You’ve probably seen the new Sprint Marketing campaign that’s been out for about the last 6 months to a year – The Now Network. Sprint has even built a website that allows you to see all kinds of information and numbers and random facts that are happening now, right this instant.
As ministers, we’re always on the lookout for new ideas. However, in our quest for information and new resources, often we find ourselves surrounded with far more information than we could possibly ever absorb, let alone use. The same stands with the Sprint website – sure, it’s really cool in how they built it, yet it’s not practical information at all. This is what I call the Information Overload.
In the resources we find, whether it be online, in a video, in a book or somewhere else, much of what is being offered is good, sound advice. Here’s the problem: it’s good advice, if only one had the time to put it all into practice.
What Are We To Do?
You want your ministry to be successful. You want to work efficiently. You want to offer the best to those who you minister to that you possibly can. But, there’s no way that you can absorb, let alone follow, all of the various resources and pieces of advice that are currently available.
In fact, it’s all too easy to be overwhelmed by the information explosion that surrounds us today, both in and out of ministry. You don’t have to let the information overload leave you with a defeated feeling. There are ways to manage information to your advantage. One tool that we’re going to explain today is called Diigo.
Diigo is a free application and community that is designed to help manage the information that we find online. It can also be used for collaboration. In this post, we’ll examine how ministers can use Diigo. We’ll also explain how to get started with Diigo and provide some tips. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see the value of Diigo in your daily use to help you avoid the Information Overload in your ministry.
What is Diigo?
Diigo is a free Firefox add-on that has been around for a while. I would describe Diigo as a cross between a social networking site and a research tool.
If you’re a web worker, especially one who uses the Internet for research or who regularly collaborates with other ministers, this tool could become an invaluable part of your work routine.
Diigo itself promotes three uses for itself: research information, share information, and collaborate.
Some of the capabilities of Diigo include:
- Bookmark and tag web pages
- Highlight words or portions of a web page
- Keep sticky notes with a bookmarked web page
- Organize bookmarks by tags
- Search through your bookmarks
- Connect and discuss bookmarked pages with other Diigo users
- Automatically tweet bookmarked sites
- Retrieve information through iPhone app
Once you join, you can download the toolbar and mark web pages as you browse.
Now that we’ve explained what Diigo is, let’s move on and explain how to create a Diigo account.
How to Create Your Account
To create a Diigo account you simply need to:
- Choose a Username
- Enter your first and last name
- Enter your email
- Select a password
Once you have created and activated your account, you need to install the Diigo toolbar. After you restart Firefox, the toolbar appears above your browser window. You can use the toolbar to bookmark information any time that your browser window is open.
Now that you have an active Diigo account and a toolbar, let’s try some bookmarking.
A Trial Run with Diigo
After you download and install the toolbar, give the application a try. I just quickly added our website as a bookmark for demonstration. To bookmark a site, simply click the bookmark option on the Diigo toolbar.
The dialog box that appears each time you bookmark a post makes it easy to tag and comment on the post.
After you book and comment on a variety of posts, you are able to go back and view the sites that you have bookmarked as well as sort them by keyword.
After only a short time, you can quickly find a plethora of resources that you will have bookmarked. The great thing about Diigo is the simple way in which you can sort through these bookmarks by searching for keywords to show only those bookmarked URLs that meet the tagged criteria that you searched for.
Don’t Forget to Fill Out Your Profile
To get the most out of Diigo, be sure to fill out your profile. Include your work experience and your industry. Diigo also allows you to automatically include links to your other social media profiles.
One drawback that I saw was that, as far as I can tell, you can’t really link to your own blog by name. I linked to my blog under the category of My Other. The My Other category also seems to be limited to a single link.
Once you have a profile that can be viewed by others, you are ready to start connecting with other users.
Connecting With Others
After you have been using Diigo for a while, it is likely that you will want to connect with other users so that you can share information. There are three ways to connect to people on Diigo:
- Search the users by the tags, site, URL, profile information, language, or industry
- Import friends from your email address book
- Invite friends by sending them an email invitation
I found this task to be a bit cumbersome. Personally, I would have liked to a way to automatically import friends or followers from Facebook or Twitter.
Now that we’ve made some connections through Diigo, let’s take a look at some tips.
Diigo Tips
If you’ve been following the steps in this post, you should now have an active Diigo account.
When using Diigo, you should keep the following in mind:
- Your online brand — Any social site that you participate in online becomes a part of your online brand. Customers and potential customers will be able to search on your name or possibly company name and discover what you have posted here.
- Your participation — Like any social media site, you will only get from Diigo what you put into it. If you consistently bookmark and tag URLs as you run across them you should have a useful and sortable base of information in no time.
I’m still a new user to Diigo, but I’ll continue experimenting with it over the next few weeks. I’m hopeful that it will allow me to better organize (and therefore, better use) the huge quantity of information that passes before my eyes each day.
Some Other Bookmarking Sites
There are several other bookmarking sites available. You may wish to consider one of the following:
We haven’t tried these particular platforms personally, but they have a good reputation online. If you do try them, let us know what you think.
Share Your Own Experiences with Diigo
We’ve explained what Diigo is and shown you how to set up your account. Now it’s your turn to share.
Have you tried using Diigo to manage online information? Are you a current Diigo user? Or do you use other social bookmarking sites?
Share your tips and ideas in the comments.
Connect with New Media Ministry
New Media Ministry is now on Diigo. If you would like to connect with us and see which resources we share, feel free to add us as a friend – http://www.diigo.com/profile/newmediaministry
