This blog underwent an identity crisis for quite a long time, and the last time I thought I knew what I wanted to do with it, I decided to keep it (somewhat) focused on communications technology. I strayed away from what I thought I wanted to write about quite a bit. I wrote a lot about music, which is my first love. There’s quite a bit in the archives about that, but I decided to launch a music blog for that kind of thing, which took a backseat to real life happening and my inability to make a decision on what to do with this one.

This morning I woke up all but certain I was going to retire this blog and domain forever, but still keep the archives up (to completely kill it would be foolish, it has great SEO). I was just about to pen my farewell post when I visited my big identity crisis post  and re-read the comments.

You know what? My commenters were right.

I shouldn’t feel like I have to pigeonhole myself in one category or another here. That invisible obligation is what has kept me from publishing a lot of stuff here that I’ve written offline. I’m not going to do that anymore.

This is my damn blog and I’m going to write about whatever I want here.

The funny thing is, I never really had any intention of doing anything huge with this blog in the first place.

I’ve said in the past, and I continue to say, that it exists as a sounding board for whenever I feel like I have something to say. I never had any “strategy,” nor was it ever my goal to become any sort of online “public figure,” or even make any money. I bought the domain because it was a funny nickname given to me from a few friends, and then the online handle just kinda stuck. It was my own self-imposed pigeonholing that I’ve been contending with.

Ironically, I’m a staunch nonbeliever in classifying artists these days into genres of music. I’m not sure why I was trying to peg myself in one particular genre of blog.

That Damn Music Blog was ideally going to launch in 2011 (though I never gave it an official launch date since I had lots of stuff happening IRL), but now, because of life and being wishy-washy about this blog and a few other life-type things, it’s looking more like January 2012.

Anyway, henceforth (yes, I say “henceforth” in real life, it sounds so much better than than “from now on,” dontchathink?) — consider this under the “personal blog” category.*

*I realize this is not exactly an earth-shattering announcement, but I think I had to write it for my own clarity of thought. What I do know is that I’m going to have a lot more fun here in the future, and I hope you do, too. Thanks for sticking around. 

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Two Things:

The other night I was weeding through my files on my hard drive and found a project I forgot about — it was a little ebook based on this post I wrote way back in 2009, wherein I compare water skiing and social media, and what you can learn about both. It was about 75% finished, so tonight I finished it. It’s short, a very quick read. I know I mentioned I was tired of writing about social media, but this was already written. I just compiled it into an ebook “just because.”  So here, enjoy:

Another blog?

Also, I mentioned a long time ago that I was going to be publishing some of my writing elsewhere on the web, and I’ve been writing a lot and stocking up on stuff to publish, which is sort of one reason why it’s taken so long. (That, and because I’m just a really bad procrastinator when it comes to my own stuff.)

Anyway, I’ve had some crazy stuff happen in my life, and I’ll be publishing stories about many of these things that actually happened over at thisactuallyhappened.posterous.com … so head on over there if you’re so inclined. The first post is up, and it’s about sushi, stripping, and Indian food. All names are changed to protect the guilty parties, and I must warn you that while nothing is (or ever will be) “NSFW,” I don’t recommend your kids read that blog. Any and all feedback is appreciated, and no, that is NOT a “professional” blog by any means (like I had to clear that up). Consider it as me just showing a different side of my writing.

… and yet, another one on the way!

OH by the way — I made a New Year’s resolution to finally get my damn music blog off the ground. Life got in the way, then I reconsidered, then I put it off, and put it off … and I’m sure that by now, many people are doubting that I’d ever actually launch it. Well, guess what? IT WILL BE UP SOON. Like, very soon. For realz. So go on over and bookmark that damn music blog now, and I’ll let you know when it’s up. Got stuff in the hopper, finalizing an editorial calendar, etc… just have a few final things before v1.0 finally lifts off. (It won’t be as pretty as I want it, but I’ve got someone working on that.)

As for this blog, I’ll be writing here from time to time about technology-related things, but my energies are going to spent on those two plus a couple other projects I’ve got going on behind the scenes. But I’m not shutting this blog down, I’m just shifting my attention elsewhere.

OK, so that was more than two things. Ah well.

Anything in particular you’d like to read here (or thither, or yon)? Let me know.

kthxbai

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1. I’ve been cheating on my blog.

. . . but now seems as good a time as ever to revive this damn blog from the dead.

