Blogging

Digital Knowledge | Exploration

Selected pages within this site were developed during studies for RMIT’s Master of Information Management (2019).

At 95%, the site design/content achieved a ‘High Distinction’.

Demonstrating exploration of Blogging.

Blogger | Sean McIntyre, Oxford University 2010

Evidence | screen shots or embedding the technology

commentary

professional

During Week 2, guest lecturer Chelsea Quake demonstrated her use of blogging for professional purposes.  I was very surprised to learn this activity had attracted unsolicited professional attention resulting in an invitation to speak at an industry conference. Possibly the rare nature of her topic helped explain this.

During other lectures and tutorials, comment has also been offered that LinkedIn profile content (particularly published articles) is a resource employers use to mine for potential candidates. Anecdotes have been shared that professionals in the information sector have been head-hunted for employment.

To date, my professional experience has been opposite. Some years ago a recruiter told me that she would not see me or review my resume unless I posted regular articles to LinkedIn to attract employment opportunities. My position was: who would read them? In what context – at shortlist stage or before/during application process? In the context of our contemporary, time-poor professional lives, who has time to read articles posted by unknown authors?

I’ve posted more than 35 articles to LinkedIn over an extended period of years. None have attracted vast readership despite being extremely well-written with professionally shot original images.

Professionally, no recruiter or employer has ever made reference to my LinkedIn profiles nor the embedded links within my resume. In fact the commentary is that they have no time to review such assets due to the overwhelming volume of applications and queries.

This assignment is now an experiment to test whether the above may apply to me. I am admit to being very sceptical.

On Monday 8th April 2019 I posted to LinkedIn an article reflecting my professional interest in a topic relevant to the Information Sector, with further digital links to a recent broadcast on AI by BBC World Service.

personal

In 2010 using ‘Blogger’ I created a personal blog to track and record my daily class and tutorial experiences studying creative writing at Oxford University. In my experience, the primary audience targets of the blog – family, work colleagues from tertiary sector and fellow Oxford creative writing students – were not attracted to this well written content.

The blog was commissioned by Aims Overseas – a private business based in Sydney specialising in matching potential students with overseas study opportunities. Aims Overseas did not and has never reviewed or promoted my blog.

My overall position on blogs is that they are time-consuming experiments. Other than being searchable on Google, there is no guarantee of attracting, marketing to or building a dedicated readership and audience from scratch.

Comment | Other Issues 

PRIVACY

Blogs are like any other platform using a Content Management System structure. They require a self-assigned user name and password. Articles can be ‘hidden’ or set to private access via passwords.

COPYRIGHT

By their nature, blog authors are publishers beholden to copyright laws.  Content has to be referenced and acknowledged properly, however it’s easy to acquire an image from the web, save and upload without appropriate attribution or permission.

Likewise your own original content can be used in same way.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

IP is difficult to pin down. It rather depends on the complexity of material being posted/published.

Blogging is really all about communicating a shared  experience, usually personal, in longer form writing than say a brief Facebook post. Topics are generally going to be based on creative or hobby-based activities rather than professional and/or business ones.

Generally it’s fair to say that Bloggers are not more overly concerned about IP than they would be about copyright.

SECURITY

The self-assigned user name and password functions as sole security feature. Same comments as ‘Privacy’ above.

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