Tag: personal blog

• 4 years

  Today is the 4 year anniversary of this daily blog.

  Sure, I’ve missed a few days over the years (my estimate is 4-5 days), but for the most part I have shown up here every day and written something. 

  Sometimes that something is very short and/or bad. I’ve had a few people say to me: “I can tell when you’re super busy. Your posts are shorter.” I’m okay with that. Part of this exercise for me is simply about the discipline. 80% of success is showing up, right?

  In some ways, what I do here is an anachronism. Here is a good vintage article (2011) that talks about two different schools of thought when it comes to blogging.

  The reality is that it’s painfully slow and difficult to build an online audience via a personal blog using your own domain. It takes years, unless you’re a celebrity, which I am most certainly not. That’s why many people give up.

  Instead, many people/influencers choose to build their audience on top of an existing network, such as YouTube, Instagram, or Medium. Medium is pretty tempting and I’ve seen lots of bloggers port over their personal blogs.

  The idea here is that you simply bring your content to where your/an audience already lives, instead of trying to get them to come to you. 

  Of course, one of the risks of this approach is that you don’t own/control the platform. What if people one day decided to stop using MySpace? I like the idea of owning (at least part of) my online presence.

  So here’s to another year on the blog. Thanks for reading! I really do appreciate it. Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

  2017.08.29

• Contentment as vice

  “Contentment used to be a virtue. Now it’s a vice.”

  I came across this line on Brad Feld’s blog. 

  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Brad, he is a successful entrepreneur and early stage VC investor. He cofounded the Foundry Group, Mobius Venture Capital, Intensity Ventures and Techstars, and sold his first company back in 1993. 

  But Brad has also struggled with depression over the years and so you’ll find that a number of his blog posts are also quite contemplative.

  This particular post – where the above line comes from – is about a societal norm that I am sure many of you can relate to. I know I can. Here’s another snippet from the post:

  “We talked for a few minutes about the overall, dominant American culture of achievement. The endless striving. The need to feel busy, important, and successful. The deep cultural norms around ambition.”

  Whether it’s because we’re all deeply insecure or because we just need to fulfill our egos, this has become our modus operandi. It has become all about “the hustle” and about “crushing it 24/7.”

  Just this evening I was at a friend’s birthday party and I couldn’t tell you how many times I said “busy.”

  “Hey Brandon, how are things?”

  “Busy!”

  This is an absolutely terrible response. I know that. And I’ve started introducing other responses into my small talk repertoire. But busy is so ingrained in our culture. Being busy makes us feel important. It means we are in demand. We do things. We create value.

  But is the reverse – not being busy – now a vice?

  Regardless of your position on the appropriate balance between contentment (being ok with what you’ve got) and work (striving for more than what you’ve got), I think the first line of this post is an incredibly poignant commentary on the life that many of us live today.

  2017.07.28

• It’s content marketing

  Oscar Wilde once said:

  “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

  I’m sure that all of you can think of someone right now who subscribes to the philosophy that any press is good press.

  But there is something to be said about exposure. Almost every company on the planet wants it. They pay for it.

  They fight for it.

  It’s the lifeblood of business. If nobody knows who you are and what you do, you’re dead.

  In my view, one of the best ways to gain exposure today is content marketing. Marketing sometimes has negative connotations, but content marketing is probably the least offensive varietal. It’s a soft, rather than hard, approach. It invites you in and tries to earn your trust, instead of hitting you over the head with an ask.

  But at the same time, it’s a more difficult form of marketing. You have to be insightful. You have to be useful. And you have to try and create value for people on a regular basis. That’s easier said than done. I try and do that every day, but I don’t always succeed.

  I say all this because we live in a content-driven world. In fact, this blog – despite it being a personal one – is a form of content marketing. I like how Fred Wilson responded on his blog to the criticism that too many entrepreneurs treat venture capital blogs as scripture:

  “So how should entrepreneurs use this knowledge that is being imparted by VCs on a regular basis? Well first and foremost, you should see it as content marketing. That is what it is. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful or insightful. It may well be. But you should understand the business model supporting all of this free content. It is being generated to get you to come visit that VC and offer them to participate in your Seed or Series A round. That blog post that Joe claimed is not scripture in his tweet is actually an advertisement. Kind of the opposite of scripture, right?”

