Welcome to the New When Can I Stop

Welcome to the new WhenCanIStop. It looks a bit different, doesn’t it? What is going on with all that Alec?

Back in 2012 when I last did my last post about how this blog was performing, one of my key points was that I was aiming for two posts every month. Well this year, bar this post there has only been one so far and in 2013 there were only 14. Last time I wrote I said that I was trying to work out the purpose of this blog and changes in situation has meant that this blog has changed significantly because of it.

What has changed is the strategy. The stated purpose of the previous blog was that I was able to use it gain authority in the area of Analytics and then use that to get myself better jobs. Now I’ve decided to move to being a freelancer, that strategy no longer works and I’ve had to think up a new one. The old blog never really worked at driving business my way (it had a way of contacting me in the side bar, but nobody ever did).

If you imagine that in the new world the strategy is to get people to use me as a freelancer, then the objectives of the blog fall out relatively simply. I still want to be seen as an industry expert, but I also want to tell the frequent visitors about the services I offer and provide a simple place for people to get in contact if they’ve heard about the brand.

When Can I Stop is now a business that operates in the Analytics sphere, as opposed to just a blog that someone who works for other companies upkeeps. Because of that I needed to change the way that the blog worked so that it was more about letting people know that and getting them closer to the products and services that are offered. You’ll see that the significance of that instead of just being a blog, there are now tabs at the top that show what I can offer as a service and my experience. The plan is that this is going to be fluid and develop over time.

The other significant problem of the ‘old’ blog was that I’d taken a templated visual from Blogger from almost seven years ago now and then fudged it over time to suit whatever it was that I wanted to do. Widgets were put in that didn’t work so well, things were moved around, but all the time the background remained the same and so did the colour scheme.

In the new When Can I Stop World I needed something that was unique to me, so that when I go off and see prospective customers I can have a brand that they will see on a business card. Creating a brand meant that I had to keep as much as possible from before (so the dots still exist in the ‘o’), but I’ve made the whole thing a lot cleaner and better looking:

For those who are interested, I’ve also used a new font in this as well (its called Caviar Dreams) so that it is distinctive (all the titles of posts are in Caviar Dreams as well).

To make the whole thing a bit cleaner, I’ve also changed the background from being dark blue to being light green (it’s actually the green from the second dot in the old style). I’ve dropped the blue for the moment, but that is mainly because it didn’t fit in very well with the rest of the colour scheme going on with the site.

Of course having a brand means that I can now do other things like create templates of documents that follow this branding for when I produce work. The dark blue background of old was nice, but it wasn’t going to win any powerpoint presentation prizes. Now that the overlaying colour is white, I can use the touches of the blue, green and orange in the documents that I produce.

So what is coming next?

The aim is that I will go back to producing more blog posts. Historically the ones that have done well in terms of visitors have been how to guides for tools. However whilst they highlight the expertise I have, they don’t really highlight any skill that I have beyond being able to use the tool. So the posts are intending to change tact a little. My core skill is being able to define business objectives from Strategy (as I will be doing as a training course for measurecamp5 in September) and this is the service that I’m looking to expand.

You may have already noticed that taking effect. In my menu bar at the top I don’t talk about all the individual tools that I know and how deep I know them. That’s of no use to to you when you only have one tool and you want someone who has deep knowledge of it. What I can offer is the practical ways of using that tool by defining it back into your business objectives, hence one of my main tabs at the top is ‘measurement frameworks’.

Of course this is all going to be fluid and you might find that in a couple of weeks time I’m suddenly focussing on something else. At the very least, I intend for it to be a fun journey, so you’re welcome to join me.

In the next couple of weeks I’m going to be doing some posts on here about the pitfalls of moving platforms and the things I’ve done to try and make it so that I don’t lose anything. Keep your eyes peeled!