Ellie’s Digital Identity

Elizabeth Couchum  Digital Identity Paper

In doing this project, Creating a Digital Identity, I was more than overwhelmed because I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I decided to approach this paper as a blog since eventually, I will have to create a blog sometime during this process. In one month’s time, I will go from having only two social sites to having way more sites than I ever thought I would have.

Creating a Digital Identity

November 12, 2012

Discovery of a Digital Presence First thing that I did was to have Corey, a classmate from my Digital History class, Google me to see what or if anything there was about me on the Internet. Corey found my Pinterest site, but there was nothing else to be found. This was good news to me. I never wanted to have a digital presence. I have two social media websites, Facebook and Pinterest. For Corey not to find a digital presence for me means I have a lot of work to do.

Building a Digital Identity

In order to have a digital identity, I had to do was to sign up for Twitter, Word Press, LinkedIn, and Google + based on the recommendation of Dr. Brooks. Having these websites were daunting since I never had any real interest in social media. Choosing a domain name was easy, I just used my email address because it was easy for me to remember. Twitter was the first social site I created. At a workshop that I attended a few weeks ago, I sat at a table with several women and one of the women had a Twitter account. After I told her about this assignment, she helped me create a Twitter account and showed me how to follow other people or just things I liked.

After I had created other accounts on all of the sites I mentioned and now I am trying to link all of them. I was able to link Word Press and Twitter to my LinkedIn. Linking my Google+ to anything was proving to be a challenge. I am unsure of what Google+ actually does. I haven’t figured this site out yet at the time I am writing this. When I tried to link Google+ to LinkedIn, I was entering in my e-mail address. This was allowing people who might want to look at this site to go straight in my e-mails. I knew that this was not right. After a few bad attempts, I reached out for help. A friend came over and was able to link Google+ to LinkedIn and was able to show me what I did wrong. I have also found apps for all these social sites and downloaded them to my iPad. My hope is that once I get everything entered to these sites on the Internet and linked to each other, I may be able to work straight off my iPad wall.

Academia.edu? To use this site or not?

Today in class, Dr. Brooks talked to us about this assignment and answered a few questions, which was good since I had quite a few questions. I learned that if there is a reason why we are not going to use one of the social media sites that was mentioned in class, we should do a write-up of the reason why. So my main question has been, what is adademia.edu? Not knowing what this is, I searched Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academia.edu and found out that it is “a platform for academics to share research papers, monitor impacts, and follow research in a particular field.” I have decided that this particular social media site is not one I will be utilizing for several reasons, I do not plan on going into the academia world at all. However, I understand plans could change. I don’t write enough papers to put it online. At the moment, I am not a part of any graduate program. I am not doing any real work in research that I do not feel comfortable in sharing with anyone except for my teacher and classmates. I do not believe that this site will be of any use to me at this moment in time.

Objectives for online identity

My main goal has always been not to have a digital presence.I have always had a lock down on my Facebook page, I don’t have a lot of friends. It is less than 150 friends. On Facebook, I try to be positive and uplifting and don’t share a whole lot of personal stuff. I say my funny little things or my plans for the day, and share news items and photos. So, my main thing over the past week is to question what I want to share about myself? Who do I want to on these sites? Over the past weekend, I ventured onto LinkedIn and entered my education and places I worked. Is that too much? Who can see that? I did find a button so I can have control of who sees any information about me. That makes me feel somewhat better. Now that I have my sites, my main objective now is to write a blog of things that would interest me.

Current professional goals

Do I have any current professional goals? I think I have a lot of long term goals. At the moment, I am not working. I am taking a course at BSU because I want to go into another direction from the one I was on for a couple of years. I have been testing the waters so to speak to see if this was the right path I should be on. So far I have to say it has been encouraging. My goal and my dream is to utilize my office skills and fascination of research and Native American history all into one. One goal or dream is to create a Native American Cultural Center. In other words, my current goal is to learn as much as I can in order to put this long term goal/dream into place. I would like to work somewhere I would be able to learn how to do this. The problem is of course is my experience. I need either experience and/or the education to do this. So, I guess the next step is to find the right “audience” for my websites and figure out how to make these sites work in my favor to make all of this work.

November 18, 2012

Over the weekend, I have managed to connect all my social sites: Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and WordPress all together. In my settings for each site, I managed to figure out how show my WordPress and my Twitter updates in Facebook. Since I am still unsure how I want to use my Twitter, I set my Twitter status that shows up in Facebook to be seen by only me. The opposite is with WordPress, all my friends in Facebook not only can see my blog, but are able to click the link and go straight into my WordPress site. Last night, I actually made my first real blog. I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to write about at first. I wanted to ease into it. With a help of a good friend, I decided to write about the holidays and my childhood memories. Little by little, day by day, I will ease into talking about my grandparents and my memories of them growing up and what I learned from them and the rest of my family about the Native American heritage that they left behind.

