So a year or so ago – January 11, to be precise – I published a piece on this blog about some of the changes that I was going to be making.
I’d been experimenting with podcasting for a few months leading up to the post, and had really enjoyed the experience.
READ MOREThe other day, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who I first met via social media, but has become a close confidante and teacher.
We were talking about the various changes we’ve seen in the time we’ve known each other (close to 10 years now) and how these changes have impacted both our careers and the content we publish on our respective blogs.
While she continues to blog about marketing – but more slanted towards tech and how AI will impact business – I moved away from that a few years ago, to focus on more personal stuff.
I shared my thoughts on that decision in this post from April 2014, and I guess that’s culminated in the recent launch of my Turn Off the Overwhelm project.
As we talked, she asked whether I felt the move away from marketing-specific content had harmed me when it came to career choices, or “putting myself on the map more”.
After all, if I’m a marketer but I don’t blog about marketing, why would anyone hire me for a marketing role in their business?
While this wasn’t her point of view per se – she was simply asking as if from a hiring company viewpoint – it was a fair question, yet one I’ve never worried about.
One of the topics I consistently push back on is the “dress code argument”, where you can only be taken seriously in business if you dress for the part.
While I’m not advocating for cargo pants, tee, and sneakers for every job, to me it’s irrelevant what someone wears to do their job – the results come from the action(s) of that person, not their sartorial choice.
I’ve worked at some companies where the smartest dressed and – by association – smartest thinkers have been woefully underqualified, whereas the jeans and shirt wearer has brought home stellar results.
This isn’t the old boy and school tie network economy anymore. That died out a long time ago (except in some industries that seem destined to be stuck in the past).
Much like the presentation of an employee shouldn’t have a huge bearing on their ability to do the work, the words on a marketer’s blog shouldn’t dictate their ability to be a marketer.
I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years now, after gaining my marketing degree back in the UK.
During that time, I’ve been lucky enough to lead marketing initiatives for some of the most well-known B2C and B2B companies around, and privately consulted others on modernizing their marketing strategy and culture.
All this came from what I did for the company versus what I did for my blog. Not once in that time was I hired for writing something on my blog – while it may have helped in awareness of me, it meant squat when it came to the ability to do the job I was being scouted for.
Because, let’s face it, at the end of the day anyone can go Google strategy and tactics and use these results to publish something that makes them sound uber-smart.
Implementation and execution, though? Now that’s a different beast.
And this is why, to my friend’s point, I don’t worry about my “prospects” when it comes to mot writing about marketing here on the blog.
My current role didn’t come as a result of the marketing content I was publishing here. If I was to leave that role at some point in the future, my next one wouldn’t be because of the marketing content I write here (probably because there is none these days!).
Instead, it’ll come from results I brought to my current role. It’ll come from references on past results at previous companies. And it’ll come because of the strategic ideas I share for the future of any new role and its place in the hiring company.
Marketing is a means to an end. It’s an important means, and you need to know your shit to be successful at it and bring the results you’re paid to bring.
But it’s just one facet of a far bigger picture.
The people stories that drive marketing, and the behaviours, interests, and intents of these people when it comes to services and products, are the dots that really start to connect everything.
Everything we do is marketing, whether we realize it or not.
The stories we share on our blogs. The behaviours we exhibit when sharing content, or consuming content. The simple act of what we stand for and what we fight against is us “marketing our preferences”.
All of these actions helps connect us with people that have the same outlook, or vision, or belief. Some of these people will be decision makers who want to bring our beliefs and viewpoints to their companies and help market it to their customers.
And none – or at least, very little – of that will come from blogging specifically about marketing.
Which, truth be told, is exactly how it should be.
In my last post on here, I talked about why hate isn’t born with us – instead, it’s fostered by actions and words, often by our parents and those who have an impact on us.
While that post spoke specifically about whether we hate someone (or something) because of a genuine malice or because we’re simply told we do, it’s part of a bigger train of thought that I’ve been having for a while now.
[Read more…] about Do You Ever Want to Just Switch Off the Digital Lights?
