aura Engaged Excellence in Research Teaching Practices Getting

aura Engaged Excellence in Research & Teaching Practices Getting your Blog Published Research Course 4, Session 6, Day One

Session Learning Outcomes By the end of this session, you will: 1. Publish your blog post online using a blogging tool/platform. 2. Comment on blog posts on the same platform. 3. Comprehend how social media (in particular twitter) can be utilized to grow readership of your blog.

Getting your Blog Published 1. Institutional blog if your institution has an institutional blog, this is a good place to get your blog posts online (you may need to adhere to institutional policies). 2. Start your own blog (e. g. Word. Press, Blogger) you will have more control over the way the blog looks, what and how you write (setting up/managing your own blog can be time-consuming). 3. Explore other social media platforms (e. g. Linked. In has a publishing platform) where you can post your blogs for free; Medium and Google + are social media platforms which can easily be utilized for blogging). 4. Approach other blog sites as a guest blogger (e. g. African Research Institute) this is a good way to get your blog posts read (you may need to adhere to institutional policies).

Blogging Platform (Google+): Key features

Activity #1: Signing in to Google+ 1. Create Gmail account 2. Sign in 3. Search/find/join the community page on Google+ 4. Introduce yourself by adding a post. (15 minutes)

Writing Activity #2: Publish your blog post 1. Publish your blog post on the blogging platform. 2. Leave comments on at least two other blog posts. (15 minutes) Image on Pixabay, CCO Public Domain

Growing your readership How could you use social media to grow an audience for your blog/blog posts? Image on Pixabay, CCO Public Domain

Disseminating your Blog Posts: 1. Twitter can be a very effective way to disseminate your blog posts to a wider audience. You can create an account for free at twitter. com 2. Other social media • Linked. In professional network • Google+ communities and networks • Medium community of readers/writers – ‘write a story’ – professional/personal • Facebook groups and pages 3. Share electronically to colleagues/professional contacts/networks.

What is Twitter: “Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140 -character text messages, called tweets”. This is also known as microblogging. A tweet is a 140 character message, including a URL. Image: by wildplorer on Flickr. License CC BY 2. 0 Quoted from the Wikipedia entry for Twitter – accessed 24. 08. 2016.

Getting Started on Twitter? If you do not have an account, you can create one for free at twitter. com

What is a Tweet? A tweet is a 140 character message that can have a URL, video, picture attached. A tweet is available to the public.

Breaking Down a Tweet Twitter handle/@ Hashtag #

Breaking Down a Tweet: Replying @username

Breaking Down a Tweet: Retweet Click on Retweet symbol RT@username + original tweet

Breaking Down a Tweet: Direct Message DM = Direct Message

Growing an Audience on Twitter: Homework 1. Create a Twitter account. 2. Follow like-minded others – usually they will respond by following you back. Search for them through keywords or hashtags relevant to your work. 3. Re-tweet their tweets. Respond to their Tweets. 4. Participate in conversations on Twitter about relevant areas of your work. 5. Tweet your blog posts, and other tweets about your work, use relevant # hashtags.

Session Learning Outcomes You should now be able to: 1. Publish your blog post online using a blogging tool/platform. 2. Comment on blog posts on the same platform. 3. Comprehend how social media (in particular twitter) can be utilized to grow readership of your blog.

The content is authored by: Emma Greengrass Learning Coordinator Institute of Development Studies E. Greengrass@ids. ac. uk Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK • This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share. Alike 3. 0 Unported License.