November 21, 2012

Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, and WordPress

I have now all of these social media sites and over this past week, I have learned how each of them works if I didn’t know before. I also have learned how they all work together. I have learned how to tweet mainly on my page, I am not sure how to tweet on other pages that I like. I am still unsure what the “hashtag” or “#” and the “@” sign mean and how to work them so not really sure if I am using them correctly. My Twitter and Facebook are linked, however, I have set my Twitter to be seen only by me on Facebook. I am still unsure about Tweeting and if I want any of my tweets to be seen by any of my Facebook friends. I have also made a few blogs in WordPress. Since I have linked my WordPress to my Facebook and Twitter pages, my friends on my Facebook can see the link to blog and are allowed to click the link and go straight into my blog. The same can be said for Twitter.

Professional needs and goals….

Right now, my goal is to make more contacts on my social sites. I haven’t figured out how to do that. Eventually, I will figure it all out. My professional goals at the moment are none. However, in the future, I hope to have quite a few followers who are interested in history especially in Native American history. Also, I hope to create a professional circle of those who are in administration and research.

November 24, 2012

Feedback

Thanks to my classmate, Molly, who looked at my social sites that I created over the past month, I was given some really good feedback. Based on Molly’s recommendation, I made changes to my blog. I was able to figure out how to change the name of my WordPress blog. I originally had the title of my blog as my sign-in name, and I also changed my tagline on the About page. I didn’t realize that I should add information to the About page. That was very helpful. Also based on Molly’s suggestion, who indicated that she didn’t see my links to my LinkedIn and Google+ on my WordPress blog, I went back in to see what I did wrong. I worked on that so hard, I thought I had all my links visible and her recommending that I should link my other sites was not something I wanted to hear. I worked on it some more and I believe I now have it.

Since I added my Google+ to my blog, I realized that I should fix my Google+ up a little more and have some information about myself instead of just pictures that I like. After finding the edit visibility link on Google, I was able to add some information. I also added more pictures of history and things that I like that I felt represented myself. After looking at Molly’s WordPress blog and her feedback, I have learned that I have a long way to go to have everything come together and have everything look professional. I also learned that even when you think you are done, you really aren’t done. Things are always changing.

Plan for Sustainability

I need a plan on how to make “friends” on LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, and WordPress. On my LinkedIn site, I plan to keep it updated as I get a job and take more classes. I am pretty excited that I have more than four followers on LinkedIn. Google+ is a site that I am really trying to figure out. I have managed to edit my personal information and I only have three friends there, but that’s ok. I haven’t put my Google+ site the way I think it needs to be yet. After I do, I plan to invite my Facebook friends to be on this site. I now think I have a handle on Google+ and what it does. Lately, my goal on Twitter is just to “like” what I am interested in, like Pinterest. I have been trying to figure it out. My goal is to reach out to more people who are interested in the same things that I am. As of now, I only have four people who are my “friends”. Another goal is to make my blogs more interesting that people would like to read. I need to focus my WordPress blogs on my Native American heritage. My plan is to write more about my grandparents on my dad’s side. I have so many memories of them both and I want to share that with my friends.

November 25, 2012

What I learned from Feedback Over the past month

I learned that creating a digital identity is not easy. Also, learning what your own link for each site is challenging. I learned after my feedback from Molly that even if you think you did something or created something, it may not come out as you had hoped and that you need to go back and try again. Great to have a second pair of eyes. I still have a lot of work to do, but in a month, I have come a long way in social media. I learned that choosing what to share about yourself online is difficult, perception is everything. A person doesn’t want to appear as a dud but also doesn’t want to have a persona that is so wildly out there or they share everything there is to know about themselves, no one would want to get to know the real person. My goal was to be able to create a digital identity and over the past month the goal has changed into having a low key identity that grows and change as I do in real life. The real life and the digital life don’t have to totally mirror one another, but they can be closely related.

November 26, 2012

Last night was a nightmare. I went into my WordPress blog to add a few buttons for my Twitter and Google+ pages. I ended up deleting a few pages and had to start all over again. I decided that since I was to start over, to change the theme of my blog. I decided at the last minute to also add in Goodreads, a site that catalogs the books that I have been reading. Creating a button for Goodreads was almost as difficult as figuring out Google+. In the end though, my WordPress blog page looks almost professional. I also decided to allow my tweets be seen by the public in order to have a Twitter button on my page. This process was exhausting but a fantastic learning experience. I can now say….. I have a digital identity.

My links are as shown:

WordPress = http://elizamay52site.wordpress.com

LinkedIn = http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elizabeth-couchum/5b/928/b88

Twitter = http://twitter.com/e_506_couc

Google+ = https://plus.google.com/app/basic/113103309308313243969/about

Comments

  1. Hi Ellie,

    Is this still an active project? I would love to learn more about your efforts to create a digital identity.

    Steve
    http://www.follr.me/steve