When you create content – either written, visual, or aural – you hope that people will read/watch/listen and enjoy.
The added benefit is if that content consumer shares with their friends, or recommends your content to others, more people become aware of what you’re trying to do.
[Read more…] about Why You Have to Push Back on Unethical Content Thieves
Last year, as summer started to get into full swing, I published a couple of posts over on my own blog that talked about getting back to pure blogging.
These posts – Why the Real Driver of Traffic is Content That Matters to You, and Pure Blogging and the Experience We Give Our Readers – saw me taking a step back and looking at how the chase for traffic, shares and monetization was making us forget the reason we started blogging in the first place.
Not for glory. Not for fame. Not for fortune. But for the sheer joy of writing (or video blogging, or podcasting).
The joy of just putting something out there, with no other agenda than to share your thoughts with the world, and see if anyone responded and started a conversation with you.
It’s the direction my own blog had been moving in for a while (from its initial premise of marketing and social media topics), and – going by the comments after each of the two posts linked above – many others also wanted to see a return to the “pure blogging” approach.
So, after thinking about it for a while, and talking with some fellow bloggers whose work and style I admired, I launched the?Pure Blogging project.
And it’s one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve been part of.
When you look at the?Pure Blogging logo, you’ll see the tagline, “where it’s all about the content.”
This is something that was the driver of the project to begin with (and remains that way today).
Instead of worrying about creating the kind of “viral content” [*cough*] that many bloggers and content creators are happy producing, Pure Blogging is the antithesis of that.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content. #pureblogging” quote=”Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content. #pureblogging”]
No buzzwords. No clickbait titles that have little (or nothing) to do with the post. No easy listicles like “Top 50 Content Rules for Content Marketers”, blah blah.
Nope. None of that would be encouraged at Pure Blogging.
Instead, it’d be what moves you at the time of writing.
It could be a personal story. A story about someone or something that shaped who you are today.
It could be about personal battles, or supporting those going through battles of their own.
It could be a story about faith (or how faith was lost).
It could be something as simple as why someone has so many pets.
The only caveat that I gave the folks kind enough to be part of the project was simple – no hate, bigotry, bullying, or any of that crap. Everything else was pretty much good to go.
Because of this open approach, Pure Blogging has resulted in some amazing posts, and the kind of topics that more often than not get bypassed in lieu of “content this”, “social media that”, etc.
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/1953-woody-old-spice/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/this-is-not-a-dress-rehearsal-this-is-your-life/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/a-question-of-faith-or-why-are-aliens-less-believable-than-religion/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/one-child-worth/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/wrestling-time-dinosaurs/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/the-day-i-died/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/a-writer-stops/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/youre-not-too-busy-to-be-a-dad/
http://forbloggersbybloggers.com/laws-of-distraction-the-dangers-in-legislating-what-women-wear/
As you can see from these posts above, there’s a huge variety in the topics being discussed.
Some are funny, some are sombre. Some are introspective, some are optimistic. Others are somewhere in-between.
The one thing they all have in common, though, is they are written from the heart, and talking to you – the reader – as if you’re the only other person in the room.
In short, they’re pure blogging at its finest.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with creating content for the masses. There is zero wrong with creating content that needs to be created a certain way to meet business goals.
That was never the reason Pure Blogging was started.
Instead, Pure Blogging came to be simply to counter the easy, lazy way of content creation that seems to be ever more pervasive today.
If shares, comment counts and page views are the goals by which you set your content strategy, then Pure Blogging is probably not for you.
Although, ironically, by ignoring all of these goals and simply concentrating on the content, Pure Blogging has a decent amount of each – go figure!
However, if you’re a fan of blogging from the heart; blogging that inspires; blogging that makes you think differently from when you first landed on the page… then I invite you to check out the posts currently on the site.
You may just find you have a new favourite blog.
And if you’re finding you want a change from writing for social proof metrics alone, and you want to get back to creating the content that really matters to you, there’s an open invite to be part of the team, which you can find here.
Here’s to Pure Blogging, where the only thing that matters is the content.
