The creation of a digital presence is important in establishing a base in an online participatory culture. In their work “THE PARTICIPATION DIVIDE: Content creation and sharing in the digital age, Information, Communication & Society” Eszter Hargittai & Gina Walejko examine the increase of sharing due to the ease of these activities online. This digital culture has helped to remove some inequalities and from the changes the results are that people of every age are better connected despite potential socioeconomic challenges. From that, I feel as an educator there is a need to participate in digital culture and to understand the benefits and challenges ourselves.
My digital footprint was built organically over time. I chose Twitter as the main tool for my information dissemination. While working on digital marketing, I had an opportunity to investigate creating a separate social media account based on my professional use. When I had the opportunity to split my online presence, I decided to use one account for both personal and professional. My reason for my choice was simply based on the platform itself. Of all social media platforms, Twitter is one of the most accessible to conversation and discussion but to encourage discussion there is a need to be more human and less robotic which means that posts on opinion fit well among more professional posts. That is how I have built my @jclemy Twitter account to nearly 1,300 followers.
Looking at other sources and how other educators use their social media, I realized that without looking or planning that I had created and worked on a plan without setting anything in motion or putting it in writing.
My Facebook presence is primarily private. While I post responses to other stories, I have my own personal page kept relatively private and I’m careful about who I share or connect with. My approach is comparable to the approach used by other educators and a similar description to A. L. Flamme in his article “Developing Your Personal Social Media Strategy”.
I plan on further expanding my blog presence throughout my courses in the MALAT program. By posting all my writing, it will give me a place to go back to my research and where I worked. This will also give me a place to write more regularly on education and the topics I have an interest in. My current plan is to write primarily as I go through the program with an increase in content as time allows. Knowing that to get an audience on the blog I will need to have regular and enticing content, I will endeavor to try to post at least once a week.
I will also likely share my articles through LinkedIn but that is a platform that I am weakest in simply due to a lack of interest. While I understand LinkedIn and it’s a great platform to connect with other professionals, the lack of interaction on the platform is what I find relatively unappealing about it.
An element that is important to my presence is the inclusion of imagery on all the posts written and published on the blog. High quality imagery will is important, so I will use Creative Commons 0 images or my own to ensure that I have the rights to use them.
I will also set up automated sharing through the service IFTTT to ensure that all posts are shared on my social networks.
For me success on these platforms is measured by engagement and commenting on my posts. Regular discussion will add value to my posts and will allow me and others on my page to gain perspectives from others.
Eszter Hargittai & Gina Walejko (2008) THE PARTICIPATION DIVIDE: Content creation and sharing in the digital age, Information, Communication & Society,11:2, 239-256, DOI: 10.1080/13691180801946150
Flamme, A. L. (2015, February 12). Developing Your Personal Social Media Strategy – The Synapse – Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/synapse/developing-your-personal-social-media-strategy-dfb8da0777d
The Role of Social Media in Education. (2018, January 02). Retrieved from https://lcibs.co.uk/the-role-of-social-media-in-education/
May 3, 2018 at 1:28 pm
Hi Jeff, your post had some interesting information, especially your mention of success with Twitter! 1300 followers, wow! Would you say that you have built your own brand on social media? Twitter is the one platform I have shied away from, it seems very constant and overwhelming to me, but maybe I don’t know enough about how to filter information on it. Your post intrigued me enough to give it another try. Any tips for newbies on Twitter? Thank you for the tip to use IFTTT.
May 3, 2018 at 7:46 pm
Hi Anita, I suppose have built a bit of a brand on Twitter. It has definitely helped being involved in social media and marketing because I’ve had the opportunity to connect with some extremely digitally active communities. I think though that the biggest thing has been sharing things I’ve found interesting and starting conversations with people I find interesting. Twitter to me is the one platform where no matter how big you are, everyone can still connect with you.
Twitter is definitely overwhelming and a constant stream of consciousness but I think once you get past the fear of missing out on things you can just enjoy the conversation and the connections you can make. I think it’s learning to know that you will miss a lot but that’s ok that’s important. Tools like Hootsuite can make it easier to curate Twitter but I’ve found I only use that for professional Twitter and not as much for my own (other than little experiments like scheduling daily posts).
I love IFTTT. It didn’t feed quite right for the image for my post on the blog but it shared it to my Twitter and got some engagement through it. Automation really does help to streamline the sharing. I think I might have to set it up to share to my LinkedIn as well.
May 3, 2018 at 6:59 pm
Thanks for the great insights Jeff. I had always thought of Twitter to be more of a wild open space where different pulbics would somehow coexist, mostly by avoiding each other. I think it’s fantastic that your digital presence on Twitter came about organically where people like me now have to muse and formulate identity and brand management over who we want to be online. I can imagine your digital marketing background probably really helps you move forward in this area and I’m sure you can give all of us some great tips on utilizing hashtags etc. I’ll have to look for that particular feature of IFTTT but in the meantime would you suggest hootsuite?
May 3, 2018 at 7:54 pm
I think that describing Twitter as a bit of a wild west is pretty apt. I think that might lend itself to experimenting with your own brand and figuring out the best way to connect and actually engage with others. For me I think it’s my willingness to just jump out there and go that has helped. My Twitter is a bit of a wild west itself filled with dancing children, food, marketing and education content but I like it that way because that’s me. I had a discussion about it and it was suggested that it was a sanitized version of me but I think if it’s looked at close enough the bad jokes or criticisms (usually of politicians) show a bit more.
Digital marketing has definitely helped me in this field. I always joke, three hashtags max and you’re gold but it’s really just thinking about who you want to connect to and how. #YYCBeer will get a very different crowd from #ABPoli but sometimes those two will meet. Having fun and experimenting is really the best bet.
I like Hootsuite a lot. It’s great for curation and connecting more on Twitter. That said I simply use the native app and webpage because I like to just go with the stream (even if it is a little broken).
IFTTT has so many great features. It’s automating the tasks that you don’t really need to do yourself.
April 13, 2020 at 12:42 am
thank you for great work