Comments on: Reputation, academia and blogging

By: Being an academic and a blogger - two models, one mind « Random Thoughts of a Student of the Environment

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:31:59 +0000

[...] things that I have found most challenging with the blogging I have done is keeping some degree of a reputation in the academic realm, and translating social media for the hard-core academics. Surely, some of my former professors [...]

By: Beth

Beth — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:13:45 +0000

I think you should blog what you want to blog. As Cecily says, not everyone is going to read every post and that’s fine. Some might skip over the enviro ones, others might skip over the personal ones. You might even consider having separate blog feeds for different categories (e.g., all blog postings, only those in the “Environ” category, only those in the “Restaurant Review” category, only those in the “Personal” category).

And I don’t think that having a personal blog means you can’t have both an academic reputation AND a social media one. As you know, my blog is almost exclusively a personal one (I very, very rarely touch on my areas of academic expertise) and it hasn’t hurt my academic reputation.

As for the question: ““do I let my students read my personal blog?” the answer is “you can’t stop them if you want to have a public blog.”

On a somewhat unrelated note: I think you should turn off “Snapshots” on your blog – it’s so annoying! Do people actually find that function valuable?

By: Tyler Ingram

Tyler Ingram — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:29:04 +0000

Hey Raul if you’re worried about mixing your posts up and having people judge you based on your personal perspective towards things you could always branch off your environmental posts to another blog? There are a lot of bloggers who blog multiple sites; granted it may be harder and more time consuming (or not…)

Then you would have your personal blog where you could do whatever without worrying about ruining your environmental aspect and then you could have your newly branded environmental blog etc.

Take my blog as an example: it is a lot more personal than most blogs out there. I talk about what I want to talk about in the way I want to. It may interest people, it may not but I continue to do it nonetheless. Someone was telling me that because of my personal nature on my blog, more people find my words to be true and listen… or something lol…

I thought to myself if I continued to do more product reviews (aside from my doing work for Futurelooks.com) I would create a separate blog site to keep the two aspect separate. Not sure if I am saying all this right but hopefully the idea is there

By: Trevor

Trevor — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:55:22 +0000

Glad you brought this stuff up. I personally find it difficult to just throw it all out there for the world to see. It would certainly feel a lot better to let loose but you never know whose watching. Kinda shitty, really – to feel ‘under the gun’, which is why I have so much respect for people who just write and do whatever they want.

Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.

By: Mel

Mel — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:40:13 +0000

I’ve thought about this some, which is why my public blog is limited to the photographs that I take and what I choose to write about them. I have a couple of personal blogs that I update, but they’re locked, and I only allow friends to read them. I don’t have my full name on those.

Anyway…of course, you can choose to do whatever you wish. I enjoy reading about all kinds of things, even things that I don’t necessarily understand, so I would keep reading, regardless of your topics.

By: Cecily

Cecily — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:58:10 +0000

Raul: I fought this a while back and fought it so much that I actually stopped blogging. Your blog is your brand, and your brand is you. I think you should feel free to write about whatever you want in a unified space without worrying about spreading your identities so thin across dispersed virtual spaces. If people aren’t interested in your enviro posts, they don’t have to read them. Those who aren’t interested in your social media posts can avoid those as well.

While I’m not in academia, I am in a profession where writing in any format is looked upon fondly. Of course, I run the risk of potential employers not agreeing with a position I might take on my blog, but as long as I’m building a good reputation for myself, and can translate that reputation into some sort of added value for the institution where I work, I the benefits far outweigh the risks.