Chicago…nowish

A batch of really smart and savvy people at The Chicago Tribune have launched ChicagoNow, a blog hub that features a lot of people sounding off on various topics. Leah Jones has high praise for the site after being one of the beta testers and I’ll check it out more deeply based on her recommendation alone.

On a related note, the Trib has one less of those folks around now that Daniel Honigman – the creator of the more-than-a-little-awesome Colonel Tribune character – has been hired into the PR agency world by Weber Shandwick. That’s great news for Weber as Dan is a bright guy who’s not afraid to try new things.

“Let me tell you why I *suck* as a salesman…”

I’ve been doing a bit of…soul searching lately regarding what I’m writing online and where I’m writing it. Here are some conclusions I’ve come to, in no particular order:

• I have no idea what I’m doing
• Movie Marketing Madness will never be the most popular blog on the internet for at least two reasons:
  • I don’t think many marketing people read it because it’s about movies
  • I don’t think many movie bloggers read it because I often mock them and find their chase after headlines either irresponsible or at least unseemly
• My RSS feed subscribers on MMM are growing while my actual site traffic is absolutely tanking. I’m actually alright with this, even if it does take my ad revenue down with it, since it means more people are reading the latest stuff.
• I have about 12 posts that are written but are sitting in a Google Doc for any of the following reasons:
  • I don’t know where to post them, MMM, VoceNation or CT.WP.
  • I think they’re good but feel like I’m going out on too far of a limb rhetorically
  • I don’t feel like they really add anything new to the conversation
  • I’m concerned people won’t like them
• I really want to avoid two things:
  • Making myself look like an idiot by declaring something great or bad
  • Posting crazy rumors that only have a negative impact on someone else’s business
• A level-headed rational mindset that likes to keep things in proportion, not go overboard in blaming people and put the best spin on everything is probably the root of most of my problems
• The rest of my problems probably come from those pesky self-esteem issues
• I’d really like to avoid becoming popular at the expense of turning into an asshole
• Some days I really don’t like the internet. There. I said it. Feh.
• I’m just an awful self-promoter since I actually feel bad about it, like I’m spamming people whenever I talk about something I’ve written or a project I’ve worked on.

So there you have it. It’s like my whole online persona is a pet and I occasionally say “Hello there pretty little pet, I love you. And then I stoke it, and I pet it, and I massage it. Hehe I love it, I love my little naughty pet, you’re naughty. And then I take my naughty pet…” you know how it goes.

I think I just needed to get all this down and out of my system. I’m constantly trying to tweak things and optimize and all that in terms of what I’m doing online. Probably won’t figure the whole thing out any time soon but at least I’m hashing it out. When I hit on the right formula I’m sure I’ll be surprised at how easy it is to maintain. Until then…more hand-wringing.