Let the blogging begin!




Welcome graffiti -- photo by alborzshawn


This post was originally created as class assignment #2 for MSU's New Media Driver's License course, and posted to the course website on October 4, 2010.

Welcome to Freelancia!
This is the inaugural post of my inaugural blog, the beginning of what I hope will be a long, creative and productive relationship with today’s social media tools, and with everyone who reads and comments on my posts.

What can you expect from this blog? My goal is to create a platform for newcomers to new media to hear from the experts in the blogosphere, like David Meerman Scott, Chris Brogan and many others. I’ll be citing and commenting on the knowledge they share in their own websites about how to blog, what to blog and when to blog, as well as how to use new media techniques like search engine optimization (SEO) and popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Along the way, I’ll be sharing tips of my own as I scamper up the learning curve, helping myself and my clients to communicate more effectively and build and execute more impactful marketing strategies.

This blog is for anyone who feels that the new media train is leaving without them. In particular, this blog is for my fellow freelance writers, who are skilled in the tried-and-true, but perhaps not so proficient in the networked-and-new.  If you’re an independent MarCom pro like me, your clients count on you to get their messages across -- in letters, press releases, direct mail, presentations, training materials – all sorts of marketing communications – and you deliver for them. But are they also asking you to help them get noticed on the web?  Are you afraid they might ask any day now?

If you're like me, you want to be ready to answer that question with confidence. Your clients trust you with their brands because they value your talent and expertise. You owe it to them and to yourself to learn a new skill set (one that will complement, not replace, your existing one) and get their message ---your content -- noticed. So I invite you to join me on the learning curve.

I’ll admit that for now and likely for a long time to come, this blog will likely take much more from the online conversation than it contributes to it. I have everything to learn, and this space and all points connected to and from it will be my classroom. The impetus behind starting this blog is the New Media Driver’s License course I’m currently enrolled in through Michigan State University.  I thought my formal schooling ended years ago (at the state’s other Big Ten powerhouse), but none of these marvelous new media tools existed way back then, so it’s back-to-school for me. 




Classroom circa 1950, photo by Nationaal Archief / Flickr

 I feel lucky to have the opportunity to learn from some real pros, and I hope this blog helps, in some small way, to pay it forward.

Again, thanks for visiting Freelancia – hope you’ll stop by often.