How do you market your blog?
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted for about two weeks now… and to be honest, that change of pace will probably continue for a while yet.
I’ve taken on a new job - it’s consuming a lot of my time right now, leaving little time for blogging (let alone anything else), but professionally, it’s a big move forward and I really can’t knock the pay or the conditions… my first week on-site has been great and I’m really looking forward to digging my teeth into this more.
I’m working for Oakton - quite a large IT Consultancy group (over 1000 employees) with several offices in Australia and India, in a QA/Test Co-ordinator role for a large project in the education sector… basically I’m helping to set the Test plan, make sure everything gets documented and tracked and from all that analyse the results and make recommendations on the outcomes.
It’s been a few years since I was last in the corporate sector, so I’ve got to bring myself back to the world of rigorous processes and procedures and endless amounts of documentation, but I have over eight years experience in QA/Testing roles and quite frankly, I find the corporate way of doing things reassuring and secure (sounds crazy, I’m sure!)… I’m glad to be back, and after fumbling my way around for the first couple of days, my confidence has really grown over this first week (I’m sure my wife is happy to get me out of the house too, lol).
So what does this mean for Marketing-SEO.com and my other blogs?
Basically I won’t have much time to blog, certainly not as much as I would like to anyway… my days are pretty much blocked out from 7am - 8pm each day… I have about 1hr travel to work each-way, home by about 6:30pm which only leaves about an hour or so each night to be with my kids (having worked from home for the majority of the last 18 months and able to see them practically all day, this is the toughest change by a long way)… I’ll still write posts here when I can, I just won’t be forcing myself to stick to any sort of schedule.
It’s also going to be a lot harder to maintain my blogs and spend time twittering, dropping entrecards etc. as I’m essentially locked out from all this during the day - another part of being in the corporate world is that all computer use while at work is tracked (they want you to actually be working for some reason), and that goes even further when working on a clients site (as I’m doing now)… it’s not exactly extending a professional image for a consultant if the client walks in and sees you playing solitaire while they are paying massive amounts of money for you to be there - not that I would have time to do that anyway, I’m kept pretty busy and actually having a good time getting through the work too (sssshhh, don’t tell anyone, they’ll think I’m weird).
So that’s the state of play… I’m around, but only briefly each day, and I’ve had to ramp up my focus on the QA/Testing side of things rather than marketing and development which has taken some of my focus over the last few years. The good news though is that I’ll still need a release of sorts for the blogger and Internet marketer inside me… I can’t really write too much about anything that might come close to resembling my duties at work (unless I clear it with Oakton or maybe do something semi-official through them), but that’s cool… my blogging will essentially take the role of a hobby and there’s nothing wrong with that!
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good for you Martin. Congratulations for having the job. At least it’s a regular paycheck (lol)
anyway, blogging would always be there to destress you when you feel pressured from work
good luck!
Roy