Digital Media

Should I Publish a Student Blog?

Emily Wade · Nov 25, 2021 · Leave a Comment

The simple benefits of publishing a student blog that might surprise you!

A student blog can help graduates find paid employment in a highly competitive job market. In an environment where many graduates hold the same university degree, demonstrating practical skills in blogging and digital content creation can be absolutely vital.

My students are asked to create a WordPress blog as part of their digital media studies at Deakin University. Below are four of the most important reasons for this (and some examples from my students)…

Why are we talking about the potential value of a student blog?

In the 2020 Graduate Outcomes Survey, 68.7% of undergraduates were in full-time employment 6-months after graduation (GOS 2020), with many sectors being negatively impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Sadly, ‘the largest falls in undergraduate full-time employment by study area have been in Communications, down from 60.1 per cent in 2019 to 52.8 per cent in 2020’ (GOS 2020:8). However, rather than focusing on the negative, these figures also highlight how important it is for students to stand out from the crowd, and blogging is one way they can do this (visit this post for extra advice about standing out in a changing job market).

It’s not about ‘going viral’ or even having a huge volume of work to showcase. Instead, a student blog can demonstrate passion, work ethic, commitment to an industry and practical media-making skills. In order to be successful, the blog should be developed strategically, and with a broader audience in mind than a teacher or small group of classmates.

Infographic created in Canva by Emily Wade

A student blog can develop practical skills in real-world environments

We (students and teachers) talk regularly about the importance of writing for an external audience. This can be an abstract concept for students who are conditioned to working within a traditional educational system. They’re used to satisfying an assessment rubric, criteria or marker, but not necessarily a real-world audience. So, during our digital media units, we encourage students to engage in a process of ‘learning by doing’ with platforms such as WordPress, YouTube and Soundcloud. We also engage with students, industry professionals, and others, on social media platforms such as Twitter. This public engagement allows students to develop skills in online publishing, networking and community building.

Real-world engagement is also where the concept of an external audience starts to become more tangible. So, rather than doing the bare minimum to satisfy assessment criteria, students create engaging content that an audience will genuinely love and find value in. While some students discover this quickly, others need a little more time and encouragement. And one of the most powerful forms of encouragement can come from seeing the work of their peers, so here we go…

Inspiration from some stellar students!

Below is some media (a blog and two videos) created by students in a third-year Digital Media Entrepreneurship unit during 2021. The featured students created this content to ‘pitch’ their own (hypothetical) start-up concept and have given me permission to share their work here.

Firstly, Olivia’s blog features her pitch for a more sustainable alternative to single-use plastic bottles called OneWay. She writes with a consistent and engaging tone of voice, which places the reader front and centre in the story.

You’re on your way to work, but you’re running late because you simply didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. In your Monday morning madness, you pressed snooze one too many times.
Olivia Styles (2021)

As a reader, it’s hard not to engage with content written like this because it’s creative, entertaining and informative!

The next video was created by Zoe and embedded in her blog to promote the concept of an educational app called Foresight. The detailed custom-made graphics featured throughout, along with excellent planning, filming and editing, have produced a very impressive result!

_{Foresight – Career education reimagined by Zoe Lusted (2021)}

Our final feature is a video produced by Sam (also embedded in a blog) to promote her start-up idea for an LED illuminated dog harness with GPS tracker called Spot Spot.

_{Introducing Spot Spot by Samantha Wridgway (2021)}

The work featured above isn’t perfect (and neither is mine) but these students have demonstrated creativity, professionalism and clear communication skills in developing highly compelling content. They have discovered the ‘magic’ in creating content that engages audiences in meaningful ways.

Student blogs (and embedded multimedia content) can speak volumes about skill and motivation that a written application or university degree alone simply cannot. Not to mention that engaging with student work like this is my inspiration!

Based on the brilliant content that these students have produced, I think the future of the communications field is looking very bright!

A blog often forms just one part of a personal-professional online presence. If you want to dig deeper into this topic, head over to How to Brand Yourself.

References

Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (2021) 2021 Graduate Outcomes Survey National Report, QILT, accessed 25 November 2021.

_{Cover Image by Thought Catalog on Unsplash}

‘Fake it ’til you make it’!

