Turn Your Blog into a Citizen Journal

A blog is a form of citizen journalism, but with a few added touches, you can transform your site into a social media community. Citizen journalism is writing that anyone can do. Whether posting in a blog, leaving comments on another's page, submitting work to wiki sites, or writing articles for websites, these are all forms of citizen journalism.

Is your current blog niche oriented? If you are only writing about a particular subject in your blog, then you have a niche. A niche is just another word for subject or topic. Your niche could be medical health with a focus on diabetes. Maybe your blog is about your life with diabetes. How can you can this into citizen journalism?

Start including your daily lifestyles based around the news of diabetes. Sign up for Google News Alerts. You can select a topic that you want to know more about, in this case, diabetes, and whenever news breaks on that subject, Google will send you an email with the report. Discover the latest medicines or treatments, re-write it in your own words, then apply it to your life. How will this help you? How could this help others? Include all viewpoints in your new style of writing.

Open up your blog to comments. Most blogging sites have this option. Allowing others to comment on your articles generates more ideas for you and gives the readers incentives to come back for more. People love to see their writing online. You could even take it another step forward and invite people to write on your blog with you.

Start a forum on your blog. This gives your readers an opportunity to chat with you and each other. Allow them to open up discussions and create new threads. This gives them a place to correspond with others and will give you new ideas for writing articles.

Citizen journalism doesn't just end there. Creating well-crafted high-quality journalism takes a lot of work and practice. Start simple when transforming your blog into citizen journalism. Slowly change your entries into professional writing pieces. Research how to write well and how to write for the audience and put those tips into practice.

Always double check your writing, proofread your work, make sure your facts are correct, and keep your subject matter relevant. Your article should be unbiased when delivering information. You can add your own point of view, but it should be based from your own life experience. Always read your document out loud before you publish it. There have been so many times that I have found mistakes in my own works by reading out loud.

It will take time for your blog to become a well-developed citizen journal. Don't get discouraged. Part of the fun of writing is the learning along the way. With every article you publish, you gain new writing skills. As you're constantly learning, put those new ideas into practice. Your writing will flourish and become as crafted as the pros.