Blog Plan

Overview

Community Profile

Blog Plan

Some aspects of Mind Over Matter won’t change in the least. I will still be providing quick bytes of the latest psychology news, views and research, with a bit of snark to keep things interesting. But in addition, Mind Over Matter 2.0 will be more useful, more interactive and (hopefully!) more widely read. By targeting information for undergraduate students majoring in psychology, I will meet the specific needs of young, educated, psychology-literate readers and become a destination for my target demographic.

 

Here are some changes I would make:

 

• Categorize blog posts into bodies of research and fields of psychology

Some students love social psychology, others are into behavioral psychology, and still others are totally into abnormal psychology. Instead of lumping all studies into one “Research” category, I’ll sort them according to their specific fields. Further-categorized research will allow readers a more personalized experience. In doing so, I’ll make the site more accessible to students who are either researching one field of psychology, or who have particular interest in one field but not others. For example, a young student might wish to read up on, say, depression for personal reasons, without any express interest in research on the search for an Alzheimer’s cure.

 

• Include information about psychology education or psychology as an overall field

Students don’t just want to read a slew of research. They also want to read about psychology as a field, put into context. How is psychology changing the public’s attitude? How is it shaping public discourse? How is it covered by the media? How is psychology doing as a profession – what are the job outlooks? What sort of ethical quandaries do psychologists find themselves in? What are student psychologists up to these days, and what are some trends in psychology education? I’ve been doing a little of this with my “Mainsteam Media” category, but I’d like to expand this aspect of the blog. Basically, I’d include more posts on these topics in the blog (rather than adding a new section to the Web site).

 

• Add interactive pages for different categories of readers.

Yes, I’m identifying “undergrad psych majors” as my target demographic, but to think that they all have the same needs would be a huge mistake. Therefore, I’d include pages linking to outside resources and providing internal resources for the following groups of people:

• • Those looking to major in psychology
  • Those looking to apply for grad school
  • Those looking to find related employment

Students unanimously said they’d be interested in communicating with psychology majors from other colleges about ideas, advice and research, as I indicated in the “Community Profile” section.

 

All three pages would be heavy on trend information, original and external advice, and public message boards. The message boards would be an extremely important element of this project, because they would provide a place for students to reach out, interact, and get answers to their questions. This element of interactivity would be a great circulation boost, because it would create a self-perpetuating cycle: the more students who peruse the forums (willing to answer questions and serve as experts), the more students who will want to post questions and join the discussion. The more students posting questions and joining the discussion, the more perusing students willing to post answers.

 

• Include more original content

A major draw to my Web site is the fact that it aggregates much information in one easy-to-digest forum. But another big draw to Mind Over Matter could be original content – interviews and profiles readers can’t find anyone else. One thing I’d like to include is a weekly profile of a person who majored in psychology and now uses it in a seemingly unrelated profession. Students expressed a strong desire for more information about what to do with a non-pre-professional degree, and Diamond should be credited for this great idea.

 

Several students also expressed dissatisfaction with the level of depth professors were willing to devote to the application of scientific research. “The thing that bugs me about psychology is that I feel like a lot of psychologists do these studies and get interesting findings and that’s the end of it,” Sode says. “For example, ‘Oh, we found that introverted people are more likely to be highly neurotic,’ and that’s the end of it, and they move on to the next study.” Scott said he’d love to engage in discussion or simply read more about the applicability or service elements of the research being published every day, since he feels like many of his classes gloss over that component.

 

This indicates a hole in students’ psychology education that I could help to fill. By contacting researchers about their published studies, I could press them for information about how their findings could be applied to everyday life. Perhaps I could pursue about one study a week in a regular feature or Q&A that breaks down a study’s methods, findings and real-world implications.