Marketing Monster

I’m not Martha Brogan.

I’ve been thinking a lot about content creation lately. I haven’t been creating much over the last 6-months and it’s been bothering me. I was at lunch with a friend the other day who commented “Yeah, but you don’t really blog anymore, do you?” Oh, dear. What a terrible reflection that mirror offered. My blog has been on a very low simmer, I’ve not been doing any video, even my other blog has been kind of quiet. This has much to do with bandwidth.

Not the kind that my Internet provider offers, but the number of hours in the day. I will lament what is a fact for most solo-preneurs: I don’t scale. Try as I might, I can’t seem to change the limiting factor of time.

I attempted to create more time by sleeping less. Hey, if Martha Stewart and Chris Brogan can get by on 4-hours a night, why not give it a whirl? I trained my body to get by on 5-hours a night, but, it resisted. I was bleary and short-tempered after many weeks of my new longer work days. This was not doing much for my creativity either. So, now I’m back up to a robust 6 1/2-hours a night and feel much better for it. I guess I’m not cut out to be another Martha or Chris.

So, with only one of me, and 17.5 waking hours in my day, let’s lop off 4.5 hours for family time (non-negotiable if I want to maintain a happy life with a 5 year-old and a husband) and an hour for such luxuries as showering and having a lunch break, and I’m left with 12 hours.

That’s the time I have everyday for client work, new business development, staying on top new things in my industry, maintaining my social networks – digital and physical, sourcing and prepping for speaking gigs, project research for digital legacy, and content creation. Oh, yes. and a personal life.

At some point, something has to give.

I’ve never been the type of blogger to whip off short and breezy posts just to keep content flowing. You know the type of blog I mean. It’s like eating at an affordable family restaurant chain: not bad, but not memorable. I prefer to write longer, more analytical posts despite the extra time they take to create. But this means I don’t write as often. Some have suggested that I change the style of posts I write to be short and sweet to accommodate a faster turn-around and increase the volume of content on my blog. I’m undecided on that, but I’ve definitely taken the advice to heart.

It’s about habits, really. Some people blog daily and that frequency results in faster production. Practice, practice, practice. I’ll need to carve out time in my 12-hour a day to build some new content creation habits. I wish that I had minion clone to do my bidding. But, I’m not in the market to hire a ghost blogger.

How can I miss you if you won’t go away?

To be honest, the break away from content creation has been good for me in some respects. It has allowed me to concentrate on supporting my clients, building some new service offerings (to be launched in the fall) and to do a fair bit of speaking. And I’ve decided not to beat myself up over being absent. Sure, maybe I won’t be an A-list blogger on the AdAge Power 150 just yet, but, I’ve spent my time in other useful and productive ways that will benefit my business.

My break from content has also made me itch to start making it again. Recently, I spoke at the Podcasters Across Borders conference in Ottawa. For years I’d heard nothing but wonderful things about PAB and it’s single-track, laid back community and it’s intelligent and intimate approach. Sure enough, being in a room full of passionate content creators for a weekend re-invigorated my spark to express myself and get back to writing here and there and over there too, post photos (instead of hoarding them), and try to process the 15+ hours of video that I’ve amassed which is collecting digital cobwebs. (I *really* need a video editor!)

Pivotal moments in unexpected places.

On the morning of the first full day at PAB, Andrea Ross took the stage. For 3-years, Andrea produced a successful podcast about children’s books with her husband, Mark Blevis, one of the PAB co-founders. In her 5-minute presentation, Andrea crystallized what creating online content is ultimately about: real, human connection.

If you’ve ever wondered if the work that you put into your blog, your podcast, your videos or your time spent on social networking sites ever mattered, please watch this video.

Who am I kidding?

Earlier, I said that my lack of posts were to do with habits and scant available time. But, really, it’s about priorities. If this blog was a bigger priority, then I would develop better different habits and make the time, right? So, then what gives?

Andrea’s presentation humanized content creation for me again. I’d gotten caught up in the thought that, to be an integrated marketing consultant, I must blog because it’s good for business. It’s a central part (some would argue “THE” central part) of any online strategy. But, lately, it has been feeling more like a chore than a joy, something I had to do to be part of the game, and with that uninspired attitude, it was easy to rank it lower on my list of priorities.

Everything I created online had to have a business purpose – work, work, work – and I lost sight of the most important part of this exercise: people. I forgot about how what I create might have meaning and resonate with people. No, not just people – YOU.

So, if you take the time out of your busy life to read my blog, I want to thank you for spending time here when you could be doing something else. And I offer an apology for being absent, in heart and in spirit as much as in posts. I’m going to re-jig my priorities, cop a new attitude, do my best to learn some new habits and make this space special again.

If you have any tips for me, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Thanks for sticking with me.