I acknowledge that I haven’t written here since August, and letting it die wasn’t exactly intentional, it just sort of happened. Life happens when you’re not blogging, just as life happens when you leave off the hashtag. I’ve wanted to write, but it seemed I never had time, and when I did have time, I didn’t have any energy or interest because my blog was the last thing I wanted to think about.

Really, though … this thing has always been on my mind, and if I’d have blogged half as much as I thought about blogging, I wouldn’t be blogging this now. (Ridiculous, isn’t it?)

Anyway, the past year I’ve struggled with what to do with this thing, and I can’t say I’ve really got any definite answers but I’m just going to see where it takes itself. I have a couple requests of posts to write from friends/readers, a Moleskine of scribbles of ideas, and hear things like “you should really blog about that” in conversation with friends/colleagues on a regular basis . . . so yeah, I’m getting the hint that I need to get my ass in gear and make time to just do this, for Pete’s sake. (To this day, I don’t know who “Pete” is that we’re referring to there.)

It’s also been suggested to me on many occasions that I should start a more niche blog for my music writing, and get more into that. I’ve been in talks with some music blog/publication folks in past months to do some collaboration on that front, but nothing has materialized yet because I can’t seem to make a frickin’ decision. I’m not against either idea, but would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

So . . . no, I’m not dead (if you follow me on Twitter, you’d know that), I’ve just been busy and unorganized, for lack of better excuse. Anyone who knows that damn redhead knows she can’t stay silent for long, so consider this a head’s up (warning?) that I’ll be back to the blogosphere soon.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

/stacy

P.S. Completely off-topic and shameless plug: If you’ve got any interest in location-based services and/or augmented reality, a presentation of mine from a webinar I did for work was just featured on Slideshare. Enjoy.

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Since my last post I’ve received an enormous amount of support from my readers, both in comments, via email, and offline.

Not only did I not think I even had that many readers left, what you said was somewhat surprising.

Most, if not all, of you insisted that I “just be me” and “write about whatever I want.” I’m not really sure why people kept insisting that I just “be myself” because honestly, that’s all I’ve ever done.

Which brings me to the topic I’ve been avoiding like the plague on this blog, but I feel is in order now: Personal branding.

Many people think that “that damn redhead” is some kind of personal brand that I’ve worked so hard to develop.

That’s complete bulls**t.

I don’t believe in “personal branding.”

I think that’s complete bulls**t, too. (Well, not complete bulls**t. Read on.)

I’m just me, and I always have been. The nickname “that damn redhead” was something that a few certain people started calling me years ago, then it turned into a joke, then it turned into a screen name, etc. It just stuck, so I went with it.

I almost wrote this post in March.

About a month ago, I was super tired but just before I went to bed I clicked on over to one of my favorite bloggers, Melissa at Rock and Drool. She wrote this great post about life in general and being a grown-up called “Is it fun yet?” that was just so real that I couldn’t help myself but just let it rip in the comments and tell her how awesome I think she is, just for being herself. I said:

You know what? I don’t read many blogs that would be considered in your “genre,” per se, but I love yours, and I tell people about it in person a lot. You know why? Not because you’re local (although that does help), but because you’re REAL. You don’t bother with the facetiousness and the bulls**t of “personal branding” and all that crap, you’re just you, and you tell it like it is in your world and how you see the rest of it. And I respect that more than you can imagine. Seriously. I can’t say any more on this post than “keep up the good work” but I thought I’d tell you like it is, like I see it, because you’re one of the most authentic people online I’ve ever “met,” and I thought you should know. One of these days I hope we could have coffee or beers or something. You’re awesome and I love you for being real, for being you.

… and also for leaving the shoulder pads in the ’80s.

Little did I expect her to ping me the next day and tell me that was “the best comment she’d ever received” and that I “made her entire week,” not to mention inspire her to write her next post, entitled “Bloggy Branding Bullsh**t.”

I basically told Melissa, in quite a few more words, what my readers told me in reply to my last post. I think we may be on to something with this whole “be yourself” thing, I’m not sure.

It’s not that I don’t understand the concept of personal branding. I get it. At the risk of retyping myself, I’ll just include a couple pieces of my reply comment to Melissa here:

Truth be told, I actually admire the people that are banking on the “personal branding” thing, like Dan Schwabel. The core of it all, at least what I understand, is to be the best person you can be and to let that be known, let yourself and what you stand for stand out in someone’s mind and I can’t really argue with that. I do know that a lot of people have trouble grasping the concept of “be yourself,” even as adults, and if subscribing to the “personal branding” philosophy helps them, GREAT.

