SMUG | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Blogging 108: Starting Your WordPress.com Blog

Note: This post is part of the Blogging curriculum at Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

This may be a case in which our course sequence is out of order, since Blogging 109: Experimenting with WordPress.com should perhaps logically come before this one. In Blogging 109, I offer a chance for you to do practice posts on a Training Wheels Blog that isn’t your own. So you can feel free to experiment and make mistakes there, before starting your own blog.

But in another sense, it probably makes sense to at least start your blog here in Blogging 108, then go and experiment a bit in Training Wheels before coming back to start your own blogging in earnest.

As I describe on this page, which was my first effort to give a step-by-step intro to starting a blog on WordPress.com, the process is really simple. But I didn’t show exactly what it looks like as a first-time user, because the screen shots you see are from me starting a second blog, when I’m already logged in to my first one.

So now it’s time to update and enhance as part of the SMUG curriculum, and I’m making it a SMUG Podcast and putting it in the form of a Slideshare.net presentation.

Since everyone should have a blog, I’m going to start by creating a blog for my nine-year old son, John. Of course, I’ll need to start by getting a Gmail account for him. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the presentation:

Homework Assignments:

As indicated in the presentation, your homework assignments are as follows:

Go to John’s blog and leave a comment on this post about what a great Dad he has. (And by the way, A Grand Start was really the title he chose for this post.)
Start your own blog on WordPress.com.

It’s fine if you want to leave your blog in that initial condition for a few days. Send me an e-mail or a message through Facebook with the e-mail address you used in signing up for your WordPress.com blog, and I will add you as an author for the Training Wheels blog. Then you can experiment and learn how to do posts before you start doing it for real on your own blog.

SMUG Extension Class for LifeSource

Today I had the opportunity to do a presentation on social media for LifeSource, the non-profit organization that manages organ and tissue donation in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and parts of western Wisconsin.

I had been asked to do this because of a presentation I had done for the Minnesota Health Strategy and Communications Network. I told the LifeSource group I would provide a link here to my presentation; since it was substantially the same as the one I did in February, I’m just linking to that post.

I will be interested to see what LifeSource does in social media; for an organization that is so volunteer-intensive and deeply affects so many people in a positive way, these tools are a natural way to give a voice and a platform to people who are passionate about this life-saving work. Here’s the Facebook group, Donate Life Minnesota, they have formed. I suggested they should talk with Scott Meis from the Donate Life Illinois campaign, where they’ve had a lot of success using social media.

I’m also looking forward to connecting with LifeSource at the Transplant Games in Pittsburgh in July, where Mayo Clinic will have a booth as one of the sponsors. We will be having opportunities for participants in these Olympic-style events to share their stories via a Facebook group and in other ways.

Chancellor in Computerworld

A couple of weeks ago I got a request from Julie Sartain, who writes for Computerworld, to summarize what I’ve been saying about the business benefits of Facebook. I was delighted to contribute toward her article, which is available on-line today.

Here’s an excerpt:

But some companies just don’t get it. Aase compared these new opportunities for businesses to the adoption of early fax technology around 1990. Companies could suddenly receive customer purchase orders by fax instead of FedEx, a huge savings in time and dollars, and well worth the cost of the machine and the monthly charges for the additional phone lines.

If AT&T had offered all this for free, would anyone have declined? he asked. “Social networking sites like Facebook are a much more advanced communications phenomenon than the fax, but not only are many businesses failing to take advantage of these free communication services; some actively block employees from using social networks,” Aase said.

The full article is recommended reading for all SMUG students, and for anyone else looking for an overview of some of the practical business benefits of Facebook and MySpace. My Facebook friend Jeremiah Owyang also is quoted extensively…a lot more extensively than I am, but then he should since he’s a Forrester analyst.

If you’re new to Social Media University, Global, you can visit our Student Union in Facebook, or audit some classes that are part of the core curriculum. Here’s a Message from the Chancellor that gives you an overview and introduction to our educational philosophy, and you can read all of my posts related to Facebook here.

Wanted: Professor of Graphic Arts

Update 6/13/09: Please read all the way through for the update at the bottom of this post.

As we approach the four-month anniversary of the founding of Social Media University, Global, your Chancellor is still looking for a creative logo to replace this wordmark:

I’m thinking something that resembles a coat of arms or a crest, like all of those “real” universities…such as:

Harvard

Yale

Or maybe something round, like these:

Stanford

Carleton College

Or some blending of the two, like this one from the University of St. Thomas:

Given that many college seals are in a circular shape, and that part of our school’s name is “Global” it would seem to make sense to have a representation of the Earth as part of the SMUG seal’s framework.

If you wanted to include Latin in your design, maybe you could use fragments of the “Lorem ipsum” text traditionally used for placeholders in mock-ups. Or if anyone can translate our University motto — It’s Not That Hard — into Latin, that would be even better. The year of our founding, 2008, should be included in the seal, too.

My artistic skills are limited to drawing word pictures, so I would appreciate it if students who are more graphically talented would contribute their artistry to good ol’ SMUG U. Please let me know if you’re interested in working on this.

Speaking of word pictures, one project I will be working on myself is a school song. It’ll be coming soon. But to do a really cool recruitment music video, we need a better logo.

Whoever submits the best logo will of course be compensated in links and salutations, and will earn tenured professorship in the SMUG Department of Fine Art.

Update 6/13/09: I’m working on a project for which it would be really great to have a new SMUG seal. And an official seal would be a nice addition to my presentations. As you can see from the banner at the top of this page (and the comments below) we’ve got our school motto translated as Suus Non Ut Difficile, which ideally would be incorporated into the seal design. If you’re up for the challenge (or know someone who might be able to help) please get in touch with me by email (see the contact form) or by Twitter @LeeAase. I’m open to providing financial remuneration if necessary in addition to the fame and glory referenced above.

With a diverse set of authors and no common theme, it’s the Seinfeld blog: about everything, and about nothing.