A bit at a time

Yesterday I went to talk to Phil and Bill at a community arts project in my local area, Gortonia, about possibly volunteering.  Phil is the artist and creative force behind the project and Bill is on the management committee and both are also involved in the Community Interest Company (CIC) that they have set up to make some money to fund the project.

There are lots of things I could do to work with and help this project. And it ticks lots of my boxes. Now I find the issue is how to focus on the best thing to do to help and be most effective.

What I am interested in is marketing and promotion online. I read a great blog post the other day, which I picked up from twitter: "Living Self-Employed Online: The Manual They Forgot to Give You." Naturally I retweeted and was pleased so see a recently picked up follower favourited my tweet.

I particularly like the "Just Get Started" idea which really applies to anything daunting and that you put off.  I made it the subject of my photo today... my approach to gardening.

The "View anything Public as Marketing" section is also making me think a lot.  This is the new online world, marketing a bit at a time in lots of places.  But it also made me think about how one manages one's online presence and identity, since this can have a negative as well as positive impact.  It is the well discussed problem of how much you reveal and what that says about you.  Does it give the world an impression that you don't want to give?

As I sent links to Phil and Bill of my myriad of online projects and activity spaces, I did have a little twinge of doubt.  Do I really want them to see all this stuff about me?  But whilst I believe that we do show different aspects of ourselves to different people, and there are things to keep in private, I think if I am putting it out there online and people think badly of me, fuck 'em! I'm too long in the tooth now to pretend to be something I'm not.