Blogging | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Putting You to Shame

If you are a SMUGgle and haven’t started your own blog yet, that’s the purpose of this post.

If my Dad, who is 77 years old, and my son, who is 9, can start their own blogs using WordPress.com, what exactly is your excuse?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQBHVaDHgIc]

I also wanted use this video to introduce you to one of SMUG’s major benefactors, for whom our SMUG North Annex — the Lewis J. and LaVonne A. Aase Motor Fleet and Retreat Center — is named. Here’s a photo of Dad and Mom in front of the facility that bears their name:

Lewis and LaVonne Aase (a.k.a. Dad and Mom) — Lewis and LaVonne Aase

And here’s the “retreat center” portion of the facility:

If you’d like to see more campus photos, check out the SMUG Facebook group.

Dad and his cohort will be taking blogging classes in the Retreat Center next Saturday. As I help them get started, I’ll also use that process as a teaching/learning opportunity for SMUGgles, showing their step-by-step progress.

Meanwhile, you can click here to get started on your own blogging journey.

Yammer 101: Getting Started with Yammer

I’ve previously written about Yammer and how I think it has some neat potential applications. I’m actually writing this post to show some work colleagues how to get started with Yammer and how it could practically help in

Limiting the mass e-mails that tend to overwhelm our inboxes,
Ensuring that we are included in conversations that interest us, and
Making non-confidential information that could help anyone in the organization easily available to everyone in the organization, instead of having it locked in the inboxes of a few.

Here’s a slideshow that takes you through the process, step-by-step, of joining (or creating) your company’s Yammer network.

I had originally planned for this to include a narration track (as you see in this video I shot in the SMUG Annex last night), but I think the slides themselves are fairly self-explanatory.

As we get into some of the subsequent courses in the Yammer curriculum, there will definitely be a place for screencasts and slidescasts. But for now, here are your…

Assignments:

Create or join your work-based Yammer network.
Share your questions or comments about Yammer in the comments below, so they can be addressed in future courses.

Thanks to my colleague, Bob Nellis, for serving as the guinea pig and allowing me to capture screen shots of his sign-up process.

Blogging 112: Pages vs. Posts

The great thing about blogs is that the newest and freshest material is always right at the top.

And the bad thing about blogs is that the newest material is always right at the top.

So you can write a great post, but over time it gets pushed further away from the front page, accessible only through the monthly archives and via Google.

That’s why Pages are a helpful alternative to Posts.

Pages become the overall high-level structure of your blog. So, for example, on this blog the Pages are

The Curriculum page is the “Parent” page for the Blogging, Core Courses, Facebook, Podcasting and Twitter curricula.

Then each page can have links to posts that have been done over time. So, for example, the Podcasting page has links to courses from Podcasting 101 through 110. These posts were written between March 31, 2008 and July 29, 2008. During that same time, I probably wrote a couple of dozen other posts, and I didn’t write the podcasting posts in numerical order.

By creating the Podcasting page, though, I could bring links to all of the podcasting-related posts together in one place, so that people stumbling upon SMUG (or one of the podcasting posts) can work through the related posts in a sequential manner.

As I write this post (part of the Blogging curriculum), it is Sept. 30, 2008. Soon it will be part of a previous month’s archive, and within a couple of weeks will be off the front page. But several months from now, when someone is wanting to learn all about blogging, she will start at Blogging 101 and work her way through.

Creating Pages is easy. In your WordPress dashboard, click the Write link:

Writing a Post is the default, but if you then click the Page link, you’ll be able to write a Page.

From that point, it’s just like writing a post, except a Page becomes part of your overall navigational structure.

Use Pages with care; once you start them you shouldn’t get rid of them. But if you need to bring order to your blog, Pages are important tools.

Blogging 110: Private Blogs

This course could have been called Blogging for Cowards. It’s a way of test-driving WordPress without letting anyone else see what you’re doing. But there actually are some legitimate reasons why you might want to consider a private blog to accomplish your goals.

First, I will show you how to create a private blog. It’s really simple.

Start a WordPress.com blog. If you already have a WordPress.com blog, it’s easy to register another one.

Then go to your dashboard and click the Settings link,

Then choose the Privacy Tab,

and select the “I would like my blog to be visible only to users I choose” option.

It’s that simple.

So why would you use this option?

In addition to being a risk-free way for you to experiment with blogging and learn how to do it without anyone else seeing, it could also be a way to have the equivalent of an intranet blog for your organization, but without needing IT support to install blogging software on your servers. You just need to have everyone who wants to have access to the blog sign up for a wordpress.com account. They don’t need to have their own blogs; they can simply get an account.

Then, on your blog’s administrative dashboard, click the “Users” link (which is right next to the “Settings” link) and scroll to the bottom, where you can “Add User from the Community”

Just enter their e-mail addresses and choose what level of access you want to give them (Contributor, Author, Editor or Administrator) and they will be able to participate in your blog. But no one else can.

I’ve used this method as a way to introduce colleagues to blogging so they could get hands-on experience. It takes away the mystery and fear of the unknown.

But particularly if you work for a small organization, it could be a way to in essence create the equivalent of an intranet if you don’t already have one…and without any IT expense.

So you can use this approach either to take away your own trepidation (by creating a private blog that only you can see) or to allay the fears of others in your organization or workgroup who don’t want to be blogging out there on the internet for all to see. And you can have up to 35 users (I believe) for your private blog on wordpress.com without paying for an upgrade. The upgrade to allow unlimited private users is $30 a year.

If such fears have been keeping you from experimenting with blogging, start a private wordpress.com blog today. And if you later overcome your blogophobia and want to make your blog public, it’s as simple as going back to the dashboard and changing the privacy settings.

Get started today!

Prepping for the Health Care Career Festival with Facebook

Today I met with Guy Finne and John Murphy to discuss using Facebook for a high school career festival. I will be posting here about that when it happens next month, but for now here’s a picture of John and Guy.