The Dogma of Blogging by Kalinagoenglish
There’s really only one core, key principle when it comes to becoming a successful edu-blogger, and it is this:
“Do unto your fellow bloggers
what you would have them
do unto you.”
Follow this dogma on their blogs, within the blogosphere and right across the twitterverse and eventually – you must be patient – the Great Google God will bless your life with love and you shall be gloriously showered with many, many visitations.
Once you have proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are most selfless and diligent then you shall also be rewarded with the keywords to Google’s first page and forever more, be known as blogian.
image credit:
Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, Queen Mariana of Austria, blogging
(c) KarenneJoySylvester, 2010
This article is part of a new series: Thoughts on Edu-blogging. Karenne is an ELT edu-blogger, a ESP:IT teacher, EdTech teacher-trainer and materials writer, originally from Grenada in the Caribbean. She currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany and writes Kalinago English and BusinessEnglish~5mins.
Tags: Blogging, Etiquette, Kalinago
ELT Basics | turklis1 | 
July 9, 2010 1:02 pm
7 Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By turklis1, July 11, 2010 @ 11:34 am
I have not received the keys to the Kingdom of Google yet. Perhaps not enough good deeds? But the question is, is access granted through Works or through Faith?
By Karenne Sylvester, July 11, 2010 @ 12:50 pm
“But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” James2:20
although it has to be said, also that
“No man is justified by works.” Romans 3.
The thing is, Nick – it’s really not enough to wait for Google to find you, you must also provide something for Google to find.
One of the things that bloggers forget to do is to submit their sitemaps to Google!
They don’t load up keywords related to their edublogs, describing their blogs content, or sometimes may even forget to switch on the button in the back-pages which allows Google to crawl through their sites (varies across platforms).
Another problem lies in the fact that many, many edu-bloggers keep their prayers secret
they dream of being found by others through Google, but simply aren’t comfortable with saying so publicly and may even say things like “they’re blogging just to amuse themselves… it doesn’t matter if no one visits their page.”
But that’s just not true.
Well, in part it might be true, but in part it might just be an excuse. Blogging is a conversation – the first real written permanent conversation in our species’ development (seriously exciting times) – and to be honest, only crazy people like talking to themselves over the very long period of time that it takes to go from being a small-blogger to a big-blogger.
So… I’d rather suggest that it’s more that they haven’t grasped things like, despite the religious irony in this piece, haven’t actually grasped that the easiest, simpliest, most righteous thing they can do is to become a part of other people’s conversations.
Once they have contributed and participated and helped others and joined in other people’s blogs, then in time, those with whom they have been talking will be interested enough to then find out what is going on on that bloggers’ page too – and if the content is worthy, will share and link to it.
Those links (not the blog dumping I mentioned on Sue and Mike’s glossaries) help to tell Google to come on over here, look! Here lies a noble blogian and worthy of your Kingdom.
Karenne
By Darren Elliott, July 13, 2010 @ 12:35 am
You have to mean it, don’t you? No one can keep up this conversations over an extended period of time just to get blog hits. And the meaningful dialogue with teachers around the world is reward in itself, no?
By Karenne Sylvester, July 13, 2010 @ 8:20 am
Hi Darren,
Am I allowed to keep the religious analogy going – I do hope too many people aren’t offended by it…
Yes, precisely and just like with any ‘ism or ‘ian, this isn’t a case of “pretend to be a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Sufist/etc” as blog hits will not come because you spend a month or two helping other bloggers so you get some traction and it absolutely never should be done for that shallow a purpose – they come because you simply help others – because that’s who you are.
By the way, did you know that the mantra “do unto others” is the one single – the only single “rule” for man which can be found right across the world, in every single nation, in every single culture, in every single ideology in the world…
(A very long story on why I know that)…
Thanks for chipping in,
Karenne
By Karenne Sylvester, July 13, 2010 @ 12:31 pm
Of course, being me, despite the fact am so running against several clocks and have3 got to get to class again this avo…
I wanted to come back and add a different analogy, moving slightly from the religious because that just has all the potential to explode in my face (though a good bit of disagreement never hurt any good conversation)…
If we edubloggers think of the staffrooms we work in now – who do people turn to whenever they have a question?
The guy with a smile and quick suggestions on how to bluster on through that FCE coursebook – making it all interactive and fun… or the guy who spends a lot of time telling you, sigh, how much he hates that book too but yeah he made some exercises a while back that really worked but ya kno’ – shame and all that, but he’s hoping to publish them one day so no, you can’t have a copy or even a peek…
Karma’s karma.
By turklis1, July 13, 2010 @ 4:50 pm
Darren & Karenne – I think meaningful communication is as important in the blogosphere as it is in the classroom. You definitely have to care about what you say and I think it’s quite obvious that most commenters do.
Karenne has a point though, there are bloggers out there that are shy about commenting. They don’t feel their opinion is important enough, they are afraid to be challenged, they don’t think they know enough, etc. But, if you really want your blog to grow – and I think most people do – then it’s important to interact with the community in this way. Otherwise, no one will know you are out there and search engines certainly won’t rank you very high.
This is also where all the lovey dovey stuff comes in. If you aren’t nice to people, you won’t get on their blogrolls, recommended by them, tweeted by them etc. I feel that’s where the falseness enters into things, but it’s no different than other areas of life.
By adam, September 4, 2010 @ 11:34 am
Haven’t popped round for a while so it was nice to see two of my favourite bloggers collaborating. Great stuff.