Emily Wade · Mar 11, 2019 · 4 Comments

How to conquer your fears and publish your work online.

Are you terrified about publishing your work online? Do you know that you ‘should’ be putting content out there, but…well, it’s never quite perfect?

Many students, professionals, small business owners and freelancers struggle with this exact problem. We all know how important it is to develop a personal brand or online portfolio because today’s job market is so competitive. But, ‘just publish it’ seems so much easier to say than it is to do! I was prompted to reflect on this through my teaching work in Digital Media at Deakin University.

Our Digital Media units encourage students to embrace the philosophy of Media Studies 2.0. which is based on students learning about digital media by immersing themselves in it; experimenting, creating, sharing, and connecting with others online. Senior Lecturer in Communication, Adam Brown, describes this highly practical approach as ‘learning by doing’.

I was brainstorming ways that I might be able to inspire confidence in students when the phrase ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ popped into my head. With several connotations and potential origins, ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ draws parallels to the concept of ‘learning by doing’. It’s also based on a similar premise to that of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which promotes the exchange of negative thoughts and patterns (bad habits) for positive ones (good habits), in order to affect change. In other words, ‘you are what you think’.

The more I thought, the more examples of ‘learning by doing’ or ‘faking it ‘til I made it’ I could identify throughout my own career. Two of these are below:

Starting my Journey as a Food and Product Photographer

In 2008, I had just bought my first DSLR camera and started experimenting with it at home. I was particularly interested in exploring macro photography and started creating artistic photos with natural elements (leaves, feathers, shells etc.) or food as subjects, but hadn’t engaged in any formal photography education yet. One day, my ex-husband (then, fiancé and business partner) told me that he’d volunteered my services as a food photographer for a major hotel group in Melbourne that he was doing signage for.

‘You did what?’ I said. ‘I can’t do that – I’m not ready!’

He assured me that anything I could produce was better than the amateur food photographs that the hotel group was using at the time, and if it didn’t work out, I could just waive my fee. Well, I went into full-on research and practice mode. Despite preparing as best I could, I was completely terrified when I turned up for my first shoot, but I concealed my nerves by putting on a big smile and greeting the Head Chef confidently. The session went as well as it could have.

Afterwards, I spent a lot of time editing (to compensate for styling, lighting and exposure errors) which served to quickly develop my Photoshop skills, and produce a more professional looking result. The client was happy, and I continued to shoot their food for several years afterwards.

As time went on, I upgraded my lighting equipment and honed my styling and photography skills so that I was able to spend a lot less time editing afterwards. I also went on to complete professional photography training and picked up many other food and product photography clients along the way. In the beginning, the only thing that got me through was a positive attitude, motivation to succeed and a good dose of adrenaline!

My First Role in Social Media Management

Around mid-2017 I was studying a Graduate Diploma of Communications, and one of my then teachers, Adam Brown referred stuart-hinds.com to me – they wanted someone to manage their social media and online marketing strategy. When I first read the offer, I was excited but unsure that I could deliver on the brief.

Despite my initial reservations, I contacted Stuart Hinds (an internationally-recognised Soft Tissue Therapist and Educator) anyway. We met for an interview, then he and his business partner confirmed that they wanted me to do the job. I immediately started researching, auditing their current social media accounts and developing a new marketing strategy.

It was an exciting opportunity given that they were just about to re-brand and expand their product offerings, and although their social media presence was minimal, Stuart Hinds himself had an established professional reputation in Australia and overseas. They also didn’t have a formalised social media marketing strategy at the time, so it was the perfect opportunity to develop something from the start, and (thankfully) see it grow so strongly as a result of my work.

I was lucky to have extensive small business and sales experience to draw on when I began this role, and my job-specific skills developed over time.

Often, there’s no substitute for being able to learn a set of skills in a practical setting. I strongly believe that if I had tried to learn the above skills in a traditional educational setting (through theory and simulation), then put them into practice later, it would have resulted in much lesser outcomes.

If you’re feeling unsure about how or where to start, I encourage you to just ‘start’. All you need to do is embrace the challenges and opportunities that come your way, work hard and learn from your mistakes.

Even if you feel like you’re ‘faking it’ to begin with, you’ll ‘make it’ in the end!