But at the same time, one shouldn’t HAVE to work at it.

It’s when people that strive to let their “personal brand” be something that they’re not that really gets me.

…

As I said in the comments of my own blog recently:

I am not a brand. This is who I am. I don’t try. I’m a real person, not a persona. Michael Jordan is a brand — he has shoes named after him. Vera Wang is a brand — she has dresses and mattresses named after her. I am a regular person who coincidentally (not luckily) was nicknamed after a malediction.

Former fellow Detroiter (and smart cookie) Shannon Paul had a great post back in January entitled “Having a Personal Brand is Fine, but Making an Impact is Better.” I encourage you to go read it, because she’s a lot more articulate than I am when it comes to this stuff, and she nailed it on the head. It’s more important to me that I do my thing and hope that I can make some kind of impact, whether it’s leaving a comment on someone’s blog that “makes their entire week,” write or say something that really resonates with someone and gets them to think more, or even just making somebody laugh with one of my many off-the-cuff wisecracks.

And that’s the truth. So if you feel you need to subscribe to the “personal branding” philosophy, party on with your branding self. But please don’t call me a brand. I don’t work at being “that damn redhead,” I just am, whether you like it or not, and nothing’s going to change that.

On a completely humorous note, I recognize that this post is totally echo-chambery. It’s a post in response to comments on my last post, that reminded me of Melissa’s post she wrote about a comment I wrote on one of her posts. Now Melissa just needs to comment here and the circle will be complete.

Image by Wesley Fryer.

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1. The internets know I can’t stay away for long.

I’m having a really hard time writing this blog anymore.

Or, rather, the way it’s been going.

I’m burnt out.

I’m really, really tired of reading about “social media” and everything that goes with it. I’m really tired of hearing about it everywhere I go offline, too. It seems like that’s all anybody ever talks about. People are communicating constantly about this “new” method of communication (metacommunication by its very definition) so much that they lose track of the messages they want to convey behind those methods in the first place.

I know that last paragraph is debatable. (If we debated it, would that be meta-metacommunication?)

My point is that I read and hear so much about the social web that by the time I get around to writing something for my own blog that’s the last thing I want to think about, let alone write about.

It’s only natural for a blog to evolve. I’ve been shying away from “usual” stuff for some time now, although I admit I’ve been anything but prolific. Much of that has to do with my burnout. I rewrote my About page a while ago, and on it I said:

If anything, I like to take an in-depth look at current situations in integrated marketing and communications, technology, and strategy and analyze what went wrong or what people are doing right. Extract the things we can learn and see how we can apply them to our own online practices. Not just plain ol’, run-of-the-mill case studies, but situations that are either overlooked, under analyzed, or perhaps just bizarre.

. . . I still like to do that, but lately, I’m just not feelin’ it.

When I blogged on other domains in the past and got to this point, I’d shut down the blog and start anew on a different domain, with a different focus (or not).

Not only do I not want to do that again, I know now that it’s really bad for SEO and “digital footprint” purposes.

So now I have a dilemma — deciding which direction to take with this blog.

Oddly enough, yesterday I visited Ari Herzog’s blog and found he was in a similar situation so he asked his readers.  I was planning on doing the same, but he beat me to the punch.

Of course, I know ultimately it’s up to me, but I thought I’d toss it out there and ask you, my readers (if I have any left) — what would you like to see here? I’ve heard from a few people that they’d like to see more music-related posts. I wouldn’t mind that, and I have a few in mind, but I’m curious to see what others bring up — there might be something out there I’d love to tackle that I haven’t even thought about.

So, to steal Ari’s question, “If you were doctor knowing what you like to read, what would you prescribe?”

Image by kudumomo.

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It’s true.

Not that I’ve ever been that prolific here, but lately I’ve been writing somewhere else. While I’m great at promoting and marketing others, I am always reluctant to do so for myself — call it “the cobbler’s kids having no shoes” or what you will, but I suck at self-promotion. Many in my field are the same way.

But at the encouragement of others, I thought I’d let you know where I’ve been. Recently I dusted off my journalist’s hat and have been writing part-time for Detroit Unspun, a new blog that is sponsored by the Detroit Regional News Hub. What is the Detroit Regional News Hub? From their site:

The Detroit Regional News Hub is the collaborative media relations department for the region and is a central communications clearing house for information reporters may need to cover their stories. Our job is to connect reporters with experts who can provide information about the region’s growth, quality of life, education, economic development and government. Our partners include the region’s major businesses as well as economic development, government, community and philanthropic organizations.

