The Big, Hairy, Audacious First Posts....

In my 10+ years in digital marketing, I’ve frequently include blogs as a piece in my content strategy recommendations. Blogs are content powerhouses! And rich content brings traffic, builds relationships, showcases your expertise and builds trust.

And yet, as I set out to add a blog to my professional website, I found myself road blocked on creating that first post.

I knew I needed it.  I wanted to add it.

But for over six months, kicking the blog off seemed like a greater task than any other project I’ve ever attempted—in my past work as an in-house marketer at Stanford University, we would’ve called this my “big, hairy, audacious boulder.”

I hemmed and hawed over the task. I procrastinated. Every time I sat down to implement the blog module of my website, I would find myself falling down the rabbit hole of researching how others kicked off their blogs, like Avinash Kaushik’s too-cool kick-off to Occam’s Razor, or a listicle of “top 10 things that must be included in every first blog post” or “how to succeed with blogging”… and I would get completely overwhelmed until I was not able to proceed with just writing the darn post.  And I would go another day without implementing the blog.

I did this for 6 months!

And then, one day, I was listening to one of my favorite podcast hosts, Cathy Heller, interview Mignon Fogarty, aka “Grammar Girl,” about how she created her podcast empire. In that interview, Mignon said that in the beginning you just have to dive in and begin creating “stuff.” Create content and don’t be afraid. It might not be perfect, but you can’t get better without starting.

Mignon also shared about how she’s actually re-recorded or taken down her first podcast episodes because she iterated as she created more content.

So with this in mind, instead of continuing to agonize over the perfect “Top 5 List” or pithy opening, I’ve put type to .doc and created THIS post.

Who am I?
Hi, I’m Kristin.