Positioning Tech IT Easy, continued
Hello, it’s Vincent and I propose a coup: I will take over Tech IT Easy as, at the very least, head-editor and/or, at the very most, vice-president, after our revered founder, Jeremy Fain, who is busy with other things now. Say ‘Yay‘ or ‘Nay‘ in the comments. Of course, the only reason I would do so is because I’m tired of introducing myself in the intro for the 5th time this week, though I would like the less frequent bloggers to do so, please. This is my first decree.
Today’s post is a little public brainstorm on where I would like to see Tech IT Easy go. This is a follow-up to my last post from last week.
Positioning!
Bearing in mind the 4 C’s of positioning: Continuity, Clarity, Competitiveness, and Confidence, where would we like to see Tech IT Easy go, both from the blogger’s perspective as well as You, the reader?
My position!
I have some thoughts on this. Any blog needs a goal, and so far we have not made this goal very explicit, though we each have one. For me this goal is not to write, far from it, rather it’s the exchange of ideas and the meeting of people. I have taken blogging on Tech IT Easy very seriously, taking it beyond this webpage and contacting people directly to help me with my many questions.
When I look for a job, I talk to my friends, when I want to start a business, I talk to my friends. And they are all more than welcome to talk to me. That said, friendship is contextual! I don’t believe in non-sollicited contact, as a matter of fact if people send requests to us about “reviewing” their website, etc., I more than often ignore it, because for them it’s cheap marketing and for me and you it’s rarely worth anything. Rather, a relationship is something you work on, together, and which comes out of shared experiences.
From my perspective, Tech IT Easy is a relationship-building tool. We don’t use it for marketing ourselves, but we use it to build relationships with the world around us so that we all become smarter people.
I would like you co-bloggers and readers to chime in on this, via the comments (or mail, if necessary).
How to get there!
If we agree that Tech IT Easy is about relationship-building, both internally and externally, then we have to continue with defining a good “relationship.”
In come the 4 C’s again.
- Continuity: A good relationship is ongoing, which means that you have to nurture it and dedicate time to it. To blog here, to build that relationship, you have to commit to blog at least once a month. Basta! I’m currently working in 1.5 part-time ventures, and even I can make time for 1 post a month, even when I move on to more full-time engagements. I’ll keep track of this and you can of course always talk to me about it. And if a conversation is started, you have to keep it going somehow, as well. You are responsible for your content and the conversation!
- Clarity: A good relationship has well-defined values, meaning that your posts must be clear and relevant to you and your readers. If you’re writing for just yourself, you better make it a topic that other people want to read about too. And you have read and re-read your words to see if your message comes across.
- Competitiveness: Be continuous, be clear, and 99% of this is done. Don’t write crap, don’t plagiarise, don’t post videos that add no value to anyone, and… don’t write crap. Have a take on the world that is just your own and which we can debate. That’s the other 1%!
- Confidence: If you believe in yourself to be an ongoing presence on Tech IT Easy, if you know that you write clearly, if you know that you write competitively, then you can be confident that all of us, bloggers and readers, will have your back… even beyond blogging, in whatever venture or activity you want to engage in. You want to climb a mountain, I can help you. You want to be a musician, Cecil can help you. You want to solve the credit crunch, Kari can (probably) help you. You want to start a company, many here can help you. Be good, be there, and we love you.
Sustainable models!
I’m going to steal one of Verteeblog’s graphs now. Sustainability can be interpreted in many different ways, but to me it means that whatever energy you expend, must come back to you somehow. The same applies to blogging.
What are our expenditures:
- Time spent blogging
- Money spent on this domain, etc. (we will leave this out of the equation for now)
- Time spent marketing (which is really blogging)
- Time spent recruiting (which is really blogging)
What is our income:
- Life experience, which leads to new ideas
- Feedback through comments and email, which leads to new ideas
- New bloggers, which makes our hive smarter
Sustainability on Tech IT Easy comes from doing the first 4 well (respecting the 4 C’s), and the last 3 will follow automatically!
This is my vision, regarding the future of Tech IT Easy and I will try my best to set that example.
As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback (except if your feedback is that I write too textbook—I am who I am).
Vincent
Of course, if this in any way inspired you, if you want to contribute to making Tech IT Easy a better blog, and in return make yourself a smarter person with smart friends, then, by all means, join us!
Related posts:
Business Process Management, Business intelligence, Business strategy, Editorial, Education, Friends, Organization, blogging, marketing, operations
But Vince, you needn’t ask: you de facto are the lead editor of Tech IT Easy. So, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a YAY!!
PS: nobody asked you to introduce yourself before
this is long, long gone
Vince, you’re the boss here…
Thanks, Jeremy and Steve for the endorsement (nice to see you both again).
@Jeremy: my first decree in the first paragraph of this post – authors need to say who they are to develop a relationship with readers. I talked about this in my last positioning-post. Whether they do it before or sign after, I don’t care, but rss-feeds don’t show authors, nor do readers need to check for it.
Your Highness : a very very very interesting article, which I will print on A0 and hang all over the walls of my future startup as a its one and unique guideline.
Namaste.
_Marc
Alternatively I can also help you tuning your JVM option for your EJB3 to run faster on JBoss-4.2.3GA under a Java6 runtime.
Vince > you rulz.