So you have made the Social Media plunge with Twitter and now you want to share your thinking and reflections without the restriction of 140 characters, well this challenge is for you. Welcome to the world of “Blogging".
The Challenge
- Get yourself signed up to a blogging platform - no walkthrough for this one, you will have to do some investigating and find a platform that suits you (see the list below for some starting points)
- Write a post - Try “Social Media, Research and me!" as a title
- Share a link to your post on Twitter with the #NWRDSoMe or #NWRDChat hashtags
There are lots of platforms to use for longer writing and all have different strengths, this is by no means a complete round up but does highlight the main players (and a couple of interesting alternatives)
Wordpress https://wordpress.com/
The most popular blogging platform out there, lots of customisation available, mobile app, multiple users, can be built into a sophisticated web presence (inc. commerce etc). However all that customisation can be overly complex, particularly for new users!
Tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/
Simple interfaces, focuses on content, easy to apply themes but not as well known as Wordpress and is purely a blogging platform (can’t scale into something else)
Blogger https://www.blogger.com
Google’s blogging platform, fairly simple, themes available, mobile app available (but you have to initially set up the blog on a browser)
Postach.io http://postach.io/
The blogging platform from Evernote. Tightly integrated with evernote allowing you to turn notebooks into blogs. Simple templates, easy to use once set up and definitely one to consider if you are an evernote user.
The others
Storify https://storify.com
Doesn’t currently have a mobile app for creation but is an interesting platform for reflection particularly with its ability to pull content from other social media platforms
Medium https://medium.com/
Not in the top group here only because it doesn’t have a mobile app for creating content but it is definitely the new boy in town for long writing and comes from one of the guys responsible for Blogger and Twitter
Svbtle https://svbtle.com/
Focus on simplicity and distraction free writing. If minimalist design appeals and total focus on content is important then this might be the platform for you.
If you are interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging