Aussie baby boomers learn how to blog
November 21st 2007 by Megan Bayliss in Child Abuse
Tonight I’m having a few girlfriends around. Mostly baby boomer colleagues (child protection professionals), my girlfriends are a committed bunch, who have no idea how to navigate around or read a blog site because blogs as a communication tool are still relatively new to most Australians, let alone those baby boomers/gen X’s of us who grew up without any computers or computer games at all.
Blogging is NOT second nature to all people. By gee, even reading online news is not preferable to pulling up the sofa at 7pm (note: I hate the TV and LOVE online news). Search engine optimisation, indexing, spider, bots, links (even knowing that clicking on a high lighted link takes you to further relevant information), technorati, blogrolls, social network sites, plugins, etc, can be scary and off putting technical terms. Platforms that do not use home pages (blogspot) often confuse a reader (where do I go now?) and cost the blogger page views and repeat visits. Constant feedback to myself when I email instructions to colleagues is that their eyes glaze over because of technical stuff - it’s all too hard, can’t you just show us.
So I am; tonight. No blogging expert, I am though, a trainer and professional communicator. Surely this combination will help me impart the blogging basics that I am comfortable with and that my colleagues do not yet know. Social Workers and technology are not synonymous terms but tenacity and a wanton desire to positively influence social agendas make Social Workers and blogs pretty good buddy’s I’m thinking.
In preparation for sharing blog navigation as a platform for consciousness raising, education and research, I wanted to share a couple of posts that I have found particularly helpful for understanding and that you gals may want to have a read of before you rock up this evening:
- What’s a blog got to do with child protection?
- What is a blog?
- How do search engines work - Web Crawlers
- New to the blogosphere?
- Advantages of a blogspot blogger (Tonight we’ll be raising a blog spot blog as an example of how super easy this blogging stuff can be).
- Blog Design - Open Your Eyes.
- 7 Encouraging Must-Read Articles For The Blogger Just Starting Out
- Top 7 blog mistakes to avoid
And just so you know that blogging is not some way out unusual writers thing that only I do, here’s a few other Cairns bloggers covering a plethora of issues, causes and business related products:
- Andrew Griffiths (Australia’s leading small business expert)
- Spasmodic Dysphonia (a retired Social Worker that most of you coming tonight will know)
- FutureOfCairns.net (Discussing the Future of Cairns, Australia)
- Cairns Blog.net
Stumble it!
November 21st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
This is a great thing you are doing. Welcome all new bloggies..
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:21 am
Thanks Thiru. You may have seen us crawling your site last night. We used you as an example of how to find out who the readers are, what they do, etc. Thanks so much for commenting - it gave the women a buzz.
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Thanks Megan and Paul for teaching a mature woman (what’s this baby boomers thing?) a few new tricks! It can be done. I guess I realised I have learned more about blogging since I started on Imaginif than I had realised, so that has boosted my blogging confidence.
Keran
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Hey Keran, lol, I am a baby boomer but not mature. So you reckon you are mature and not a baby boomer. Ummmmm…Baby boomers are from ‘46 to ‘64 so I hate to tell you this but, you are a baby boomer sister…..lol
I had a great time last night. Yes, you have learned heaps about blogging.
Take care Baby Boomer Birdwing.
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hey Megan
Ok, so I have some issues about my age! Thanks bb sister
Keran
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I should have read this post earlier. I would have baked a cake in welcome in case you visited me :-). I hope your visitors came to see the advantages of blogging and how wonderful it is. Please let them know if they need any help they can contact me via my blog via comments or my contact form if they are not ready to leave comments.
Sue - from Generation Jones - the lost generation according to Wikipedia!
November 24th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Oh Sue, cake would have been very nice too. I’ll give you the heads up next time…in fact, I’m repeating this process next Wed evening with three of my husbands business colleagues - people I have never met.
November 29th, 2007 at 2:12 am
I would be very interested in learning what you find is working in relation to persuading non bloggers of the benefits. I know a number of people who I am sure would find blogging of real use to them - most for personal reasons and a couple for business purposes.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Hi Sue, I am actually going to write a post on this over the next few weeks. Will email it to you (or maybe even put it in the Carnival of Australia) once it’s done.
I had to cancel last night’s bloginair because I went to the dentist again yesterday morning and was in no fit talk sense - talk about being drug affected!!!!!!!!!!!!! My goodness, I was hopeless.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Well done - look forward to it