After more than 2 years, we finally completed a first version of the blue media labs website. In-house ventures (and some unrelated business) kept us busy until then. At this point, the only missing piece, and thus defunct link on the site, is this blog. (I’m writing this before setting up the blog actually.)
A blog is a major piece of work over time. So, being the pathologically analytical mind that I am, I can’t help asking myself: Is a blog useful? Is it necessary? What’s the purpose of this blog?
useful
A blog is useful for search engine optimization, engaging customers and customer potentials, communicating thought leadership and plainly, because it’s expected. Or so the web community as well as major consulting companies say (see the linked blog post).
Technopreneurs often seem to see their venture’s blog as simply a way to express themselves. As tech people, they (or should I say “we”) are most excited about the technology they get to touch.
(“Touch” because technopreneurs, instead of focusing on solving a consumer problem, often use technology for its coolness only until the next, even cooler tech comes along.)
So, technology is often what’s being discussed on tech venture blogs. Unfortunately, this isn’t really helping the venture as a business. Furthermore, it can be a red light for potential investors, clearly indicating to these where the founders’ (only) passion really lies.
Now this is the major trap to avoid for pure tech ventures. However, blue media labs is both a consulting company and, more predominently so far, a holding company for technology-rooted new media ventures. Therefore, a blog to be useful needs to
- satisy the update hunger of search engines as part of (do I want/need people to find the blue media labs site via a web search, though?),
- engage investors (which is more of an inter-personal task really though, isn’t it) and
- provide some comfort to users of our in-house ventures (not to say: avoid scaring them off).
That’s going to be a bit of a challenge.
necessary
As useful as a blog may be, it’s also a major time drain. Is it responsible time management to do
19 presence management chores every day? I don’t think so, and I am tempted to add a quick, opinionate discussion on this social presence management (you know, the being-on-twitter-all-the-time, answering-emails-instantly, and so on, my attitude towards which seems to be much more in line with Tim Ferris’). But I’ll keep that for a later post. Maybe.
Between full-time “presence management” and doing nothing, however, a blog seems like a decent compromise. Not absolutely necessary, but worth a try as a decently simple approach to corporate communication.
purpose
The purpose of the blue media labs website obviously is to communicate a service for investors
and illustrate some relevant experience. There’s also the initial, much simpler purpose of just providing some web presence at the internet address that an email reference such as marco@bluemedialabs.com naturally gives away.
In line with the website, the main purpose of the accompanying blog will be to share our line of thought, details of our current efforts and future plans to
- facilitate the acquisition of new clients,
- attract potential partners for our existing ventures as well as new joint ventures and
- serve as a sounding board and force us to re-think our efforts.
Content intended for the blog includes:
- selective extensions of the website’s updates section, which is a timeline of major steps blue media labs is taking,
- from time to time, some general background considerations about the space blue media labs operates in such as social media and social gaming,
- some meta information about our ventures such as their underlying rationale and our future plans for them.
It’s possible that we decide to add some tech content to the blogging section as well. When doing (or letting other do) the web development, which is a natural part of our efforts, too, tech questions frequently pop up. Sharing and preserving results of the research into these questions seems a worthwhile effort, too. However, such content is probably better placed at a location separate from the main blog. (How about techblog.bluemedialabs.com vs. blog.bluemedialabs.com? I think I have seen this distinction on other websites, too.)
Enough of a purpose for this blog? Reasonable in its time requirements? Not sure yet. At least I though about it for some time before getting started and that’s what matters most.
reset
As the founder of blue media labs, I started an independent personal blog almost a year ago at marcobremer.com (now redirects here for the time being). At the time, I thought it would be good to establish a personal brand over time. Not a bad idea. However, time showed that there wasn’t enough time to keep this personal blog updated.
Furthermore, there didn’t seem to be enough passion to keep discussing things from a rather personal perspective. After all, eventually I’d rather be known as somebody to go to with questions at the brink of web technology and business by a select few in the startup investment scene than become a public figure of Guy Kawasaki proportions. With everybody seeming to be on Twitter these days, trying to get others to follow every detail of their professional and personal life, is this a reasonable approach to web presence management? I assume so. At least, if everybody is doing the public-figure-instant-response-thing, what I’ll do is true blue ocean worth of a blue media labs (learn more about blue ocean strategy from the generalist blue ocean experts or from us for everything Internet).
Therefore, I will shut down my personal blog and reuse some of its contents here over time. I’ll then do my best to give some meaningful updates on this blog following the guidelines layed out above. Let’s see how this goes over time.
P.S. If you really do like to follow things, follow blue media labs on Twitter for the offical updates and announcements and me as the founder for all the rest of the infrequent web presence updates. That’s the planned news distribution at least.