I’ve become hung up on the word ‘useful’.
Every time I draft an article, I ask myself ‘will this be useful?‘ and ‘how will people use this guidance?‘ – which is a fair habit, as I absolutely want people to find my content valuable.
But I’ve become hung up on the idea, on the ideal.
I feel paralysed unless I’m certain that intranet practitioners and internal comms people will scream with delight at my proposals and solutions. Unrealistic!
The more readers I gain, the more ‘professional’ I’ve believed it necessary to be. I started this blogsite as a place for expression and exploration; the rise of social media has given me an audience (for which I’m grateful) but I’ve forgotten that I’m a person and you’re a person. I want to write because I want to write, and I hope you’ll find my material inspiring, if not always useful. Even though I now make my living from helping organisations with their intranets and digitals comms, I’m still a person, not a ‘full-service turn-key boutique’. I hope it’s OK to be me, and address you as a person too.
I’ve been sharing my thoughts for eight or nine years now, here on Kilobox Communiqué, and frankly, I’ve been afraid to return to points I’ve made in years past. I don’t want to be seen to repeat myself, yet the fact is the world of comms has changed, and the intranet industry has transformed. There are core ideas that need to be revisted.
Having a chat with Sam Marshall helped me realise that not every blog article needs to be a white paper, and that I’m not publishing material for the benefit of the experts I admire (like Sam, Rachel, Sharon, Luke, Oscar, Jonathan, Dana, Luke, Christy, Andrew, James, Kristian, Jenni, William, Diana, Martin, Jane) – I’m publishing material for lone intranet managers, and even lone comms people.
I write for over-worked and under-resourced intranet and comms people who don’t have a team of colleagues to discuss problems with. I write for people who are dedicated to improving digital communications within their organisation (not just business, within charities as well) regardless of the financial and technical limitations imposed upon them.
I promise to focus on you – the practitioner who needs reminding of just how awesome you are, of just how much you get done.
Wanna read some interesting and / or possibly useful stuff?
- Let your personality speak for you
- I don’t deserve your attention
- How to measure the success of your enterprise social network
- Stop viewing your intranet as a single channel
- Ghost writing for the fearless
- Intranet managers: reduce the company’s reliance on email
- Why cool intranet features go unnoticed and unused
- Take a small idea and run with it
Image credit: EpSos .de
[ Wedge ]
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Should you have intranet challenges or content requirements (internal, website, or social) that I could help with, please see my intranet and comms services and give me a call to discuss your neeeds.