Postgrad Blog

brownbinman

Hi all

I have just setup a blog, am I hoping to give my experiences as a postgrad student during my time in DCU...www.postgrad-life.com

It will simply be of my experiences, without slagging slandering anyone (as might get in ****). Im hoping it might help other current or future students of DCU, especially as ill be new to it.

Anyhoo, im just wondering what your opinions of it would be? I was thinking of asking this Prof Ferdinand lad for a link off his blog, would really help with traffic, but would the college take a big opinion of this blog?

Any thoughts on it would be great

cheers

Mods, please move if required

giveliberty

Good luck with trying to get Ferdy to link to you. He has two links, that is all.

If you want to develop good SEO and therfore increase traffic register with the main blog aggregators and blogspheres such as irishblogs.

Also see if NinthLevelIreland will follow you - they are one of the main education blog aggregates in Ireland.

My blog gets about 5 hits a day from a link to my blog on Ferdinand's site through some obscure reference.

If you are looking to give some decent commentary and you are actually going to give decent observations and analysis on services, problems and anything else that makes a post-grads life sooooo unbearable, like maybe annoying undergrads getting in the way of your research - then you might get picked up by The Irish Times which regularly lifts decent quotes out of blogs and boards.ie on various education related matters. The Indo has been known to do the same.

It might be worth dropping an email to Walsh and Flynn to let them know of the blogs existence, but they might just hit the delete button rapidly too.

Try to be authoritative as possible and objective, but say it as it is too. You are not the first to try this, but there is an interesting hook to it so you might garnish some following.

I like your request for guest contributions. Don't quite know how the academic staff will react to this.....are you planning on making your identity known....even though its very easy to find out?

Hope I didn't come off as critical too much, best of luck!

brownbinman

no, thats exactly what i wanted. As i have litually only set it up, I was looking for opinions and I haven't even begun the usual SEO work on it.

As regards contirbutions, I was thinking I would screen it first, and see if it was dodgy, and if so not put it up.

Its not the hardest thing ever to find out who bloggers are, hence I will be trying not to slander anyone on the off chance they find it "against policy" and kick me out

cheers giveliberty

giveliberty

brownbinman wrote: »

no, thats exactly what i wanted. As i have litually only set it up, I was looking for opinions and I haven't even begun the usual SEO work on it.

As regards contirbutions, I was thinking I would screen it first, and see if it was dodgy, and if so not put it up.

Its not the hardest thing ever to find out who bloggers are, hence I will be trying not to slander anyone on the off chance they find it "against policy" and kick me out

cheers giveliberty

Slander is one thing. Bringing the college into disrepute is another - keep an eye out for this little beauty. One or two college's have tried this once or twice - but a big mean solicitors letter explaining that their Disciplinary policy applies to students who broke the law or have been anti-social usually ends that one.

One thing to bare in mind though - if you are doing a research masters and also lecturing (I doubt that happens in DCU though [does it?]) that you may have some employment 'contract' with DCU, and therefore may be in breach of that if you start 'mouthing' off about the negatives. Mind you the foremost media college trying to stop journalism (for all intents and purposes one could argue that is what you are doing) would be a disaster for DCU credibility.

giveliberty

Oh you might want to re-read the 3rd para in the About section - you are missing the word 'life' after student me thinks!