About huh? That’s a sweeping claim for such a little bit of space. I suppose I should count myself lucky that it doesn’t say “About Me.” Oh well. Let me see…
I suppose that, first and foremost, I’m a writer. And it was by following that meandering path that I ended up in whatever it is we call it these days. Online marketing. Digital marketing. The names may differ, but the end goals are mostly the same. I started writing as a kid. Published some poetry in my teens, (and technically in my 20’s), went to university, and studied philosophy because I loved it, and communications because I would need a job. I chose communications, because it included journalism and PR as specialisations, and I figured one of those would be the easiest way of being paid to write.
Of course, once I’d earned my degrees, and entered the workplace after a bit of traveling, I got my first proper job as…a proof-reader in a printing works. Since I knew how to work a computer, (and had side-lined in some graphic design for a few years), I started doing a few extra things for them here and there, as one does, a bit of copy writing, a bit of type-setting, this and that. Then a series of unfortunate events (none of which were the companies fault) led to its temporary closure, and to me having to find work again.
Going Digital
After a bit of IT contract (monkey) work, I found the perfect job. Web copy writer for a start-up online tourism marketing company. Hell. In those days, we knew nothing. I shudder when I think of some of the stuff we just didn’t know we should, or even could, do. There was no Google Ads in SA. Google was on the verge of going public, and Gmail was being launched in beta. How happy my Gmail invite made me. :D But more about this another day. Suffice it to say, things did not go well for the company, which folded after a few years. But I was a bona fide content writer with some hard lessons under my belt.
And content is king. (Which makes writers courtiers of some sort I suppose.) Which led inexorably into the world of SEO, content marketing, link building, and by extension, PPC and social media. More, (maybe much more) on that later I suppose. I rented my brain out and spent the next few years learning everything I could from what it was doing. And in fact, that’s what I still do today.
The Price Of Progress
Which leaves me with only one problem. I’m a relatively private person. I learned about the internet in the days when you never gave out your contact details. Ever. Nobody bought things online. There was no credibility. If a business had a website, it was a 1 page .jpg with a bad photo and their contact details on it, and it took 10 minutes to download. There was no social sharing, there were no connected smartphones. The term BBS was used in its original form. The internet of things was a wacky theory if that.
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to blog either. I’ve been given free reign over a platform in the past, but everything comes down to time. I know. You have to make time. With the socialisation of the internet proceeding at full speed, I’ve decided to try again. Get a little more involved. So this is as much an experiment for me as anything else. If you drop past every now and then, perhaps you’ll be lucky enough that I might have said something interesting or thought provoking. We can only hope.
