that the author wanted to say so many things, like the problems of her practicum team, the way her sales team functioned and so on. But all these parts are lying scattered in the plate and lack of a subtle string to link them tightly. Therefore the blog is not well-structured.
One good way is to pick only one or a few factors and link them structuredly. Write a to-the-point blog and hit the points really hard by telling specific stories. It’s far from enough to only tell conclusions. The readers will be more impressed and convinced if the blog is telling only one thing with arguments and evidence.
Short paragraphs, subtitles and images.
Writing for web is entirely different than writing for print. Nothing will intimidate or outright anger a reader faster than huge walls of text. Try to break down the several long paragraphs and add subtitles to indicate the structure.
The images in the blog were not placed in the right spot and did not have much correlation with the text. Using images can improve the flow and lighten the tone of the posts.
