Week 1 - Post 2: Blogging
When we were asked as an assignment this month to create a class blog, it was something I felt incredibly comfortable with. The nice thing about blogs is how differently they can be utilized for different purposes... which I'm intimately aware of since I currently maintain 4 (count 'em, 4) active blogs, all of which have distinctly different purposes.
For this entry I thought I'd give a little tour through my blogs to highlight a few ways you can use blogging for a variety of goals.
(click on any of the images if you want to see a larger version)
Blog #1
Journaling and Socializing - Shiroiko (Journal Desu)
Hosted on: Livejournal
This is my personal blog. I've had a blog in one form or another on Livejournal for around ten years now. I hooked up with Livejournal because a large number of my real life friends had done so and we all used the service to give each other updates on our lives. Many years later a few friends have navigated elsewhere, but the vast majority of use still use Livejournal for the same purposes. We tend to share general updates about our lives, links to articles and websites we've enjoyed (you can blame Livejournal for my habit of communicating in links in class), and we also use the site to plan events (much like many other people do on Facebook). For my social group, it's the equivalent of sending out update emails and status updates, only faster and more in-depth.
This is my only blog that's locked down and is accessible to friends only. I wanted to feel comfortable posting personal information and I also needed to be able to plan events through my blog, so keeping strangers out seemed to make sense. I love that many blogs have features to lock or filter certain postings, which gives you a real sense of privacy if you desire it.
Blog #2
Business Applications - Shiroiko (My Etsy Store)
Hosted on: Blogger
Just before I signed up at Full Sail I launched a jewelry store on Etsy.com. To promote it I decided to use a variety of Web 2.0 tools, including a blog. I originally launched it on LiveJournal, but decided it would both look better AND attract more readers on Blogger, so I moved it not long after the initial launch.
Using a blog for a business is both a way of communicating with your current customers as well as attracting new ones. The most obvious use for a commercial blog is to let current customers know about your goods and/or services and updates to your business. The other benefit, though, is that your content can attract new customers as well. In order to do this, however, you have to add content that will appeal to people who don't already know about your business. In my case I added jewelry and Etsy tutorial postings and also noted when sales at some of my favorite stores were taking place. I hoped that people might come to the blog for my secondary content and stay to check out the postings related to my business.
Blog #3
The Blog as a Means of Tracking a Project - My Cheap Ass Home
Hosted on: Blogger
In the new year I made a promise to myself to start properly decorating my apartment. I was in that horrible decorating spot of living somewhere I wasn't planning to stay long-term, so both my boyfriend and I were hesitant to spend much money on improvements we couldn't take with use when we moved. We also were suffering from both a merging of two households AND beginning to slowly transition out of the "furniture I had handed down to me and stuff I bought cheap" and towards nicer furniture that we had picked out on our own. Our apartment looked... well, kind of mismatched and mostly undecorated. Something had to be done.
Following in the footsteps of many others, I decided to push myself towards action by creating a project and blogging my progress. Since my decorating budget was minimal at best, I decided to focus my project on decorating on the cheap. My blog included tutorials for the home improvement projects I worked on as well as links to related resources.
When you use a blog to chronicle a project you create a tool that can help you feel more energized about what you're doing and can hold you more accountable for your progress. You don't want to disappoint your readers by not making new postings, so you force yourself out of ruts so as to not shame yourself to your peers. Think of it as online-peer-pressure, but in a good way. You can also build up a group of cheerleaders that can give you help and support when you most need it.
Blog #4
Blogging as an Assignment - Bianca's Full Sail Blog-O-Rama
Hosted on: Blogger
This is the type of blog all of us are familiar with at this point. Class blogs allow us to share information and reflections about readings, projects, and other course work. RSS feeds and web-based aggregators give us easy means of keeping up with our peers' blogs as well.
Back in the grim days before Web 2.0 journaling was a common practiced used to create assignments as well as reflect on performance. Unfortunately there was no easy way to share this information with more than one person at once. Blogging, on the other hand, carries the same benefits as journaling, but also allows easier connection to classmates, conversations through commenting, and linking to additional resources. Blogging leads to the same introspection, but also has additional community and interactivity aspects to it, which I believe make it a stronger learning activity overall.
