There is an interesting conundrum when starting a blog. Those blogs that have vast audiences already have a built-in publicity machine. When a blog like Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com), that likely has followers in the millions, publishes a post, many of its readers will find it interesting and then tell others about it. This perpetuates further, organic growth, as the blog re-engages its audience, and that audience, in turn, brings in more readers. When a new blogger writes a post, who reads it? How do people hear about it? Lifehacker, and blogs of similar size and loyalty, have an inherent advantage that a new blogger cannot match. That means that when we write a post, we need to be creative in finding ways to tell people about what we have written. There are any number of ways to do this. One proven way is through creating a personal learning network on social media.

In education, as in most professions, there is a vernacular of sorts, a common terminology that is supposed to unify educators and help them to meet on common grounds. The problem is that new buzzwords seem to come up very often, while others are discarded. It is inherent in education. Everyone has an opinion on education; "experts" come up with new ideas; politicians propose new "reforms." Most of these seem to add to the chaos, but not to progress. So, it is not surprising if you have not heard this term before.

The term PLN is an acronym that stands for personal learning network. I have heard several variations. Two of the most popular are professional learning network, which seems limiting if you ever want to learn something outside of your immediate profession, and personal learning environment (PLE), which is often used either interchangeably or with a slightly different meaning than PLN.

The idea and value of a PLN has caused more controversy and debate than I believe it merits. Personal learning networks have always existed, regardless of the terminology around to identify them as such. The word network implies connections; connections can either be to people or resources. The connections are used for learning that applies to you personally. So, in short, your personal learning network is any people or resources that help you to learn.

You already have a personal learning network. We could both teach the same subject, and grade, even at the same school, and have completely different personal learning networks. The beauty of it is that we align ourselves and our resources to maximize our own learning. There will obviously be differences in the depth, range, and quality of different people's personal learning networks. The shift comes when you recognize your network for what it is, analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and then try to make more connections to grow in the areas where your network is not meeting your needs.

In my first year of teaching, my personal learning network really only consisted of my mentor teacher for the first few months. There was no one else that I knew to look to for help, and really no one that I was contributing to. In the spring semester, I started co-planning and meeting with other teachers in my grade level and subject area regularly. This opened me up to a wide range of resources that I had not had access to. These people, along with a few lesson plan sites and some professional literature, were the network of connections that I was using to become a better educator.

As my second year started, I realized that I was not improving as quickly as I needed to in order to best serve my students. The people in my building were wonderful, but they could not provide me with everything I needed. It is impossible, because their skill set, while varied, did not exactly line up with my needs. It was also often limited to meetings before and after school. So, I started to take action to broaden my network.

I started my own blog, and reading the blogs and reflective writings of other educators beyond those in my building. I started following the bookmarks of people in many of the different schools in the district I was in; this way, I had access to many of the great resources they were finding. I started to connect and talk to great teachers and educators all over the world on Twitter and other social networks. I contributed, and still do, as much as I possibly can, but what I got back from the networks was such a great boon. I am a better educator because of it, and I continue to improve because of the connections that I have made.

For me personally, I have found Twitter to be the most useful social network for both sharing my blog and for professional development. Twitter is routinely the most popular referrer (site that users use to find your blog), beating Facebook, Google searches, and more. I have several thousand followers (people who read my posts) on Twitter. That does not make me a Twitter celebrity by any means; however, it does mean that there is a sizeable potential audience. It becomes even bigger if any of those followers retweet (post again) a post that I have written. If they do so, my post is then visible to all of their followers.

There are several people I talk to on Twitter who share their blog posts repeatedly for a few days after writing. There is a line here that we need to be careful not to cross. I make it a point not to tweet a blog post more than twice, usually once in the evening and once in the morning, in any given day. I realize that by limiting it, I am limiting my potential audience. The trade-off is that I do not come off as obnoxious and taking advantage of my followers strictly to garner page views for my blog. In addition, my tweets are more valuable; a smaller percentage of them are focused on marketing, so more of them can be focused on helping others and participating in meaningful discussions. Most educators online are fine with a certain amount of sharing, because they realize we are sharing our blog posts to support and edify the educational community.

