MarsA month ago I started to use Twitter to pass on my thoughts on various topics. Although the work flow for Twitter is devilishly simple and costs hardly any time at all two major issues occurred to me:

  • How to reach people if you do not have a sufficient group of followers (i.e. I never actively used Twitter before); and the potential audience hardly uses Twitter feeds to read, if they use it in the first place, and only publish themselves?
  • The second issue is more profound. I firmly believe that nobody is helped with “sound bites”, not in politics, not in journalism, not in business. Reality is too complex for that. Not being modest, I want to write about thoughts and things too complex for 140 characters too. This is also a key aspect in my professional life; I am not following the fashions of the day, or use one-liner consultancy speak but try to get down to the core of the issues at hand to understand the underlying complexities, dynamics and correlations involved.

Twitter as a publishing medium in it self is not the right medium for me obviously.

Two weeks ago I decided to switch entirely to blogging via Red Planet Dust. I have been able to post one or more times a day for almost everyday since.

Most traffic is related to new posts being published and notifications are automatically send via Twitter and Linkedin. But I see a trend of people visiting Red Planet Dust independent of these feeds, and I see them starting at the blog page itself rather then directly from the feeds to individual posts. Also at the occasional day I have not been able to post traffic will not turn to zero.

The average unique visitor is viewing multiple pages per visit. And while I see Red Planet Dust as a personal journey of discovery of sorts I find it interesting to see that more people have visited my company profile page than in the full year before.

The majority of visitors are from the Netherlands. But I have seen a rapid uptake from other countries from the moment I started linking and quoting articles which are often in English.

As a result I have seen an increase in Linkedin activity for my profile over there. I see international contacts visiting my profile, and as far as I can deduct from the analytical tools I have at hand are visiting Red Planet Dust. To increase the potential audience and to cater for my non-Dutch personal and business relations I have decided to post in English from now on.

Now for the content. I have not found the definite format and list of topics yet. It is getting steadier by the day, where I use an article and some quotes to voice my own thoughts. Every post can be seen as a small piece of a larger puzzle, they relate to each other as the themes I write about are maturing. Many posts already have links to other posts at Red Planet Dust.

The best part of blogging to me is that it enables me to urge myself to elaborate on titbits of thoughts I have while reading articles or interacting with others. I have several “theories” on the development of and the effects by the web-based economy that I want to explore. I hope some day I am able to put the pieces (posts) together to create a comprehensive idea on these developments.

I want to paraphrase Semler: I have no specific goal or target with Red Planet Dust other then to just see where it brings me and hopefully my audience.

Extended Interview Semler with VPRO Tegenlicht:

NB I have chosen not to have comments available for individual posts. May be at some day I will, but not now. But please do not hesitate to pass on your feedback on Red Planet Dust or on individual posts. I would really appreciate it!