Are You There Blog? It's Me, Patty.

Blogging is one of those things where literally anyone is able to it, but the question remains: are you able to do it well? There are so, so many different blogging websites out there; more than I even realized were available. They’re usually free (at first) and you can set it up in seconds. As someone who is actually trying to get into the habit of blogging and participating in social media, I tried out a few to see what suits me best.

After checking out the options, I decided to focus on Blogger and WordPress. A great deal of the websites I reference and use to help me in my career as a youth services librarian are run on either of those sites. If they’re sites I use in my personal learning network, it only makes sense to join the crowd. Since they’re well known, they also hold a bit of credibility; I would feel more confident sharing my blog with others if it’s on site so well used. I crafted the exact same post on both my Blogger and my WordPress page to see how it felt navigating the site and to see the ultimate result.

My first draft.

Results: I don’t know which is better for me! This article gave me a lot to consider between the pros and cons of WordPress vs. Blogger. Blogger feels easier to craft and use, but WordPress has so many more design capabilities and works, in my opinion, as both blog and a content management site. I’m going to cheat and say both are great.

Sidenote: I love Tumblr. If I could communicate through only gifs and screen shots of television shows and movies, I would. In a heartbeat. The thing about Tumblr is that I find it easy to become sidetracked and waste a lot of time on silly, unproductive stuff. It’s all certainly amusing, but not really helping me learn anything—and honestly takes away from the stuff I SHOULD be doing instead. There are some exceptional Tumblr blogs and I love having a blend of different interests, and variety of postings that are all conveniently located in one space. And truthfully, This sister article to the one link above made me rethink my Tumblr activity. It is without a doubt an incredibly active and creative site. But I feel like Tumblr is often used by many for more of a personal (and somewhat anonymous) outlet as opposed to an informal professional learning network. That, and also that’s a platform for emotional, misinformed teens….