Social media is simply any website that is built around social interaction. The two largest social networks for most regions of the world are Facebook and Twitter; they will be discussed here more than other social networks. That said, depending on your specific circumstances, they may not be where you want the bulk of your focus. Marketing through social media is personal; you need to find where you are comfortable, and what works for you. Trying several social networks and tracking analytics to see which sites referred readers to your blog is an effective way to gauge which sites you should pour your energy into. There are education focused social networks like Learnist. There are curation-focused networks like Pinterest and Diigo. There are a lot of photography-centric networks, the largest of which is Instagram. There are video-centric networks like YouTube and Vine.

Try your best to invest in relationships and provide real value to people. This helps you to develop a reputation as someone who is both helpful and who possesses expertise. There is a reciprocal benefit. As you invest in relationships, you learn from other people, and those people become much more likely to read and think about your writing.

A discerning reader will have noticed a problem. Social media is only useful to help alleviate the issue of blog readership if someone already has a following on a social network. How does one go about developing followers? The answer is deceptively simple: provide value, and invest in relationships.

If you are writing an educational blog, it is safe to assume that your audience is one of the following:

People in these groups need to be able to see a correlation between talking to you and making a real difference. For teacher-readers, can they take what you are saying and help their students? For parent-readers, can they take what you are saying and help their children? For politicians, can what you are saying inform their policies?

Creating value takes time. Quality content on your blog is a wonderful first step. When you talk to someone on Twitter, or tweet them, people will often check out your profile, view your blog, and see if you are the type of person they are interested in following. Some great blog posts help to set you up as someone who is an authority on some aspect of education.

Another way to create value is to find people talking about education and participate in those discussions. Twitter, more than any other network, allows people to easily find those who share similar interests. It can be helpful, when developing your online identity, to try to secure the same username on multiple networks. My personal blog URL is the same as my Twitter username; this helps to build a reputation and makes discovery easier. Often, this is done through the use of hashtags—a hashtag is a search term preceded by a # symbol. These are supremely useful. If someone writes a tweet with the hashtag #education, anyone in the world can see the tweet when they search for that hashtag. Jerry Blumengarten, an outstanding retired educator who runs the Cybrary Man website (http://cybraryman.com) and tries to help other educators on Twitter and at educational conferences, has a listing of many of the most used educational hashtags, and when they are most active. This listing is available at http://cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html. #edchat (general education), #tlchat (teacher-librarian focused), and #edtechchat are some of my favorites at the moment. The more that I participate in these chats, the more other participants find my ideas of value, and are more likely to both follow me and read my blog.

I would like to list some of the reasons why I am such a passionate advocate of Twitter. In the few years that I have been using it, I have seen immense benefit and really have become a better teacher. I follow about 2,000 educators and am followed by close to 4,000. I give back to the community whenever I can, but with a ratio of 4000:1, I always receive much more than I have given. The vastness and diversity of experience lets me see things from a perspective that I would not otherwise have had. It was on Twitter that I got the support and the necessary help to write this book. Many times this year when I needed help on a lesson or finding a tool, the educators on Twitter helped me not only with much better ideas, but by providing them more quickly than I could find. Twitter has been better than any single professional development tool because I am able to talk about ideas that are current and relevant to my profession on a daily basis. Furthermore, I have even seen a material benefit. Twitter has allowed me to connect with other educators in meaningful ways outside of the Internet. Twitter has enriched both my personal and professional life.

What can you share on Twitter? Having friends and family on Twitter or other social networks can definitely make it more enjoyable. However, the suggestions here are limited to those that deal with education. They are merely some ideas that have worked well for many teachers, and are not binding or all-encompassing.

There is an intentional pattern in this. Humans in general thrive on relationships. Educators in particular are in the business of relationships. It may have become a cliché, but there is truth to the saying that students do not care what you know until they know that you care about them. Other educators may differ in background and experience, but most are here because they genuinely believe that they can learn something that can help their students, and possibly help students' interests. If you approach social networking with the goal of helping all students, then you will be both enriched and a help to others. In the process, the audience of your blog will grow proportionally to the relationships you are a part of and the value you provide.