"From Germany to Australia and now into the world of blogging..." or something along these lines was going through my mind when I was sitting in last week's lecture of INB346 Enterprise 2.0 - one of the four units I am following here at QUT during my exchange semester. Not that it was particularly surprising to me that one of the main objectives of this course would be to create and maintain a blog (Yes, I've indeed read the unit outline before I enrolled in this subject) - no, it rather reminded me of the same mixed feeling of curiosity and cluelessness I've experienced the day I stepped outside the airplane here in Brisbane.
So what is this all about?
Similar to my semester abroad adventure, this blog will be a journey into the world of blogging. Since a blog can be literally anything ranging from a personal diary to an extensive literature review, I'll have to note that this project will be more of an academic nature rather than just for the pure fun of it. Just don't get me wrong here, I'll still try my best to keep it personal and refreshing opposed to some dry textbooks you might already have encountered during your years at school. More specifically, the theme of this blog will be centered around the numerous web 2.0 tools and/or their applications in a business context.
Why exactly this topic?
In general, I just simply really like the idea of how technology enables us to enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing both privately and for business purposes. So why then Enterprise 2.0? Even though writing an own blog is completely new to me, I already came across the concept of using blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 tools in an organizational setting in one of my previous courses at Maastricht University. Back then, it was already pretty interesting to learn about what wide variety of applications these tools have or still might have. Most importantly, my impression is (and the first guest lecture by Deloitte Digital actually showed) that there still is a remarkable amount of companies out there which do not use make use of such technologies.
How do I get this where I'd like it to be?
I imagine writing a blog for the sole purpose of getting a message across can be quite boring and sometimes even depressing (Is there anybody out there?). I believe it just completely misses the point of the interactive idea behind blogs and similar tools. Thus, my ultimate goal is to create some sort of discussion platform - that is, my blog posts being just the starting point for an interesting discussion.
To achieve this I'll try to follow several guidelines which I've found on Entrepreneur.com. They can be summarized under 3 key aspects: - Content: Content is king. I'll try to find popular yet controversial topics to make it as interesting and inviting as possible for the (potential) readers of this blog. This might also very well include compelling pictures and videos that add value to the content.
- Engagement: As this blog is designed to ultimately serve more as a trigger for discussion it'll be crucial to engage with other fellow bloggers - in this case, especially with other students within the course community.
- Promotion: Although this one is close to the 2nd point, promotion is more meant in a sense of spreading and sharing the blog on other social media sites such as Facebook and Google+ to hopefully attract one or two more readers.
Any good blogs I'd recommend?
To be honest, up until now I'm not really following a lot of blogs - 2 in total to be precise: the TEDBlog (the guys that feature those great talks) and the blog of the Entrepreneur magazine. Both blogs offer diverse and rich content including inspiring stories as well as useful tips and tricks. I also really like the simple yet effective design of the two pages. After all, the layout of a blog certainly also plays an important role in the success of a blog.
So that's it for the first blog post. I'd like to conclude today's post with a poll to already get some of the planned engagement started - Thank you for reading, stay tuned and don't hesitate to leave some feedback/comments.
So that's it for the first blog post. I'd like to conclude today's post with a poll to already get some of the planned engagement started - Thank you for reading, stay tuned and don't hesitate to leave some feedback/comments.
Any TED content is always good content. Heh. If there's one thing I would say about your blog is that it's a little white... maybe you could spruce it up a bit? Of course that's always up to you. Looking forward to hearing more! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for commenting Alex! I wasn't sure about the design of the blog so I just thought I first get it out there so people can start reading it. But it's really good to see that the look of the blog seems to be quite important so I'll try to work on it the next days. I really like the design of your blog btw, looks quite professional and most importantly is not too overloaded! :)
DeleteHey Jan, great first blog. I like your structure and how you organized things into sub-headings and bullet-points. This is an effective way of making your blog more presentable and more professional which is a plus in my books in attaining readership. I agree with Alex that the white makes it a bit glaring but its the same for my blog too http://littlepuddingjustin.wordpress.com/
ReplyDeleteI really want to change a theme, but being that it is a free acocount, I don't have free reign over the color scheme. A very good first post and I hope to hear from you soon.
P.S. I was just about to hit post and noticed that your language settings are in German :)
Hey Justin, thanks for the feedback and thoughts on my blog. I was quite busy the last days but I'll definitely try to put a little bit more time and effort in it. So hopefully together with the second blog post coming the next days I've found a way to make it look more attractive. Oh and really good hint with the language settings, I actually thought that would be a browser thing but apparently I had to change the language settings - it should be displayed in English now.
DeleteGreat post, well written, and easy to read. The writing style sits between causal blogging and academic, which suits really well with the theme of the blog. Really like your idea of creating a poll, never thought of it. engaging - tick!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jess, I really appreciate your feedback! As I've never written a blog (not even in German) I wasn't quite sure about the style. I'm used to write papers in English so it is not suprising that this would be somehow reflected in my writing but it is nice to hear that you like it and that you think it suits the theme of the course.
DeleteP.S. Just read your first blog post and I really enjoyed it (especially the visualizations and your overall style of writing)! Looking forward to your second post ;-)