23 THINGS - THING 1

THING 1 - BUILDING THE FRAMEWORK

Welcome to Week One of 23 Things! This week will look at establishing your online presence. By now you have hopefully set up your new blog (or dusted off your old one). You do not need to use Blogger to create your blog, but it does integrate better with some of the other "things" we will be discovering. If you are having problems, do give a shout. I have found that Explorer can be a little flakey with Blogger, so if you are convinced you are doing the right thing, but not getting results, try using Firefox, Chrome or Safari to see if that resolves the issues.

Please note, you can choose to engage as much or as little as you feel comfortable with your colleagues or a wider audience, and you can write under a pen name for anonymity. As information professionals, we should never use a pseudonym to misrepresent ourselves...honesty is the best policy! This is particularly so if you ultimately wish to build your blog as a professional platform (See Thing 3 on building and managing your image).

If you wish to complete the 23 Things programme, please send an invite to my bpc email address so I can monitor your engagement in the programme and offer assistance/encouragement where necessary.

What is it?
So what is blogging? Blogs are a form of social media that allow the exchange of thoughts and ideas. An online diary of sorts, with the added benefits (or pitfalls) of two-way communication...this is something to consider when deciding who your audience is and how widely you wish to share your blog. Always follow the College's policy on engaging with students if you open your social media to the wider community and consider the social niceties ("netiquette") of posting and responding to comments.

Practical uses
Your blog can be shared with colleagues, customers or the wider community:

• to discuss issues and ideas
• to ask questions and gather information
• to provide a platform for feedback
• to build a network of like-minded individuals for research or collaboration
• for active self-marketing and controlling your professional image
• as the key tool for managing your presence across multiple social media platforms (Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, etc.).

The Challenge
Set up a blog account. If you choose Blogger, you will also need to to set up a Google account. Send an invite from your blog to my bpc email address (farrelld). Experiment with templates and layout. Note that the dynamic templates in Blogger may not support the addition "page elements" such as tools, apps and other enhancements (widgets) and you may be better off with the simple templates to begin with. This can be changed later.

If you have access to a smart phone, see what your site looks like on this format.

Go to the Dashboard (design area) and explore some of the settings including:

• basic settings - Title and description, privacy settings and read/write permissions
• language and formatting - check your time zone is correct for time-stamping.
• posts and comments - set which groups can comment, whether comments will be moderated
• mobile and email - supply an email address to be notified when somebody posts to your blog