Thursday, December 4, 2008

Press 2.0 - 1 year later

Well, its been a year now since I wrote my first posting for this blog and what a year its been!
(Not forgetting that personally, I've: got married, moved house and now we have a child on the way)

There have been almost 25o postings to the blog. These have covered various topics based around company & customer communication methods, whilst still trying to keep up with my per subject of the demise of mainstream media.

So, what have I learned along the way? Well, here's a few thoughts:

1. Blogging (almost) daily is hard work.
Maintaining a reasonably professional blog requires a certain discipline to keep abreast of technological, social & communication practices. It then takes more effort to actually type stuff up into (semi) coherent thoughts and perspectives. This is especially true when you have a full-time consultancy job and a company to run. Several times now I've found myself tapping away in the office gone-midnight in an effort to piece together an article to automatically schedule a publish in the morning. However, that said.... its been a good experience and I'm still enjoying it.

2. Its slightly easier to post about different (but related) topics
I have to admit that I've found it easier to produce postings about multiple subjects on a regular basic. For example: by discussing ecommerce market growth projections on one day and video newspaper initatives on the next, it allows me to investigate different issues that are still inter-linked by my passion for all things digital. Also, I'm sure I've strayed completely off-topic sometimes, but hopefully my readers have enjoyed the occasional tangents taken.

3. Getting comments is a very satisfying experience:
Its nice to know sometimes that not only am I getting visitors (I do track usage via some Google Analytics code inserted into every page), but that they are actually reading what I write. I'm particularly grateful to: Tristan, Ellify & Boudewijn for their feedback - both for their comments via the blog and also separately [thanks chaps].

So... what hasn't worked? Well certain things haven't exactly planned out as I hoped. For one thing, I haven't entirely stayed true to my original aim of treading that line between the 'Press' section & 'About Us' part of the company website and the mainstream media. But then, as my thoughts and understanding have evolved, so has this blog.

Proof perhaps then that life isn't necessarily what you set out to get from it; but it turns out being what you put into it.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think you have done well and certainly covered some new thoughts and angles I have have not read elsewhere. You have stayed on my google homepage all year so worth a good audience.

The posts when you have referenced real examples or talked to people have been good additions.

Some posts on how you have found working for yourself and launches would not be out of place either.

We are struggling with starting our own blog at work and keeping focus, when we are not a content house.

Hayden Sutherland said...

Tristan

Thanks for you for your kind comments and suggestions on where to take the blog.

If you’re starting a work blog, then the use of multiple voices and professional perspectives is both a great combination and a more difficult challenge to manage over-time. I wish you well with your project.

Hayden

Unknown said...

Thanks Hayden.

The problem we are working out how to solve is a newspaper is offering us a channel to blog on with an idea very similar to what we are try to start and leverage ourselves in our blog, and they can not be the same content. So we need to run two projects that do not fight each other for peoples input, but build. We could have them as top posts and the rest of posts but we should not make our own blog second best. Open to thoughts from anyone and also let you know how we figure it out.

Hayden Sutherland said...

Tristan

Mmmm.. that’s a tricky one as two different blogs, done by the same source and that have very similar content, are bound to cannibalise each others readership.

I think you need to look at how you can differentiate what you are going to do for the newspaper and your own blog. Perhaps an alternative tone, perspective, or other way of being ‘different’ may be a good approach, as is getting the two to cite each other (if allowed).

It may also be that the two are aimed at different audiences. If so ,then this needs to be understood in advanced and guidelines set down so there is less confusion/cross-over. E.g. length of postings, language/style, allowing comments, etc.

(Personally, it sounds to me like the newspaper is struggling to find its own unique content.)

Good luck and let me know how you get on.