Going back to my days in journalism, one of the combined joys and trials of my life as an editor was my column. It went in the Monday paper, each week without fail, and it was called (possibly unimaginatively) On the Internet.
It was a joy to be able to write about this fascinating topic from all of its many angles. Though it was also a trial settling on the next target and honing one’s thoughts into something readable in time for the subs to put it on a page. One column per week may not be particularly onerous, but it did have to get done alongside the main duties of editing the newspaper’s website, dragging the group’s many other titles online and growing a fledgling department.
However, any daily newspaper journalist will tell you that we work at a pace that would cause most people’s heads to explode and you just get on and meet the deadlines which, in the case of my column, I did week-in week-out for a good long time.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t until after I had left the newspaper and begun my move into the world of corporate communications that the real feedback started to come. I met people who knew me because of that column and professed to having read it religiously because, apparently, it opened up aspects of life online in ways they could understand (well, duh, that’s the job of a journalist).
That feedback was gratifying though and I’ve sort of missed that regular outlet as my life has become very much about projecting the voices of other businesses.
So it was with some trepidation and a small amount of rubbing of the hands that I reacted when I was asked to write a piece on social media for a brand new business magazine. “Wonderful”, thought I, a chance to spout off again and force my thoughts in front of other people’s eyes!
I wrote that piece, it was published and, amazingly, has been the cause of the most positive feedback I’ve had outside of my PR work for a long time. Now I’ve been asked to make it monthly, so I’m back into the cycle of relishing the chance to waffle in public, combined with the headache of making sure that the topic is something about which people might actually give a damn.
And with that, I give you the inaugural offering, as published in Issue 1 of Shropshire Business Today.