For this entry I thought I'd give a little tour through my blogs to highlight a few ways you can use blogging for a variety of goals.
(click on any of the images if you want to see a larger version)
Journaling and Socializing - Shiroiko (Journal Desu)
Hosted on: Livejournal
This is my personal blog. I've had a blog in one form or another on Livejournal for around ten years now. I hooked up with Livejournal because a large number of my real life friends had done so and we all used the service to give each other updates on our lives. Many years later a few friends have navigated elsewhere, but the vast majority of use still use Livejournal for the same purposes. We tend to share general updates about our lives, links to articles and websites we've enjoyed (you can blame Livejournal for my habit of communicating in links in class), and we also use the site to plan events (much like many other people do on Facebook). For my social group, it's the equivalent of sending out update emails and status updates, only faster and more in-depth.
This is my only blog that's locked down and is accessible to friends only. I wanted to feel comfortable posting personal information and I also needed to be able to plan events through my blog, so keeping strangers out seemed to make sense. I love that many blogs have features to lock or filter certain postings, which gives you a real sense of privacy if you desire it.
Business Applications - Shiroiko (My Etsy Store)
Hosted on: Blogger
Just before I signed up at Full Sail I launched a jewelry store on Etsy.com. To promote it I decided to use a variety of Web 2.0 tools, including a blog. I originally launched it on LiveJournal, but decided it would both look better AND attract more readers on Blogger, so I moved it not long after the initial launch.
Using a blog for a business is both a way of communicating with your current customers as well as attracting new ones. The most obvious use for a commercial blog is to let current customers know about your goods and/or services and updates to your business. The other benefit, though, is that your content can attract new customers as well. In order to do this, however, you have to add content that will appeal to people who don't already know about your business. In my case I added jewelry and Etsy tutorial postings and also noted when sales at some of my favorite stores were taking place. I hoped that people might come to the blog for my secondary content and stay to check out the postings related to my business.
Blog #3
The Blog as a Means of Tracking a Project - My Cheap Ass Home
Hosted on: Blogger
In the new year I made a promise to myself to start properly decorating my apartment. I was in that horrible decorating spot of living somewhere I wasn't planning to stay long-term, so both my boyfriend and I were hesitant to spend much money on improvements we couldn't take with use when we moved. We also were suffering from both a merging of two households AND beginning to slowly transition out of the "furniture I had handed down to me and stuff I bought cheap" and towards nicer furniture that we had picked out on our own. Our apartment looked... well, kind of mismatched and mostly undecorated. Something had to be done.
Following in the footsteps of many others, I decided to push myself towards action by creating a project and blogging my progress. Since my decorating budget was minimal at best, I decided to focus my project on decorating on the cheap. My blog included tutorials for the home improvement projects I worked on as well as links to related resources.
When you use a blog to chronicle a project you create a tool that can help you feel more energized about what you're doing and can hold you more accountable for your progress. You don't want to disappoint your readers by not making new postings, so you force yourself out of ruts so as to not shame yourself to your peers. Think of it as online-peer-pressure, but in a good way. You can also build up a group of cheerleaders that can give you help and support when you most need it.
Blog #4
Blogging as an Assignment - Bianca's Full Sail Blog-O-Rama
Hosted on: Blogger
This is the type of blog all of us are familiar with at this point. Class blogs allow us to share information and reflections about readings, projects, and other course work. RSS feeds and web-based aggregators give us easy means of keeping up with our peers' blogs as well.
Back in the grim days before Web 2.0 journaling was a common practiced used to create assignments as well as reflect on performance. Unfortunately there was no easy way to share this information with more than one person at once. Blogging, on the other hand, carries the same benefits as journaling, but also allows easier connection to classmates, conversations through commenting, and linking to additional resources. Blogging leads to the same introspection, but also has additional community and interactivity aspects to it, which I believe make it a stronger learning activity overall.
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