I launched my blog Anraje in October 2017. When I first started the blog, I intended it to be mostly about political and cultural commentary. Anraje means “Enraged” in Haitian Kreyòl, and my intention was to call into question or rant about all the cultural phenomena around me that felt unnatural but that the world wanted me to believe was “just the way things are.”

Over the years, the blog developed beyond commentary to include more educational and philosophical content. This portfolio includes an educational blog sample from Anraje. 

The Challenge

My audience on Anraje is composed of book lovers, writers, and creative types. I held a prominent online presence on #Bookstagram, Instagram’s community of writers and readers. Around the time that this blog post was published, I was working on the draft of a novel, after taking creative writing courses at a local writing school. One of the key benefits of those courses was the feedback process, which went so well that I left the course with a writing buddy for continued reciprocal feedback. 

At the same time, I was an Instructor of Communication for Business and Management, a graduation requirement for upperclassmen at the North Carolina State University Business School. Throughout my extensive experience as a communicator in corporate spaces, I understood that the skills of giving and receiving feedback are key to the success of any business professional. Whether they are the one preparing a document, or a Subject Matter Expert assigned to a project, giving and receiving feedback is a key requirement for successful collaboration.

The Solution

One of the main challenges to giving and receiving feedback is not wanting to hurt feelings or cause conflict. Another is not knowing what to focus on. When I was introduced to the Describe-Evaluate-Suggest (DES) heuristic through my Advanced Technical Writing and Editing course in my Masters in Tech Comm. program, I knew it was a tool that my audience of students, creatives, and professionals would greatly benefit from. 

The objectives for this blog post were to be engaging, informational, and to provide directly actionable insights, while employing SEO best practices. 

Research 

The original research point for most of my blog posts is largely experiential. As I go through stages and process their lessons or as I encounter life helpful tips, I decide on topics for my blog posts on Anraje. Then, I like to research what others are saying about the topic and identify gaps in the conversation so that I bring in a fresh perspective and offer a piece of wisdom that is not easily available. 

For the Feedback blog post specifically, I delved deeper into the DES method by reading through the available related material on the Eli Review software, a set of tools that help instructors run feedback-centric classrooms. Quotes and ideas from Octavia Butler around the importance of dedication to the craft of writing were also included in the post. 

Writing

The key characteristic I wanted for this piece is “relatability”. I wrote it for an audience of writers, primarily. So I wanted a conversational tone that says, “I know exactly what you’re going through, and I know something that helps, from personal experience.” 

I established Ethos early, to demonstrate to what degree my input on “The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback” should be valued. Discussing my writerly experience helped me to explain with specific examples what the Describe-Evaluate-Suggest method is, why it’s helpful, and how to use it in a variety of scenarios. 

Before getting that deep, I explored the roots of the fear of feedback, acknowledging what’s at the core of why we try to avoid receiving or addressing it: Insecurity. Pulling this thread led to a direct confrontation of how our craft suffers directly due to the resistance to feedback. 

“Developing a better relationship with feedback means working on killing your ego, this idea that you can just birth your ideas as they appear in your mind, that good writing can be readymade. As soon as you start doing the actual work, you realize that storytelling is a complicated endeavor that shapes you as much as you shape the lines on the page. And as long as you keep doing so, the shapes will align and meld.”

Then, I encouraged my readers to take their time to select a Writing Buddy, and to build their own criteria list of what makes it a good Writing Buddy. I included two of my own, that they should enjoy the genre of the piece that I’m asking them to review, and that I must enjoy their own writing style and stories. 

As should any effective educational blog, I concluded it with a brief reiteration of the DES method, and the second most poignant point of the piece, that developing the feedback skill is necessary. 

“Once you truly understand why you want to become a writer, you’ll understand that there are no shortcuts and the craft takes grit, persistence, and community. Professional Writing is always coordinated and collaborative.

Becoming a writer, becoming anything that you feel you must become for fear of transforming into a living dead, requires that you begin and maintain a new relationship with yourself. Like any relationship, the strength comes in the nurturing, the courting, and the inexhaustible attempts to understand, heal, protect, and grow.”

Design 

The design of Anraje is simple, I prioritized legibility with a white background. I also wanted the impression of book reading specifically, so I opted for a serif font. I added callout quotes to emphasize poignant points or well-phrased sentiments, and they also serve to break up the text a bit.

For visual appeal, I included pictures from my professional photoshoots during my trips to Amsterdam and Mexico. In them, I interact with a book in public, further appealing to my audience of book lovers, whose favorite fashion accessory tends to be a book. 

Final Thoughts

Blog writing is one of the primary ways that organizations can position themselves as educational resources and thought leaders on the web. Whether I’m sharing my own thoughts or doing deep research to address an unfamiliar or technical topic for my organization’s blog, the principles remain: effectively using rhetorical appeals, designing the page for legibility and to be skimmable, adding visually compelling content, linking to research sources, applying SEO principles, etc.

Since posting it, the Art of Seeking and Providing feedback is in the top 5 most read posts on Anraje. It’s routinely cited in various contexts. The post was even recently assigned as required reading for a Technical Communication course at Kentucky State University. One comment from the audience on the post states: 

“Omg! Anrage! This was everything I need and more. From discussing insecurities to finding ways to be confident in sharing and receiving feedback to a learning how to receive and give feedback. I read this attentively right from the first word in the first paragraph to the very last word.

This was written with such compassion and it was very educative. I found myself screenshooting all of the words I will have to go back to because they were just that important!

Thank you for this!”