I spent much time deliberating on the type of blog I would create, and tossed up between a book blog and a cooking blog, as they are both passions of mine. I decided on the cooking blog as I already have a book blog and wanted to create a web presence that showed a different side of me for the purpose of this assignment. I first had to recall information about presenting the self, as discussed by Goffman, and thought about the best way to present myself as someone who enjoys cooking, whilst also reflecting on who I am as a person (1959). This is how I chose to create ‘Meals Below $10’, as it reflected on my enjoyment for cooking and the fact that I’m a student who tends to cook meals on a budget. I wanted to be able to present recipes that are delicious and will fit the budgets of students whilst also being meals that don’t take long to cook, or require extensive skills to prepare. From here I chose to use blogger as my main portal. My supporting nodes were then chosen, these being Twitter, Flickr and Pinterest. This exegesis will outline the decisions I made in choosing these nodes and the corresponding design elements.
Starting with the central node, I tossed up between wordpress and blogger, having used both in the past, and decided to select blogger as I prefer the editing layout and have found it to work with. I then worked on choosing a layout, and being unhappy with the selection that blogger presents, I looked elsewhere for a layout that reflected the theme of my web presence. After much searching I came across Gisele Jaquenod’s website, a designer who has created many free blogger layouts for others to use, on the condition that her work is credited (Jaquenod, 2012). On my blog, she is credited through a feature built into the layout code; however I have also added a button in a more prominent position on the right hand side. I would have liked to be able to develop my own layout but I am not particularly artistic and felt it would be more visually appealing to find someone who had created a brilliant layout, than create a subpar one. I did, however, create my own profile picture. I chose to keep it simple and have the name of the blog within it so that it would be easily identified across all of the nodes as a way of maintaining the theme even on nodes that cannot change their layouts, such as Pinterest.
The first supporting node I knew I was going to work with was Twitter. I have been using Twitter for several years now and feel it is an essential node to compliment a blog. This is because Twitter enables a user to ‘build your network and then chat about what you are doing’ (Morris, 2010). In order to create a successful presence on the web, a user must build a network of readers through a variety of mediums. Twitter has become essential to this because it allows users to announce to their followers when new blog posts are available and chat with other users about relevant topics (Newson, Houghton & Patten, 2008). I also like Twitter for how it encourages posting more regularly than blogging, which means that even when not blogging, you are still able to engage with your readership.
For my second supporting node I chose Flickr, as I planned on taking my own photos for my blog posts. I wanted a tool that would be able to divide the photos into groups, or ‘sets’ as Flickr refers to them, and then be able to embed these into my blog post. In the blog I have used two ways to demonstrate this, one by embedding an image using the URL, and another by using a tool directly from Flickr that enables posting an entire set to a blog. Flickr has been great for creating a portfolio of images that links to my blog, but is still a separate entity from the blog, allowing visitors to peruse through my images without having to go through every blog post. Out of all my nodes, Flickr was the only one I hadn’t used before so more time was spent trying to upload images and remember how to put them into sets each time I uploaded new ones. I found the upload interface quite difficult to follow in these times, and I think that if I were going to continue using a website for uploading images that I would look into different options and find the one that best suited me.
Lastly, I chose to work with the relatively new social networking site, Pinterest. As stated by their website ‘Pinterest lets you organise and share all the beautiful things you find on the web’ (Pinterest, 2012). Furthermore, Zarro and Hall refer to Pinterest as a site for ‘social collecting’ which is the ‘collection, categorisation and representation of a digital object in a system that is accessible via the web’ (2012). This means that Pinterest enables the user to categorise content into different folders or ‘pin boards’ such as ‘movies to watch’, ‘wedding ideas’, and ‘food and drink’. I have created my own folders that I feel are relevant to the theme of my web presence and have folders such as ‘dinner ideas’, ‘dessert’, ‘for the home’, ‘kitchen wish-list’ and ‘future kitchen’. While the images are ‘re-pinned’ from other users, Pinterest allows me to divulge my personality by re-pinning images and ideas that appeal to me and indicate my interests to others. This would allow followers of my web presence to gain a better understanding of who I am and what they are likely to see from my blog in the future.
Creating this web presence has been an interesting and fun experience and has allowed me to develop new skills as I learned to use Flickr, link my blog to different websites and discover the different reasons people may use these tools. Overall I believe I have created a web presence that reflects current social media trends and that I have used nodes that are applicable to the cooking genre that I have chosen.
List of References
Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. Retrieved from http://moodle.cornellcollege.edu/0809/file.php/1664/presetnation_of_self_in_everyday_life.pdf
Jaquenod, G. (2012). Free blog templates for blogger and wordpress. Retrieved from http://www.giselejaquenod.com.ar/blog/blogger-templates/
Morrs, T. (2010). All a twitter: A personal and professional guide to social-networking with twitter. Que Publishing. Retrieved from: http://tinyurl.com/c627m3l
Newson, A., Houghton, D., & Patten, J. (2008). Blogging and other social media: Exploiting the technology and protecting the enterprise. London, UK: Gower Publishing Ltd.
Zarro, M., & Hall, C. (2012). Pinterest: Towards social collecting for #linking #using #sharing. Retrieved from http://mikezarro.com/docs/Zarro_JCDL2012_Poster.pdf
