An online presence health check

In my earlier post I was trying to sell the idea that (higher ed related) blogging is experiencing a resurgence. This is partly a justification for myself (and to my line managers), because I’ve been on study leave for 2 weeks. Study leave basically means you have a reason to say no to about 50% of the usual meetings. I’ve been writing a research bid, but I’ve also been using that clearer space in the calendar to update my online presence.

This has included:

• Revamping the edtechie.net landing page – this blog is the main site but people do arrive at the main site and it was old and tatty.
• New blog design and template – look at how swish it looks! And easier to read with less clutter I think.
• Creating a newsletter – the post on blogs prompted some discussion about RSS, which may or may not see a resurgence. As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to explore different ways of dissemination now that Twitter is less reliable. So, I have a newsletter which is just a monthly round-up of posts you can subscribe to if you feel your email inbox is lonely.
• Creating a podcast – more on this in the next post, but I’ve finally (about 15 years too late), taken the podcast plunge, with a Metaphors of Ed Tech podcast.

I’m not sure if any of these make much difference, but I would argue (vigorously even) that it is a good use of anyone’s time in higher ed to regularly do an online presence health check and try out new avenues. Mainly for all the reasons I mentioned in the post on blogs, having an effective online presence is an entirely respectable and valid aspect of an overall academic identity and like any other aspect it requires some tending every now and then.

The newsletter as RSS

My post about blogging prompted some comments on RSS. I loved RSS, it seemed like magic, you could just pull stuff in from different places, subscribe easily, aggregate feeds. Your blog reader was a little daily newspaper of quality content. It was the essence of what the web was made for.

I blame Twitter for killing this magic, increasingly people didn’t promote, or even know their RSS feeds, and social media became a much more effective way to distribute content. RSS often operated in the background still but you rarely saw the little RSS icon on people’s sites any more. Various RSS readers failed or were killed off, and the convenience of inbuilt reshare buttons took over. Back in 2018 people were saying it was time to head back to RSS, and it didn’t happen then, so I expect it won’t now either in a hurry.

But with social media fragmenting and people either turning away from it completely or using it less, the absence of RSS awareness leaves us with a problem – how do we get all this lovely blog content out there? I know some hardcore people will still adhere to their blog readers, and I salute you. It’s possible that RSS will have a relabelling and a resurgence as I’m arguing blogging is experiencing. But until then, all that precious blog content is going unread.

One approach is simply to blitz it. I’ve taken to sharing blog posts on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Facebook. I know, it must be very annoying for people who follow me in all those places. But it does get some reach. I regret to inform you that LinkedIn is proving to be quite good for engagement. And the app is not a total mess like the site.

Another approach which I’ve come round to is the Newsletter. I installed the Newsletter plug-in, and one option it provides is to create a newsletter from recent posts. You can automate this if you upgrade to a subscription account. I’m going to do it manually for now and see how it goes. I don’t intend to add extra content, just a monthly email of recent posts. That way you can just sit back and know that this quality (ahem) content will pop in your mailbox once a month. So pop over and subscribe if you feel that, on reflection, you really could do with some more email.

Progress is a funny old thing isn’t it? While I like my newsletter plug-in, it’s odd to move from the creative possibilities of RSS to, erm, email. And, yes I am very late to Newsletters What next you ask? Podcasts? Well, it’s funny you should say that…

Blogs are back baby

There’s an adage that goes something like if you stay still long enough, you’ll come back into fashion. I think that time is coming for blogs. And if it isn’t I’m going to pretend it is anyway. My rather vague reasoning for this is based on the following thoughts. These are not researched, just my impressions and I’m very aware that in social media impressions can vary wildly.

Twitter is a mess. The trolls are back in, it’s run by a temperamental man-baby, they are talking about changing the free nature, there are technical issues and doubts about its long term viability. Even if all this pans out, a certain amount of damage has been done – people have migrated elsewhere, but perhaps more significantly, my sense is that a lot of people have just started engaging with it less.

There is a social media rethink occurring. I think precipitated by the above, but something that has been growing for years is a reframing of our relationship to social media. Is it a healthy or useful relationship? Is it a good return on investment in terms of time? Is it fun anymore? The danger for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook is not so much the deliberate rejection, but rather just the slow fade of enthusiasm. And once people start asking these types of questions more regularly, that fade gains momentum.

A recognition of the value of online identity. When I used to write about digital scholarship around 2010, it was often in the context of ‘why won’t those suits recognise the impact of us blogging kids?” Sort of Footloose with RSS. Now the impact of online identity is widely valued, recognised, utilised, exploited by all sorts of institutions then investing in some reliable online identity is not something that is frowned upon.

Blogging always suited education. There have been fantastically inventive uses of Twitter, podcasts, YouTube etc for education, but I always felt that blogging was the closest cousin to standard academic practice. It gives time to expand on thoughts as much as needed, to break free from the confines of formal academic publishing and engage in thoughtful dialogue.

Everyday work is often a bit rubbish. I’m not sure this has changed much, but the sense is that (in higher ed anyway) that work has often become more constrained, less creative, more precarious and less rewarding. A place to call your own is a welcome refuge in such a context.

The conclusion I take from all this (which I carefully assembled so I could draw the conclusion I want), is that there is a desire to have a core place on the net, that is not subject to the whims of billionaires, institutions or markets, where you can engage in a range of dialogue, from personal to professional, and that you enjoy revisiting. Ladies and gentleman, I give you, the blog.

(Look, even Brian has said he’s going to start blogging more frequently, that’s the sign we’ve been waiting for, assemble your blogging hordes now).