The first barrier that any nanocelebrity must cross in order to expose themselves to the larger online community is to self-publish. If we are to believe that academics must “publish or perish,” then a person seeking to be a nanocelebrity must publish or never exist. This may be the most obvious place to start, but it is important to maintain a regular publishing schedule or else you are virtually invisible to the larger community. (Yes, I realize the irony in writing this as I haven’t posted to this blog in almost two months.)
The problem can be where to publish and the answer I always give is that it doesn’t matter when you publish as long as it is expose online. It sort of mattered a decade ago as many of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were walled communities and limited access to outside resource. Now with search engines, most materials posted anywhere online can be accessed by typing a search term into the Google/Yahoo/Alta Vista/fill-in-the-blank search bar and looking at the results. This is especially true in the realm of the microblogging site as search becomes a key method of find new friends, new people to follow and new memes.
In addition to self-publishing being a point of exposure to the larger community, it should force the writer to express themselves clearly within the confine of the medium. If a person simply write garbage online, they will be more likely than not treated as noise, a nuisance or spam. In order for that person’s material to raise above the rest of the noise, a person must write from an educated point-of-view, it must be easy to understand and must be written with a human voice. The last one is very important as more and more robots are putting materials in the site and spamming the community.