The Detroit Unspun blog is an expansion of the News Hub, but rather than connecting reporters to the experts so they can write the stories, they’re using people like me to provide original stories themselves, with the aim that other reporters will pick up on them.

Detroit Unspun is still in its infancy, and recently debuted for a soft-launch at Ignite Detroit, an event that the News Hub sponsored. There I live blogged recaps of the event during intermissions, took photos, and did some interviews of people involved with the event, as well as wrote an overall recap.

My most recent story is a feature on the region’s only hackerspace, i3Detroit, and how they’re expanding. As of right now, all the content on the Detroit Unspun blog is by me, but that will be changing next week.

I’ve also been doing some copywriting for a couple other places that isn’t online yet.

I forget sometimes that most people don’t know I’m a writer “for realz.” I’ve been slacking on compiling my actual portfolio (or updating it, as it’s very outdated), but no, I’m not just a snarky redhead that writes here sometimes when she needs to get something off her chest. While that’s true, I also wear many writing hats — I write (or have written) just about everything but fiction. For realz.

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While doing some recent housekeeping in the back end of this site I uncovered some posts in my archives that many (read: most) of you missed, and I thought they were worthy of having the dust bunnies brushed off them.

I realize that the majority of you are newer readers and/or haven’t known me as long, so here are a few of that damn redhead you’ve likely never read:

What my small town dentist can teach us about social media

The internet is one big expo – what is your booth like?

The high school notebook – social media casualty?

How I accidentally started #ThankYouThursday

Social media lessons from water skiing (and vice versa)

Social media is like plastic baggies

Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter are NOT the Holy Trinity

You can’t see it yet but I’ll be doing some restructuring of the direction of this blog in the near future. Everybody’s blog evolves over time, and this one is no exception. For details, visit my new “About” page.

Enjoy and thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

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I’m not sure why it took me four months of working at the chamber to realize that although I didn’t have any time or energy to blog because I was busy driving and being tired and exhausted, I could easily video blog while driving.

(It takes me a while sometimes.)

So this morning, even though I’m relocating very soon, I decided to do a video blog, and I’m not sure why because I HATE to be on camera. And then I did one on the way home, because I apparently like to be thorough. (OK, well I actually did three, but the first one was long and I wasn’t sure I recorded it, and the third one I’d prefer to use but I’m not sure what happened to it.)

I posed the idea on Twitter, and although I hate seeing myself on camera, the demand was enough either publicly or in direct messages I decided to give it the ol’ “what the hell,” so here ya go, morning and night driving vlogs (DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any boredom that may ensue.):

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I know, some of you who know me in person are thinking “we knew that!” but I’m not talking about the context you’re probably thinking.

It is with great honor and humility that I announce www.thatdamnredhead.net has been officially anointed by THE Liz Strauss of Successful-Blog as a Successful and Outstanding Blog, which means I am among bloggers who, in Liz’s words,

“. . . take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.”

Obviously, the SOB program could not exist without readers who are brave enough to come out of Lurk Ness and comment, so I wanted to thank all my readers who have participated in a conversation here, with a big shout-out to the amazing community of wildlife enthusiasts from WildEarth.tv, whose support was overwhelming when I shone some light on  what a true “social ecosystem” is all about.

If you’ve been reading this blog and haven’t commented yet, I invite you to de-lurk and say something sometime — it won’t hurt you and you may even find new friends. Also, I wanted to thank Liz publicly for letting me be among the “cool kids,” it’s a privilege to be among such great company.

More information about the SOB program and its origins can be found at Successful-Blog.

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(This is cross-posted from my other, more local blog, Regeneration Genesee, but I thought it was applicable over here, too.)

I love my alma mater, University of Michigan – Flint. It’s a great school, a great value, and its mere presence, especially with dorms now in downtown Flint, are doing wonders for the city. I still subscribe to the e-edition of their newspaper, The Michigan Times because it’s nice to know what’s going on at the school. (I was never a fan of the paper when I went there but it’s improved a lot since then.)

Being the web geek that I am, imagine my delight when I saw a headline yesterday in the email edition of M-Times that said, “SGC tells students to ‘Blog or Shut-up’: Student Government’s mobile efforts aim to raise awareness, get responses.”

