I like telling stories, and on occasion even have something worthwhile to say given all the high profile assignments on which I've worked over the years. I rarely think about what motivates me to post online or which platform(s) my musings should reside. I blog mostly to help aspiring PR professionals ramp up faster and laypeople better understand what goes on behind closed doors.
In a few weeks, I'll celebrate mark a decade of blogging. The Flack, the irreverently named Blogger-based blog born in "a Gawker moment," once garnered an industry award for Best PR Blog (when there was such a thing).
For its first five years, The Flack refreshed nearly every day. There was no shortage of material given my long tenure in the agency business and the fact that I was not consigned to a single industry, but exposed to many. (I'm a good person to sit next to on an airplane.)
These days I post less frequently, but with a wider digital footprint. I abandoned Blogger several years ago and moved The Flack to my firm's WordPress-hosted site. I also contribute to Forbes.com and have created a "publication" on Medium.com, the new publishing platform ("platisher") started by Blogger (and
So where else should I post and to what end? A senior editor I know at
I get asked to write for all sorts of online outlets. This week I received an email with the subject line: "Write for us, and we’ll give you swag. Serious." It was from a couple of editors at the Salesforce blog. Seriously? Here's what they wrote:
What’s in it for you:
Exposure. Our blog gets 250K visits a month, and every blog post is promoted to our more than 1 million social followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, and more. We want to make you famous (or, if you already are, even MORE famous).Swag. Write 3 posts* for us, and we’ll give you some awesome Salesforce swag. Write more, and the swag gets better.
What’s in it for us:
New voices. We’re young, we’re engaged, and we’re trying to mix things up a bit. You’ll be the ones helping us make our blog more interesting and accessible to a wider range of readers. We’d do it ourselves, but we’re smart enough to know we’re not experts in everything. :)"
I'm mulling it over, but do I really need the kind of swag that an enterprise-driven SAAS company can offer? And how much "fame" can a post in a sea of posts on Salesforce really produce anyway?
Content reigns supreme more than ever. This week Facebook announced its intentions to enhance its social sharing platform by hosting more substantive content from established news organizations. The details of this initiative will become known at the company's revived F8 developers' conference today, but it's already not without its detractors.
I remember penning a piece a few years back lamenting how I needed to go on a social media diet. I was simply spread too thin. I'm kind of feeling that way again, but less with social media and more with outlets for my posts. I'm not really seeking fame, but I also recognize that individuals with large followings -- from the 8-year-old YouTube star to those with millions of followers on Vine or Instagram -- can easily monetize their followings by bartering them with big brand marketers.
Can writers whose work appears across multiple platforms derive similar benefits? Is it even ethical for a writer at a journalistic enterprise vs. a YouTube star to even think of such things?
Frankly, I doubt a CPG company would pay me a dime to post branded content I create at their behest, demographics notwithstanding. Still, I am reasonably certain that a decade of posting has served both my business and personal brand well. And isn't this what content marketing is all about? Did I mention that I enjoy telling stories?