  Again, that doesn’t make the content necessarily bad. It’s just the truth. It’s content marketing.

  2016.10.28

• 3 years of daily blogging

  

  This past Sunday was the 3rd anniversary of this blog. That is 3 years of me writing something here every day (I think I’ve only missed 2 days in the past 3 years). So I have now written almost 1,100 blog posts.

  Admittedly, they weren’t all masterpieces. But that doesn’t really matter. To do good work, I think you have to be prolific and show up every day.

  The big change this year was that I “unbranded” this blog and started writing just under my personal name, as opposed to Architect This City. I got some initial pushback when I did that, but I continue to believe it was the right decision for what I am trying to achieve here.

  I recently had someone ask me if there was any change in traffic after the switch. And the answer is no. If anything, traffic increased. 

  Over the last year, this blog received about 225,000 page views. Of course, this doesn’t include the 14,000 or so people who read via email subscription and Tumblr, and never actually land on this site.

  But honestly, I don’t care about the numbers anymore. I used to. But not anymore. I blog because it:

  – Forces me to stay current on the topics that matter to me

  – Allows me to clarify my thoughts in a way that thinking alone can’t do

  – Holds me publicly accountable for the things I say and the stances I take

  – Connects me with people I would never otherwise meet

  – Exposes me to new business opportunities

  – Gives me a distribution channel for discussion and sharing

  – Allows me to learn from readers who know more than I do

  – Feeds my desire to create things (creating > consuming)

  – Allows me to exert my personal independence (I write what I want here)

  – Promotes greater transparency and, hopefully, better city building

  I could go on, but those are some of the most salient points.

  At the same time, the world of blogging and social media is all about giving first. So I do try to curate content and posts that I think would be valuable to the readership of this blog. If there’s something else you’d like to see on here, I am always open to suggestions.

  Thanks for reading! Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. And yes, those are my old skateboard decks hanging on the wall behind my desk.

  2016.08.31

• Off to New York

  I’m packing and getting ready to leave for New York right now. I’ll be there for both Canada Day and Independence Day. My out of office message has been activated.

  I have a lot going on at the moment (which I’ll soon be able to share on this blog) and so I’m looking forward to getting out of the city and disconnecting a little. (I’ll, of course, still be blogging.) I’m generally not very good at down time. I like to keep busy and I like to work a lot. 

  But every now and then my body tells me that I should do otherwise. I also notice that I start getting decision fatigue. I am sure many of you probably feel this way as well. So I said no to a lot of things this week and I have very few things planned for New York. I’m content with that.

  A big city is probably not what comes to mind when many of you think of down time. But one of my favorite things to do is just wander around a city, look at buildings, and absorb it all. In some ways that feels like a luxury because most of the time I’m too busy rushing around. 

  But who knows, maybe I’ll end up on a beach somewhere. That’s the sort of thing that can happen when you don’t have much in the calendar. Either way, I’m off to New York for some rest and relaxation. Talk tomorrow.

  2016.07.01

• The unbranding of this blog

  You’ve probably noticed that I have removed the Architect This City branding from this blog and gone to just my name. I like to refer to it as unbranding. (Though one could argue that a person’s name is still just another brand.)

  Already I’ve received a few emails from people telling me that they prefer the old look and feel of ATC and that there’s some level of brand equity there. But let me explain my thinking.

  First and foremost, this is a personal blog. I’ve written about that before. And it’s why it’s hosted at brandondonnelly.com. But along the way, as readership grew, I attached a name to it (ATC) and it started to become a kind of pseudo-independent brand. 

  When I would speak at events, people would introduce me as the founder of Architect This City, which always struck me as a bit odd because, again, this is just my personal blog. People also started asking me why I wasn’t turning ATC into some big company and started treating the blog as a media channel. You should see how many press releases I now find in my inbox.

  Of course, these are good “problems” to have. It means my writing is getting out there and I am thrilled about that. But I was starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the grey area between a personal and independent brand. I also felt like it was starting to impact my creative writing because I would sometimes wonder if I was going too personal on “Architect This City.”

  To reinforce that point, below is a snippet from a post that Fred Wilson wrote on his blog last summer. His 10+ year old blog has been a huge inspiration for me.