This was a great idea from the Student Government Council for a campaign that unfortunately was only half-planned and half-executed. You may not be able to read the article because their platform may make you register or something (that’s a whole ‘nother post), but in a nutshell, SGC decided that in order to raise awareness on campus of their existence and get students to voice their concerns about different issues, they’d set up a “Mobile SGC” station in a busy part of campus and bribe them with pizza to fill out a “Student Concern Form” . . .

After filling out the form, students received a t-shirt voucher, to be redeemed at the SGC office, also on the third floor in the UCEN. The t-shirts are black, and read, “Shut up or Blog,” like the maize shirts for SGC members. They are attempting to draw students to the “Student Concerns” blog connected to the SGC homepage to give students a place to voice his or her issues. LeMay said she would probably use the blog.

There are two big issues with this:

They forgot something

1) Nowhere on this article was a link to said “Student Concerns Blog.” I literally had to go to the school’s homepage, search for “student government” in the search box, and then find it on the left column of the student government page. If you are going to write about a blog or some other kind of site, you need to include a link in the article. Nobody is going to do this kind of searching. It’s your responsibility as a writer to provide appropriate links for your readers.

Since my comment M-Times redeemed themselves and added a link to the blog at the end of the article, which is good, but somebody pointed out in a comment after mine that “The printed article has the info graphic that gives a direct link to the Web site…” and I couldn’t believe that I had to remind somebody that print and internet are two different media and there is no such thing as a “direct link” in print. Can I click on a newspaper and suddenly be brought to a web site? I just tried it — all I got was ink on my fingers.

What is written for print does not always translate to the internet and vice versa. Many a print-editor-turned-internet-news-editor discovers this every day, this which is common sense to those of us in my generation that grew up knowing and being able to understand the difference.

They more than “forgot something”

2) The second is the bigger issue, which is not M-Times, it’s SGC. If you follow the link to the student concerns blog, you will see that it hasn’t been updated since November 12, 2008. (I included a screen shot because I have a feeling this will change after somebody reads this… at least I hope they will.) The very blog they’re sending students to in order to voice their concerns hasn’t been updated in four months.

SGC giving students an ultimatum to “Blog or Shut Up” when they haven’t updated their own blog in four months? Do I need to say “pot, meet kettle” here?

As I commented on the article:

[Student Government] . . . can’t raise awareness and get responses if they themselves aren’t regularly updating their content. Having a campaign to send people to a blog with its latest content at least 4 months old is a waste of energy and makes SGC look bad. Send people to a landing page with a post about the event itself, or talking about SGC in general, thanking the visitor and then asking for feedback would be more productive. Instead, they’re raising awareness of SGC how? By showing them how they’ve been slacking on not updating the very blog they want the students to read.

I thought that it was common knowledge in the blogosphere that in order to engage and keep your readers, you must keep content fresh. Nobody likes an orphaned blog. And I thought it would be common sense that if you’re going to have a campaign to raise awareness of your group (whatever it may be, not necessarily in an academic setting, mind you) and purposely send them to your blog, you would have something a little more recent than four months old, preferably something relating to the campaign that got them there in the first place.

I can’t believe that for four months SGC has had NOTHING to blog about. They’re the biggest university in Flint, they have a new chancellor, new dorms, the mayor  FINALLY stepped down, they’re getting their own sports teams, etc. Downtown Flint is in the middle of an exciting Renaissance, largely in part to the existence of the new dorms, and they can’t find anything to blog about? SGC, if you’re reading this and you need help, Problogger has a new post on “7 Ways to Keep Fresh Content Flowing“, and here’s a good one from Copyblogger on “5 Ways to Keep Your Blog Content Fresh.” There are a gazillion resources out here to help you on this vast medium called the Internet, those are just a couple.

Honestly, if Student Government wants students to go somewhere online to voice their  concerns, then a blog really isn’t the way to go, especially if it isn’t going to be regularly updated. Installing a bulletin board would be more appropriate, then students could raise their own topics and it would be more conversational. They will probably have more concerns irrelevant to whatever blog post is current … if there is one, that is. PhpBBs are easy to use and easy to moderate, I’ve used them for years and moderated many communities.

So what are the lessons learned here?

1) Writing online is not the same as writing for print. If you write online about a website, or something on a site, a link is not only appropriate but expected.

2) Keep content fresh.

3) Know your needs and which social media tools are best for them.

4) No matter how good an idea it may be, if you launch a campaign that’s only half-planned and half-executed, it comes off as looking half-assed.

What do YOU think?

Photo 1 by numstead, photo 2 by sarrazak6881.

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