Blog Week 8: Blogging Best Practices           

    Ohdeardrea.blogspot.com is a blog run by Drea Duclos, a wife and mother of one. Drea lives a very natural and healthful life. Her blog talks about life, veganism, a natural lifestyle, motherhood, marriage and lots of food. This blog is a lifestyle blog and focuses more on personal stories and opinions rather than outside information. At times Drea will incorporate outside posts from other bloggers and does a great job crediting them and always cites where she gets her information. She is a wonderful photographer and creates a lot of her own recipes which she is using to create her own cookbook. The function of the blog is to help readers learn how to live a natural life and learn about veganism from somebody's personal experiences. There is only information and answered questions, no push for anybody to change their health habits unless they want to. The substance is purely antidotal. Drea brings us into her life and home. She talks about veganism for herself, raising a vegan child, leading a natural, healthy life, and how she and her family live happily. Drea doesn't hold back, she takes the reader through her ups and downs in life and the journey she has been on for the past 4-5 years. "I'm Andrea Duclos, but more commonly known as Drea. I reside in South Florida with my tiny wonderful family, where we live as simply, naturally and as happily as possible" (Duclos, About, para 1). 
     I believe the best practices for creating a blog are to remember your audience, remember why you started your blog and stay true to yourself. It can be hard to try and keep all of those thing together but it is important to create a meaningful blog. There also needs to be a consistency, blogging frequently keeps your audience interested and curious. Drea has always followed through on posts she promised, always considers her audience's requests, all while staying true to her life and all that is important to her. I love her style, her photos, and her knowledge on a simple lifestyle. She always looks at the positives and I always find myself checking in for new posts (which luckily happen frequently). 

Duclos, A. (n.d) About. Ohdeardrea. Retrieved from http://ohdeardrea.blogspot.com/p/about.html