Welcome to My Journey

Hello and Welcome to my Journey.

Normally, this kind of introduction should be on the homepage of the website to welcome the new users. Well, because I love to try new things and experiment a lot, this is the kind of article you will read only once on this blog. Why?

Because it’s more personal than the ones you are already familiar with, and I want tell you what am I doing in this digital marketing atmosphere.

Who am I?

My name is Robert and I’m from Romania. Born in a small city called Oradea with nearly 200.000 people and moved to Cluj-Napoca, that has a population of almost 300.000, being one of the biggest cities in Romania.

I’m a proud employee in a company that developed one of the best apps for banner design and other tools that a digital marketer needs. Yes, I’m proud of that and I love my job.

I had several Romanian personal blogs, but I changed them because I was frustrated that I didn’t have any strategy, so I started this blog that I called ”a journey” and guess what? For this project I don’t have any strategy. Why? Because I want to experiment and see what is working well for me and what isn’t.

It’s very hard to describe yourself in a world where every social media platform requests this from you. My short description is “Visual Marketer and Content Strategist” because I love creating (even if I’m not a designer) visual content, from infographics, slideshows, images on Instagram and other visual stuff; and I also love to juggle around with content, from the creation part to the strategy on why to create that specific topic, where to publish and what to earn from it.

It’s funny that I’m calling myself a “Content Strategist” and I don’t have any strategy for this blog. That’s because the “Content Strategist” is the part of my job and what I’m doing for 9 or 10 hours or even more at work.

My blog as a journey

I started this blog as a journey. A journey of experiments, tests, fails and lessons. Everyday I learned how to create content, what to do to create amazing content and what can I do to help others do their work better.

This is not a blog that will ask you money to download an ebook or to buy a book (for now). It’s a blog where you can read articles on the things that I learned, things that I noticed or just random ideas.

Yes, you will read these kinds of articles that some of you might call “evergreen content” and some of you might call “just another SEO article to rank on the first page”. Yes, you are both right. I’m doing this to experiment.

That is why I categorized the blog in 6 topics:

1. Visual Marketing – because I will write about the importance of visuals in a marketing strategy, from infographics to slideshows, emojis and platforms that embraced visual content such as Instagram, Snapchat, Slideshare and others. I saw how much value can an infographic bring for a website, but also how the social media ecosystem is betting on creating visuals that can bring results for a business.
2. Bannersnack – because it’s the app for which I’m working and why I believe that it’s better than other tools such as Canva, Snappa, Get Stencil or others. I’m not bragging about this and you will see in the near future why I’m saying this.
3. Social Media – I use social media every day. I get my news from social media, I get my inspiration from social media and I create content on social media. I don’t believe that social media can save businesses or can grow businesses to 7 or 8 figures, but I believe that we need social media to engage with our customers and give them the experience they need.
4. Marketing – stuff related to marketing in general. Or topics related to marketing that I don’t have a place to categorize them.
5. Content Marketing – because I’m a content strategist and I work in this field. I consume a lot of content about content marketing and I use this blog as a journey in my understanding of this industry. I will also explain how I used content marketing to bring results for the apps I’m working for, or I will give you examples that I found on the internet (something that other might call “curated ideas”).
6. Personal – these are the kinds of articles exactly like the one you are reading right now. Why? Because I strongly believe that a personal blog needs a personal touch or a personal opinion. If not, then what’s the difference between us and the bot you will talk in the near future on Facebook Messenger.

Why a blog in English?

Ramsay started this topic on his blog if English is the best language to start a blog. Well, I believe that beyond all the statistics it is about how you feel and what you want.

I started blogging in English when I launched this blog. If you would asked me a few years ago if I will have a blog in English, I will read a lot in English and I will even choose the English books instead of the ones in my native language (Romanian), I would have called you crazy. But here I am writing this article in English.

I started this blog because I wanted to challenge myself. I know that sometimes it’s easier to work in your native language, get noticed in your community and make something more accessible for the ones near you.

Yes, it’s hard and I’m not alone. My English is not perfect. I don’t write perfect in English and I don’t write the articles in Romanian and then translate them to English. I write everything in English and after this I send the texts to proofreading. Yes, I have friends who are helping me with the proofreading part and I’m so thankful for them.

Running this blog helped me connect with communities and publishers like Content Marketing Institute, AdWeek, The Next Web, Mention, Maximize Social Business and I also have this blessed connections with people like Aaron Orendorff (who is a must follow if you want to learn everything about guest posting), Neal Schaffer (who is one of the tough leaders in social media), Ann Smarty (an awesome SEO specialist) or Jacob Cass (a great web designer with awesome ideas about blogging) and lots and lots of other people.

For now, it’s just a project

This blog is only a side project. I will use it to experiment and test (I know you heard this a lot, but get ready to read about it a lot too) and share with you my opinions and ideas. It’s not something I want to use to grow a business (even if I don’t have a business, and I’m a happy employee who tries to do his job better every day) or a strategy that will point me as a specialist in this field. It’s the place where I want to share my ideas, my opinions, what I learned, even my fails (you will see these kind of articles too) and whatever I see people are interested in.

For now, it’s my side project. I don’t accept guest writing on it because I try to keep as much of my personal touch as I can. I don’t have tremendous web traffic (for now), or tons of comments or thousands of subscribers. I know that it’s a start, but I’m willing to accept it and will try to make my way into this world.

So, to finish this blog post that was pretty hard to write, I just want to say a big thank you for reading me and welcome to my journey!