Have you got any examples of ‘faking it ’til you made it’ to share? I’d love to hear them in the comments below, or head over to Twitter.

Visit my page on Unsplash or Flickr to download a selection of my images, freely available for reuse.

Building Your Online Identity

Emily Wade · Apr 12, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Is your online-self a true representation of your offline-self’? Are you strategic about what you post online? And have you considered what impact your online profile, or lack thereof, could have on future job opportunities? We all have that friend who is constantly posting photos on social media about their perfect lifestyle, house, kids or marriage but the offline truth doesn’t seem to be quite so rosy. Without diving into a deep human psychology and behaviour discussion, it’s interesting to consider the conscious and unconscious actions that shape our online identities, and increasingly, the influence that our online portrayal of self can have on both personal credibility and career outlook.

I have begun a process of carefully planning and creating my online identity for professional purposes, and want to share my experiences and insights so far; some of the lessons I have learned along the way may also help you to create and leverage your own online presence.

What is online identity?

The notion of online identity has far-reaching effects beyond the basic expression-of-self in the online environment. In simple terms the Oxford English Dictionary defines identity as ‘the characteristics determining who or what a person is’. Online identity can be defined by our combined activities in social networking, building profiles, friending, liking, commenting, sharing, tagging, posting content and participating in online communities (Poletti & Rak, 2014).

The expression of our identity now extends beyond our offline activities to an accessible online environment, where the creation of content and social profiles is part of a ‘performance’ of selfhood. That is to say, ‘online social networking behaviour is as performative as ‘real life’ acts’ (Poletti & Rak, 2014). I subscribe to the belief that the expression of our online-self is consistent with our offline persona, and inevitably, although our online activities may be fragmented and multiplied, our online representations of self are fragments of the same core persona (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2015).

In the process of creating an online identity for business purposes, it’s important to consider the types of content that should be shared with your professional network, and which things might be better kept for personal profiles. This isn’t to say that personal opinions or humorous content should never be shared on your professional profiles. Sometimes, sharing the occasional personal post can give your online personality a touch of humanity ’and invite others to engage with you. There is a fine line here though; a good test is to consider if you would relate the same opinion or joke to any single member of your professional network if you were speaking to them in person. If you would feel uncomfortable doing that, it’s probably not a good idea to share it with them online. This is one of the reasons why it may be very important for you to create separate personal and professional online profiles.

It is important to qualify here that choosing which content you post online is not inauthentic; it is a calculated adaptation of information to suit the audience. We do this in exactly the same way offline when we adapt our topics of conversation to suit those we are speaking to. The information that we disclose to a best friend would most likely be quite different to that shared with a client or manager.

When you have multiple active social and professional profiles, it is good practice to get into the habit of double-checking that you are logged into the correct profile before publishing any post!

Creating an online identity

I first consciously started creating my own online identity in August 2007 when I registered my personal Facebook profile. I was a late adopter of social media and the last of my peer-group to join. Some of my friends had been active on sites such as Facebook and MySpace for a few years before I decided to join. I was concerned about privacy and didn’t see any personal benefit for joining. Eventually, peer pressure persuaded me to join Facebook, mainly for the purposes of photo sharing with my current friendship-group.

To give you a starting point for creating your own professional online identity, I have made a Slideshare presentation illustrating the framework of profiles that I have created in my own name, and in two business names; ‘Macro Grace’, which is my photography business, and this blog, ‘Brave Little Pig’. I have focused on LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, a customised Website and Twitter for the most part. I have also got accounts registered with YouTube and Soundcloud for the purposes of sharing content related to both of my businesses. I have followed all of the principles outlined in the infographic just mentioned to create my profiles. The platforms that you choose to use for your personal brand or business is largely dependent on the industry you work in. For example, many photographers will create a personal website to display their portfolio, along with Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr accounts. The latter two are formats that lend themselves to displaying photography because they have a strong visual focus. Today, it is important to be present and active across a variety of platforms but I believe that it is better to be active and engaged on one or two, rather than present and inactive on many. Having said that, it is still worthwhile reserving accounts in your business or personal names (or both) on any platform that you can realistically foresee using in the future. This means that no-one else will be able to register that name while you hold it (check Terms and Conditions of individual sites; some have rules about how long you can have a registered name that is inactive). Of course, if you try to register an account in your personal name and find it is taken, search for alternatives that still look professional with a minimum of compromise. The name of your accounts may become important later if you get more serious about SEO. For example, when I decided to register a Twitter account in the name of Emily Wade, I couldn’t (it was already registered by someone else), but I found that EmilyGraceWade was still available. This is preferable to choosing a name such as Emily2576 or Emily_virgo11. When you are interacting online, your username will often appear automatically in messages and tweets you send out, so if it looks professional, so do you!