  “There is something about the personal blog, yourname.com, where you control everything and get to do whatever the hell pleases you. There is something about linking to one of those blogs and then saying something. It’s like having a conversation in public with each other. This is how blogging was in the early days. And this is how blogging is today, if you want it to be.”

  So I decided to clarify the brand. I wanted to make it clear that this blog is about my personal musings on city building, among the other things that I’m passionate about. And I wanted it to not pretend to be anything else.

  Ultimately, regular scheduled programming won’t really change for you. The content on this blog is still going to be heavy on city building, real estate development, design, planning and so on. And I will endeavor to create as much value as I can for all of you on a daily basis. (I am humbled by the number of people who now subscribe.) But hopefully it will end up feeling a bit more personal.

  Of course, now there’s the question of what do I do with the ATC brand (and social accounts). Do I let it die or do I spin it off into something else? I’m considering the latter. I’ve been obsessed for years with the idea of crowdsourcing and collecting meaningful real estate and city building activity, so maybe ATC will turn into some kind of open platform for that.

  But for now, I am feeling pretty excited about the unbranding of this blog. Hopefully some of you feel the same way.

  2016.04.08

• This is a personal blog

  The internet has created an interesting dialogue between personal identities and corporate brands.

  In the pre-internet and pre-blogging days, it was harder for individuals to establish a strong brand and public identity for themselves, unless of course they were somebody famous. The cost of doing so was simply prohibitive. To promote meant print, TV, radio, billboards, and so on.

  But now promoting can mean anything from tweets to writing a blog like this one. And that has opened up the opportunity for anyone to put themselves out there.

  The dialogue, or tension in some cases, is that it becomes a balancing act: what should I be putting out there? Myself, some faceless brand, or a mixture of the two? Brandon Donnelly or Architect This City?

  If you a run a company, you’re probably debating this. Do I create a personal social media account, one for my company, or both? And how do I go about managing both?

  To be clear, this blog is a personal blog. It’s not a business. 

  Some people have suggested I start to allow multiple authors and turn it into more of a platform. But I thought about that and that’s not what I want to do. Which is why I continue to write at brandondonnelly.com (i.e. myname.com). I like that I can send this URL to anyone and they’re able to quickly understand who I am and what I’m about.

  Because what I write about are things that I’m passionate about: cities, design, real estate, technology, and so on. But I also mix in personal things so that I feel as if I’m writing a public journal. There are many benefits to keeping a journal (my 4th grade English teacher Mr. Hoad-Reddick told me so). And that’s really how this whole blog phenomenon started – they were personal places.

  Over time though, blogs evolved to become less personal and more corporate. And I am sure that some of you would rather I keep things strictly business around here.

  But to be honest, my favorite people and brands to follow online are the ones that do make their content personal. Yes, I want to learn new things about interesting topics, but I also enjoy the connection that comes with reading somebody’s personal journal and engaging in discussion with them.

  In fact, I hate it when my Twitter feed becomes nothing but companies tweeting out polished articles and reports. That’s boring. I like seeing real people in my feed. People sharing what they’re doing and how they’re feeling. People being authentic, genuine, and even vulnerable.

  And ultimately I find it makes their non-personal content that much more engaging. You have context. You understand their thought process. You can read between the lines. Those connections are what social media and blogging are really all about.

  So I’m thinking that I’m going to try making this blog a bit more personal and a bit more playful. I hope you enjoy it. And if you don’t, I’m sure you’ll tell me about it in the comments below.

  On that note, I’m off to the gym to lift some weights. Besides blogging, that’s another one of my habits that I need to do on a regular basis in order to feel normal.

  2015.07.08

• What do you want to read about on Architect This City in 2015?

  

  Schönefeld by Vladimir Smirnov on 500px

  Though this blog is focused on cities and geared towards city builders, I cover a lot of different topics. 

  I talk about real estate, architecture, planning, transportation, technology, and even personal topics. My primary goal is to create a worldwide community of people passionate about building great cities, but at the same time it’s still a personal blog.

  Usually I just write about whatever is currently on my mind. I never queue up posts and so each post is written the day of. But sometimes I wonder if I’m delivering on what you, the readers, really want to read and talk about. 

  So today I thought I would simply ask: what would you like to see more of on ATC in 2015? Let me know in the comment section below and I’ll try my best to deliver.

  2015.02.20