A few of you have been asking what I've been up to lately as the prolific blogging has stopped being prolific and has turned into a black void of darkness that makes your soul weep with lonely.
That's not actually true. And when I say a few I meant one person. And that was my Mum.
The FOR REAL version is that I have decided to put my big girl pants on and go back in-house to work as permanent employee. Permanent like Vivid but not so permanent like a tattoo because, as my good friend Jo explained to me, it's not like having a kid: you can undo it.
Some people have been surprised at my decision. Some people have been frightened by my decision. The thing is, I never went out to talk about and advise in Social Media. I've studied marketing and business. I first vanity web published for a wonderful little site called Home Biz Buzz in around 1999 and started blogging on Typepad not long after. I've always loved amateur publishing and I saw that most of the discussion about social media was being had by folks that either came from a tech background or worked in smalll business. Nobody was really talking about the environments that I worked in everyday- big business and government departments.
I set up a little Blogger account and started writing into the abyss. Turns out a few ad agency guys around NZ saw my stuff and got me along to help them with some ideas. That's how that happened.
Do I think there is a future in social media advisory? No.
Do I think there is a future for dedicated social media agencies and services? No.
Will there be a demand for people that can produce ideas, work strategy and generate content for paid/earned/owned media models? You betcha. Big demand.
Did I take a permanent role for financial reasons? Short term: No. Maybe in the long term yes because I don't think social media advisory is sustainable.
It's been fun but I'm changing course a little bit now and working on more of a fun thing just for me over at http://mylifewithme.co.nzThe walls are pretty bare at the moment but I'm really looking forward to writing about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, social media or business for a while (I'll be doing plenty of that during the day).
So on that note, I hang up my SMEG badge and hit PUBLISH.
