Thank You...
Today marks the one year anniversary of my first column on Blogspot. It's a special day for me because When I started this blog I had no idea it would take off the way it did, or that I would still be posting today. Unfortunately, this is also the last weekly blog post I will be submitting to Blogspot. Before I explain why I am sunsetting the blog, let's go back and look at the evolution of how the blog came to be.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
I am a career traveler for DIRECTV. 48 weeks a year, 3-4 nights a week. I was traveling before the Covid-19 pandemic, I traveled through the pandemic, and in early 2022 as America was "Re-opening" I noticed that most of the hotel, restaurant and Bar staff that I had come to know pre-pandemic were no longer employed at my favorite establishments. Hospitality businesses across the country were hiring anyone willing to work, experienced or not. This new team of service workers were doing their best to learn a job that many had never performed before. They did not know how to use our technology, and did not have our channels memorized as previous staffs did. I felt a duty to my company and our customers to help those who might be interested.
In 2023 I reached out to the DIRECTV Business team for channel guides and sports marketing materials that I could share with our customers. This is when my company found out that I had been helping our hospitality customers for well over a year. When my supervisor found out, he asked me to generate a periodic email detailing my interactions with our customers. In the spring of 2023 I started sending out a weekly email detailing my work beyond the operations team. I was noting my interactions with hotels, issues I was finding with our customers, and sales leads from prospective customers.
As my emails gained traction within DIRECTV, I eventually migrated the weekly email to Blogspot as a blog that anyone could read. My first Blog was posted on October 3rd, 2023. This is my 50th blog post.
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
I have had lots of successes and failures over the last year. Overall I am proud of my work, and here are some notable successes and failures...
When I started using Blogspot, I immediately found issues with their platform. Of course with "Me being me..." I started emailing their database team with suggestions on how to make their website better. I have helped them make a dozen or so changes to their template platform and have developed a great relationship with that group over the last year.
I have been an advocate for our customers for a long time, and worked for months trying to get an "Email option" set up for DIRECTV employees to email the business team directly with issues that our customers are struggling with. I was (Literally...) on a teams meeting with the Business Customer Service team pitching my idea to them when we all received an email from DIRECTV establishing a toll free telephone number that any DIRECTV employee can call to report issues with our hospitality customer's systems to expedite the truck roll process for repair. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but i'll take it. Mission accomplished.
As I wrote more columns I learned a ton about our systems and how they work. I received many hours of training from the business teams in an effort to better understand our commercial systems so I could write better columns with accurate information.
I wrote a column about my team at DIRECTV shedding light on what we do, how we do it, and how we lead the industry supporting our customers. I am grateful for the insight my manager provided while writing this one in an effort to be accurate and properly represent out team. The column was so successful that I had to go back and add a section mentioning that I did not work in HR and to kindly stop sending me resumes. You can read that column by clicking HERE.
I am a staunch supporter of humans with Autism and am a vocal and financial supporter of www.Autismspeaks.org. I wrote a column about my son, our challenges, and how we live with Autism for National Autism Awareness Month in April. My column was picked up by several Autism organizations and redistributed nationally. You can read my column Titled The Puzzle by clicking HERE.
I am also proud of the column I wrote called The Dilemma which is about how our DIRECTV Commercial customers have worked hard, but struggled to come back to profitability after the Covid-19 pandemic, You can read that column by clicking HERE.
I wrote a column called The Challenge about how I support our commercial customers and in it I unveiled a plan to get my team members at DIRECTV to help me support those customers. Not only did the column fall flat, so did my attempts to get other Brand Ambassadors at DIRECTV behind my effort. This column is one that I am probably most proud of, and also the one that was the least read of all the work I have put out. You can read that column by clicking HERE.
WHY STOP NOW
I am sunsetting the column for numerous reasons. Here are just a few...
- Content has been hard to cultivate. I am pretty much a "One trick pony" as I am always writing about the same topics week to week. My success early on came from NEW viewers reading the same content I was putting out each week. And then this spring, the new readers stopped coming to Blogspot.
- Google changed everything. Early in 2024 Google changed their algorithm that determines how search engine results are displayed. Because I do not pay for or receive money from ads, my SEO quit working. The blog went stale. I went from hundreds (Sometimes thousands...) of views to dozens or less. There are tons of articles about this out there if you are interested in reading. I am in the same boat as hundreds of thousands of other small independent content creators, Google killed my blog.
- And... there were the comments. Whenever you put yourself out there in the marketplace, rejection and criticism online are the norm unfortunately. I try not to let the hate get to me, but that has been hard. Here are some notable standouts. "You should try AI, you would turn out better blogs". "DIRECTV is dead, they just don't know it yet. You are wasting your time". And the best of them all... "Please Stop...".
MOVING FORWARD
A funny thing happened the week after I notified the DIRECTV Marketing team that I was sunsetting the weekly Blog. I received an email from LinkedIn that said (Paraphrasing) "We noticed that you have not checked your analytics, you should probably do that.." So I did. I was always posting my weekly columns on LinkedIn but never followed up and checked on them. In june of 2024 my analytics showed over 30,000 impressions in Q1 and Q2 with over 20,000 unique views and over 800 followers. Much of this traffic began after my column on Autism was posted in April. That was the catalyst. I had no idea. Because LinkedIn is not using the "Google" SEO model, my work is being judged and read on it's merits and not by how much marketing money is behind the columns.
So, moving forward I am utilizing LinkedIn and Facebook as my platforms to write about my travels and topics that are important to me. I have always said that I have a face for Radio so you won't see me on Instagram. Twitter/X does not really embrace the platform I write in, so I won't be there either. You can follow me on LinkedIn by clicking HERE. You can follow me on Facebook by clicking HERE.
I do write a weekly Blog called "Monday Motivation" for my intra-company Leadership Circles group. I will continue to use Blogspot for that. From time to time I might even write a column directed specifically to my internal team at DIRECTV (i.e. The W.I.L.D. Column). If I do, it will also reside on Blogspot.
I am honored to announce that DIRECTV for BUSINESS has asked me to write a monthly column on topics that I feel are important to our Business and Hospitality customers. You can find those columns on the DIRECTV INSIDER website by clicking HERE.
HAVE NO FEAR
I may not be writing each week about my work outside of my team, but HAVE NO FEAR because I am still out there passing out programming guides, educating our customers, and always with a handshake/fistbump and a sincere "Thank you" for being a DIRECTV customer.
AND FINALLY, THANK YOU...
I would like to thank my Management team at DIRECTV in Operations for allowing me to follow my passion project this last year in addition to my "Day Job". I would also like to thank the DIRECTV Business team for the warm welcome to their group, for all of the training, telephone calls to verify information and most of all for allowing me to achieve a dream of becoming a columnist and writer.
I still can't believe that I can sit at a computer, churn out an article, and people actually read it. This journey has been so gratifying for me. Thank you to everyone who has supported me by reading what I write.
In closing, I would like to share something personal. I am a C- average high school graduate, a one semester college dropout with absolutely no formal experience or training in literary arts. My blog journey is the embodiment of the American dream. My success in the last year is a testament to everyone out there with a dream that if you work hard, look past the criticism, take advantage of any training you can find, have an open mind, and then work even harder you can accomplish anything.
Follow your Dreams...
For more information about DIRECTV's residential offerings please click HERE. To see how DIRECTV could help your business increase revenue or provide a value added service to your customers or employees please click HERE. If either of these links don't provide you with the information you are looking for, reach out to me directly and I will personally put you in touch with someone who can help.
To learn more about John and the work he does for DIRECTV please click HERE.
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