Marketing Nirvana

Summary: I’m back — Jeremiah’s moving to Forrester — What’s a career blog? — How to turn your passion into blogging into a career

It’s been almost 10 days since my last blog post (it was right after Gnomedex) and I’m not sure how many readers I lost in the interim, but it’s been a much needed break. So why haven’t I been posting regularly

1. Could it be because I’ve been ramping up my editorial duties on LinkedIn’s corporate blog? Yep, our traffic has been increasing steadily week over week and I’m focused on making our blog the central repository for all information on LinkedIn. Do subscribe to LinkedIn’s blog, since when you don’t see me here, that’s where I’ll be. I’m working on a couple of posts that’ll be up tomorrow.

2. Could it be the speaking engagements, travel, vacation? I’ve another keynote coming up next week (more on that later). And, I had a great labor day weekend in Vegas!

3. Could it be because I don’t have a proper mechanism to monitor the feed stats for the blog? I haven’t been able to monitor my feed subscriptions since WordPress removed that feature. I also don’t have a feedburner feed since my account on WordPress is free and I don’t have the flexibility to modify my feed within this template. I do plan on changing that and if you know someone who can help me with that, feel free to pass on any info.

4. Could it be pure play social networking toys like Twitter? I finally got twitter and I’ve been dabbling in mobile status updates (got addicted to that during my Vegas trip). I even found a cool mac app called moodblast that allows me to blast status updates to both twitter and facebook simultaneously.

Well, it’s a little bit of everything. But, the goal for me is to get the blog feed status back in shape and continue a more regular pace of blogging. Enough about me, the BIG news since I last blogged is that my good friend, Jeremiah, who was with Podtech until recently has now moved on to a Senior Analyst role at Forrester. I’ve got to say this again, since he started at Podtech he’s been ramping up his blogging to such a heightened frequency and not only that, he also continues to maintain (as he says) a “laser like focus” on topics surrounding web strategy. Congratulations to Jeremiah! I’m sure he’ll continue to inspire us all and blaze new paths (I’ve always wanted to say that). Way to go, buddy!

I know that he’s taking a break before he starts at Forrester shortly (atleast that’s what he says, although he continues to write his insightful blog posts - take a break, man). Today he had an interesting post on the concept of a “Career Blog”, an idea which he communicated to me when he evangelized blogging to me. As he moves into his role as an analyst, it’ll be great to see Jeremiah evolve as a career blogger. In his own words:

What’s really going to be interesting, is that I’m the first blogger to become an analyst (that I know of). Traditionally, analyst firms keep knowledge close to them, and don’t share them in a public forum. In fact, some analyst firms restrict or limit analysts from blogging, or lock them up for paying clients. Don’t worry, I was hired for this next job because of my blog, and in my agreement, I will continue to blog, they are savvy.

Speaking of careers and blogging, here are a few useful blog posts that outline tips and tricks to make your blog (career, corporate or personal) work:

* Tom Johnson’s 20 Tips that’ll make your blog work (Source: Lifehack)

* Shel Israel’s 5 Tips on Corporate Blogging

* Another good friend, Damon Billian, (community guy himself) talks about blogging and employment, which is in line with Jeremiah’s theory of a career blog. I consider Marketing Nirvana to be a career blog. I talk specifically about topics related to my job (social networking, corporate blogging, etc…) and will continue to maintain focus around 4 core topics.

* Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web talks about turning his blogging hobby into a career. Excerpts from a recent interview he did for his local New Zealand newspaper are included. As one who has done so myself, (I edit LinkedIn’s corporate blog in addition to this one), the article does ring true:

What does it take to turn blogging into a full-time living? Basically it takes a whole lot of hard work, knowledge and passion about the topic you’re blogging about, patience, and some ‘being in the right place at the right time’ luck.

* Are you looking to emulate Richard and the rest of us? Marshall Kirkpatrick (formerly at TechCruch, currently Splashcast) would love to introduce good bloggers to companies interesting in hiring bloggers. Interested? Click here.