That Great Blog You Used to Write

This week I was at Gilbane Boston and as I gorged on the bountiful smorgasbord of ‘key takeaways’, inspirational quotes and great conversation at this CMS industry love-in – I was disarmed by possibly the quote of my week. As I sought out my buddies Robert Rose and Scott Liewehr for mentioning me and my blog in a workshop they gave at the event – Robert said to me “yes, that great blog you used to write”.

My immediate reaction was obviously “OUCH!” as I zeroed in on the “used to”, completely ignoring the fact he said “great” – and then I thought about it and hey, here is someone that pays attention, he’s noticed that I haven’t blogged in two months and for that I am incredibly grateful! And dammit I better write something..

Well…. it is true that my social media engagement has slowed a little since joining SDL, I lost a little of my social media mojo. One thing – and I realize that social media lesson #1 is that putting yourself out there, you are going to have to handle some negativity – but I was tired of the few people that were constantly throwing stones at work I was passionate about.

But, new job, new role means a period of adjustment of my online voice. I’d moved from being an analyst free to tweet and re-tweet joyously about whatever and whoever I chose, back to the fun of the vendor politic. You may think that “a period of adjustment in my online voice” may seem like I’m some sort of sell-out – surely a new employer and change of industry role shouldn’t mean that my views and principals have changed.

A couple of years ago when I got on-board with Twitter I wrote a bit about this in a post – The Tweet Effect – Who am I?  – which seems naive and a bit embarrassing now as I figured out Twitter back then, but it’s still basically true. Facebook is me at home, Twitter and this blog is the “work me”. The “work me” has to be sensitive to litigation, buggering up a software deal and generally embarrassing myself and my employer.

Here I feel my voice should be slightly less formal than what I might say in a business meeting, probably nearer to being what I might discuss with someone else in this industry or a client over dinner. I’ll never be a PR mouth piece – that narcissistic desire to be respected and read sees to that! – plus, I’ve been in the industry too long and people that know me would see straight through it. It’s a balance and I needed to tune into my new surroundings.

Of course I’d hope my views are well aligned with those of my employer, or they wouldn’t have hired me. My views are my own as expressed here and a tiny slither of my value to SDL is in the work I do here and on Twitter.

Plus… I’ve been busy – in the last month I’ve moved to New York!

Anyway, enough with the excuses of why I haven’t written here for a couple of months. I have, however been writing!

In October an article I wrote about social media and content management was published in Media Post. With the title “If Your Message Isn’t Socialized, Is it heard?” I wrote about the importance of having your content curated by the social media crowd, which expanded on my previous post here. It’s something I also talked about at Gilbane this week and I am going to write about that here too.

I have also been recently published by the Cloud Computing Journal, in an article titled “The Cloud and the Perfect Marketing Storm” I wrote about  “being in the cloud” is not a business requirement, but that the business needs of the marketer are driving the adoption of software services that are offered ‘off premise’. You can read the full article here: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2076039 – (golly, it’s had over a thousand views!).

So, if like Robert you noticed I’d gone a bit quiet, thank you for following, I really appreciate it and I hope you like these other articles.

Image of cobwebs and bottles by Librarian In Black shared under creative commons license. 

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Ian Truscott

I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or now Threads! – or listen to my weekly podcast at Rockstarcmo.com

The half-baked thoughts shared on this blog may not reflect those of my employer or clients, and if the topic of this article is interesting or you just want to say hello please get in touch.