In which I ponder…..social media and particularly blogging!

I’ve spent some time recently mulling over social media and all the great positive things about Twitter, Instagram, FaceBook, Snapchat and Pinterest that help us keep connected across the globe.  

My interest has been really piqued by blogging. There are some great ones, funny informative, challenging and then, well, all I can say is that maybe some folk should question their motivation for publicly airing their innermost thoughts which could potentially cause distress to innocent bystanders!!

There’s some great data to show blogging for business really works – in fact according to HubSpot, it increases page views by 434% – and if that’s correct then every business should have several people with red-hot keyboards who are blogging like mad!

 

At Reward Gateway, where I’m the Group People Director, we are Hubspot customers and we love them – such a great company and as a bonus they’re based in our new hometown of Boston! I know there’s been analytics on the internet for sometime, but the thought that now you can tie it all in and see most everything about who’s landed anywhere totally fascinates me!  Be careful what you search for!

And – we’re great bloggers too – our CEO writes a blog and I love it – usually full of ideas and tips on employee engagement. Sometimes he’ll have an opinion about a current hot topic and it makes me go and research and find out more – a great learning tool.  It’s  also a different way of doing business – no longer do we spend all of our time on phones trying to find customers – we create interesting content and our customers do see it as something that adds real value and they come to us. To the uninitiated it’s called “inbound marketing”

So you must have guessed by now that I’m in favour of blogging?  Broadly speaking, I like it! So why haven’t I done it before?

Like anything in life  – an overused strength is a weakness and there are times when blogging may not be the way to go – I’ve always been worried that as a person with strong opinions I could go over the edge or someone might think I’m specifically writing about them and then they’d be offended or worse.

From an HR perspective, it can be fraught with danger too. When does something written in one’s own time get to be a work issue? What about cyberbullying? What happens if someone doesn’t like it? Or even worse – picks up on my grammar – not that I’m paranoid, but you know who you are!! I’m almost talking myself out of writing anything.

Anyway – without further ado, I would like to declare the Tracy Mellor blog “open” – welcome to my ramblings – they come with a health warning.  If you care to read on, ignore the grammar and syntax – whilst I try my hardest, I write as I speak – with a blended Lancashire/Essex accent and a leaning towards the vernacular!