This blog is 8

Last Saturday (6^th January), marked the 8^th anniversary of this blog. When I mentioned this to the teen (a keen blogger, too), she asked how my first and my latest blog post compared. Interesting question, teen. Here is what I found.

My first post was about the role of the audience in shaping the message. The latest one was about customer satisfaction. In a sort of roundabout way, these two posts actually sum up my approach to blogging. The first blog post is a good indicator in the sense that I often use this blog to talk through what I am thinking, wondering about or working on. In that case, I was wondering out loud how to use Twitter (which I had just joined). The latest post is quite different but still a good indicator because the posts that give me the most joy to write are the ones where I turn theory into practice – for instance, when I tackle a particular concept (like in the customer satisfaction post), or when I discuss how a paper that I am reading, or a paper that I wrote, is relevant for marketing managers.

Neither of these two types of posts are the most popular, though. If you are curious, the most popular posts in the last year were the one about smartphone manufacturing costs (from April 2017), the one about correlation vs causation (from March 2012), and the one about starting a PhD well (from July 2012). Should I be trying to maximise visits to this site, I had better shift the focus of the blog to those types of posts. But I am not trying to do that. So, I won’t. For the time being, you can count on me continuing to share with you what I am reading, what I am working on, and what I am thinking about.

From my part, thank you for being there. Your visits to the site and your comments, as well as the conversations that we have had on other platforms are a great source of energy for me. Thank you.

And if you are wondering whether you should give this blogging thing a go, I say: do it. Blogging motivates me to read, allows me to try different writing styles, and allows me to connect with people and share ideas beyond the physical confines of where I am or who I meet. I love it. But do it for the sake of it, not for the numbers.