Once upon a time, my old blog was the No. 1 rated marketing blog in the world. Granted, Social Media Explorer was ranked by a handful of arbitrary metrics that could be (though in my case weren’t) manipulated. But for about three weeks in October of 2010, those metrics favored me for some reason.
As professional opportunities came and the social media marketing world became flooded with other voices, I lost interest in proliferating the noise. I became more of a curator than a producer. Creating content is easy for me, but I’d become tired. I was getting good clients, great speaking engagements and had achieved a level of respect in the industry, so I gradually pulled back.
Those of you who have read me all these years have seen time pass with no blog posts, even gaps in time when I don’t even share content on my social channels. Sometimes the reasons are valid — big client projects that I must prioritize — and sometimes they’re not — I just wasn’t interested in being a voice in the industry that day.
But I’ve looked around and realized I’m happiest professionally when I’m sharing what I know. When I’m engaging an audience and asking questions. When I’m pushing the thinking around the industry, even if it means calling Jay Baer names or telling Mark Schaefer he’s got his head up his ass on something. And yes, even if it means I’m wrong but we need to exhaust a given topic.
I miss those days. I miss writing regularly … or at least something other than new business proposals and budget justifications.
So I’m going to challenge myself to start again. No fewer than an hour and a half of my schedule each weekday will be devoted to finding and sharing good content, then creating some of my own. I’ll warn you: I’ll be rough around the edges at first. But nothing inspired ever came from waiting for it.
I’m glad you’re still here. If you haven’t been for a while, welcome back.
So tell me: What can I share to help your marketing efforts? The comments, as they have always been, are yours.