Top 5 Tips for Building Quality Social Media Profiles

Some years later, I began to build more social networking profiles with the core purpose of improving SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for my freelance photography business. My efforts to create a professional online identity have been slow but strategic, and everything that I post online has been carefully considered to align with my personal and professional values. I prefer to post images and other content that I have created, or on subjects that I am genuinely interested, sourced from quality content-providers. I take pride in my work and always strive to create aesthetically pleasing publications. These high personal standards have admittedly slowed my online profile building. The infographic (left/above) lists five key principles that I have applied to building my profiles across multiple platforms. Have you applied any of these to your own profile building yet?

Moving beyond quality profiles to the world of creating and connecting

Creating good social and business profiles is only the first, small step in a process of building a robust professional network. It is certainly a necessary element in providing ‘social proof’ of employability (Guiseppi, 2016), but only forms part of the online identity equation. The next part of the equation; producing content and making connections, even has benefits beyond the professional realm. As Gauntlett (2011) argues in his book, Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0, that although the majority of people are consumers in this digital world, the tools available for individuals to be able to make and share creative work online can lead to connections and community-building in new ways, which in turn can lead to increased happiness and self-esteem. Gauntlett says, ‘The ‘making and doing’ culture does require a bit more effort – but it comes with rich rewards.’ Possibly one of the most exciting aspects of this theory is that the ways in which these connections may manifest and the opportunities that could arise are largely unpredictable.

I posted a poll on Twitter recently (below) to gauge my peers’ attitudes to the importance of professional profiles and quality content. Thirty-eight respondents overwhelmingly agreed that both are equally important.

Which is more important for building a professional and credible Digital Identity? #ALC708 #ALC203
— Emily Wade (@EmilyGraceWade) April 5, 2017

Ticking off one aspect of creating a professional online identity doesn’t automatically lead to career opportunities. The subject of content creation is one that enters online discussions daily, in the form of blog posts, social media posts (usually with the purpose of marketing a business or service) and forum discussions. This article from Smart Company discusses the large proportion of marketing budgets that is now spent on creating content, and how the focus on digital marketing (which includes email, social media and various forms of content) is driving businesses forward; when I shared a link to the above-mentioned article on Twitter it attracted a tweet of agreement from a fellow student who said: ‘There is a saying in my office that content is king’. These kinds of discussions highlight the increasing awareness among business owners and employees alike that creating quality content is essential for promoting a personal or company brand.

After discussing the equal importance of building profiles and creating content online, I hope I have inspired you to continue your professional online identity building with renewed strategy and positivity. My personal focus now rests with developing a regular schedule of posting and engaging online that is both consistent and sustainable in the long term. There is a lot more to come on this journey, such as the types of content to share, best times to post, how to use scheduling tools and develop marketing plans. So, stay tuned!

References

Gauntlett, D., (2011), Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0, Cambridge: Polity.

Guiseppi, M., (2016), Mind Your Online Reputation: The personal branding social proof paradigm and two little-known ways to master it. Career Planning & Adult Development Journal, 32 (2), 101 – 106.

Poletti, A. & Rak, J. (2014), Identity Technologies: constructing the self online. The University of Wisconsin Press.

Oxford Living English Dictionaries (2017), https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ Last accessed 9/04/17

Sandy, C.J., Gosling, S.D., & Durant, J (2013). Predicting consumer behaviour and media preferences: the comparative validity of personality traits and demographic variables. Psychology and Marketing, 30 (11), 937-949.

Chamorro-Premuzic,T., (2015), How different are your online and offline personalities? The Guardian (online) https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/sep/24/online-offline-personality-digital-identity?CMP=share_btn_tw Last accessed 9/04/17.

Cover Image: Adobe Stock