The Why and How of Establishing Your Web Persona by David Ing

In a time where more and more knowledge workers nowadays are starting to look after their online presence on the (social) Web, sometimes it is actually a bit difficult to get things going. Probably more than anything else because of the huge amount of resources to get started that are available out there. So with the intention of helping out in this particular area to those folks who may thinking about it, but who may not be quite sure where to go, here is a weblog post that I guess I should have shared over here a little while ago. I know. Better late than never.

I am sure that you are now expecting from me to put together a number of different tips on how to get things going, right? Well, not quite so. In the spirit of knowledge sharing and, specially, re-use, I am actually going to point you folks to a couple of weblog posts from one of my IBM fellow colleagues, David Ing (Co-author of Coevolving), who has been making use of those resources in order to get a bunch of other people online and in charge of their own online presence. And quite successfully.

Check out, for instance, "The Why and How of Establishing Your Web Persona" where David gets to put together a very thorough article sharing some really good tips on how you can manage your own online persona to match your needs, interests and whatever else. Here is a quick, brief outline of what you would be able to learn in there:

"A. Why would I want to take control of my Web persona?
B. The first two steps: A webmail address and a domain name search
C. A blog on WordPress.com is free, and it’s easy to move content elsewhere (If you decide so, later)
D. Offer e-mail subscriptions to your blog
E. Write content!
F. Move the content to your own hosted domain"

You would be able to see how David has included some really good explanations for each of the different entry points, but at the same time you will see how he has put together a pretty dense set of helpful links that would provide you with that additional edge of everything you would need to know about. Pretty impressive and incredibly helpful. (I have gone through it myself and I have found a few tips that I was not really aware of and which make just perfect sense). Totally recommended, to say the least.

But that is not all of it, because talking about the topic related to the creation and maintenance of your own blog on the Web, here is another superb blog entry that David has put together and which basically explains how you can go ahead and create / maintain your own blog in your own domain: "Installing and Customising WordPress on Your Own Domain".

To give you a little bit of an advance of what you can expect on that second blog post from David, here is the outline from the article itself:

"A. Some Web site steps leading up to installing WordPress
B. Install WordPress
C. Select and upload some themes
D. Activate a style, and set up the basic look
E. Set Options
F. Create a user persona as editor
G. Install plugins
H. Edit the Blogroll and "Hello World" post"

Yes, I know, both of those articles are rather extensive and would need some digesting further, but, I tell you, if you are looking for an extensive user guide on how to get things going with your own online persona beyond the firewall and on to the Web, these David Ing’s blog posts are probably as good as it gets: rather fundamental and resourceful to help you make it successfully.

(A big massive thanks to David for putting together such insightful resources and, much more importantly, for sharing them with us all! Well done, David! Thanks!)

Tags: Web Presence, Online Persona, Persona, Metablogging, Technology, IBM, David Ing, Coevolving, Web Persona, WordPress, Blogs, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM