Apr

A journey of 10,000 steps …

Life

I’ve been active online for 14 years now, but it was only about 14 months ago that I really got interested in social media (with thanks to Mike Stopforth and Vince Maher who gave such compelling presentations at that First Tuesday breakfast that sparked my interest.)

I have watched, analyzed and strategised from the sidelines. In the meantime, I have had great pleasure (and some success) in helping SMEs active in the online space to up their game, and reap the benefits. But I was involved in other “real” businesses, and couldn’t really make a full time commitment to play this game myself with full vigor.

Until now. I have handed over the reigns of all other commitments, and I am dedicating myself full time to the online space(yes, I know that in this space full time means 80 hour work weeks). Relatively speaking, it was an easy decision to make. It is where my passion lies, and it is something that I look forward to doing for a long time to come.

What wasn’t so easy was deciding where to focus the effort. I have two ideas for online applications brewing strong in the back of my mind, and I would love to see them come into fruition. But for now, I am going to combine my passion for online space with two other activities that I particularly enjoy: thinking and writing. So, by throwing it all into a mixing bowl I come up with the rather obvious concept of thinking about the online space, and writing down my conclusions. There you go. Full time “Web Strategist” it is :-)

I am going to focus on the educative side of writing. In other words, I am going to prefer to “speak to many”, rather than consult regularly on individual projects. Unfortunately, fun as all this may be, I still need to make a good living out of it, and there are not that many channels that accept web strategy ponderings for a good fee. So guess what? I created some.

I have two books that I am writing with with Gino Cosme. The “Linked by design” book, which will have a strong focus on South Africa and social media is the one that I am most excited about. I am hoping it will have a big effect on how business views online media, and specifically social media, as another effective marketing tool.

I am continuing with my quest to publish the Internet Guide, which is a hard copy magazine geared to the average South African user who has an Internet connection, but is not quite sure what he can do with it. It might not be you, but trust me: there are a lot of confused people out there. The magazine is pretty much finished, except for the fact that there are not enough advertisers, and I am not in a position to do any hard selling at this point. My plan is to approach 30 or so more prospective sponsors, and see how it goes. If it does not happen quickly, I will release the magazine as a downloadable, free pdf, and take it from there. (If you, or anyone you know, can assist me with ad sales, please get in touch!)

The biggest and best project is FuturePause, which is a premium weekly web digest that amalgamates and filters all the relevant online marketing space information from around the globe, and reissues it in an quick-to-read, but informative format. At this stage it is geared at South African corporates, their marketing departments, advertising agencies, marketing strategist, PR firms and web entrepreneurs, but I plan to take it global in the future.

The final project (for now) is Two Jumps Ahead, which is a blog on Social Media, but not localised to South Africa. It is closely linked to FuturePause, but will obviously be free to read. I am busy setting it up now, and I hope I can make it relevant to a global audience in a short space of time.

I would also like to get onto the Speaking circuit (on Mike Stopforth encouragment). I used to do a lot of public speaking when I was in the States, but sadly very little since coming back to SA. That must change. My dream would be to lecture on social media, and other online space topics.

I have other projects on the sideline, to which I now have a renewed commitment. The main one is the Thought Leader blog, for which I enjoy writing because of the sophisticated level of the audience it delivers. I will also continue to write for BizCommunity (if they will continue to have me!). I also intent to spend more time on Digital Garage, which I am ashamed to say has been taking a back seat of late.

This blog is going to be like a secret affair from all of the above. It is where I will post stuff that needs to be said (as judged by me), but not in any of the other forums. It will be a diversion. The topics will vary, and the range will be wild. There is a lot that goes on in that mind of mine, and it really, really needs an outlet. Watch this space, I guess.

All of this amounts to A LOT of writing, which I am actually quite happy about. The one thing that that is great about writing is that it can be done from pretty much anywhere there is a power point (as a caveat to recent SA developments, that power point obviously needs to provide power!). I will see where the road will take me.

(Oh, I also own the www.bigbrother3.co.za domain, which is going to come in handy soon when the next Big Borther Africa starts (August). The South African version of Big Brother is apparently also being discussed, so the domain can do double duty. No idea what I am going to do with the domain, but whatever it is it will be a fun exercise in Social Media.)

So, to Eric and all the others who have been asking me what it is exactly that I do … now you know.

Or think you do ;-)