As mention earlier, I’ve started on 31 day journey to create a better blog and today is the first day of this journey. Well, actually a number of days has passed but this is however the first of 31 tasks in the journey.
The ”31 days to build a better blog” consists of 31 tasks. It is proposed that these are done over a period of 31 days. The day 1 task is to write an elevator pitch for my blog.
What is an elevator pitch?
Before creating a elevator pitch, it is naturally good to know what it is, its purpose and how to create one.
Wikipedia has the following description of an elevator pitch:
An elevator pitch (or elevator speech or statement) is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The name ”elevator pitch” reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.
In this specific case, its purpose is to force the blogger (i.e. me) think through and clearly define the purpose of the blog so it is clear what to write about (and not to write about).
My Elevator Pitch
Just as ProBlogger, I created a short and a longer elevator pitch for this site. The idea is that I will use my short one as my slogan and then update my about page to include the longer pitch.
But what is my mile-high pitch?
In very generic terms, the purpose of this site is to promote myself, my ideas and thoughts on professional subjects to potential customers or/and employers.
What is it not?
The site is not intended for any private thoughts. As an example, my previous post on how to treat cancer might be very interesting but it really does not fit the purpose of this site. Such posts should be posted else where.
Who is the audience?
The intended audience for this blog is/are:
- Potential customers and/or employers.
- Anyone that find the my personal thoughts to be interesting
Now, let’s go for a ride in the elevator…
For the short elevator ride
So, for the short pitch I ended up with the following six word sentence
Personal thoughts on professional subjects
Riding the elevator in the empire state building
So, what is the longer pitch? Since the ”professional subjects” are basically two, software development and management, I came up with the following formulation. What do you think?
Do you know the purpose of the code you currently write? Do you know how that code takes you and your employer closer to your objectives? Is that code the optimal code, in the sense of functionality, quality and customer satisfaction, for the long run and not only the simple short term solution? Are you conducting the best possible software business given the your current constraints?
The purpose of this site is to convey my personal thoughts, reflections and ideas around the subjects of software engineering and management, especially the combination of the two.
Do you find these subjects to be interesting? Make sure to bookmark this site or to follow my posts on my rss feed on the subjects. Why not follow me on Twitter?
Daily reflections
Ok, so I thought that I would add some personal reflections after each task (or day if you’d like).
What have I learnt?
The concept of a ”elevator pitch” as such was not really new. I’ve run in to it before and I’ve thought that it sounded like a good idea. Creating one, however, was something new to me. It was a lot harder than I first envisioned. It was however a good exercise sine it forced me to really think through why I have this site in order to write a elevator pitch. I’m sure that this is not the last time I create a elevator pitch, not for this site or for any other occasion where it might come in handy to really know the purpose of what I’m about to do, such as running my on company.
The elevator pitch is also closely related to the vision statement which describes the direction that an organisation is moving towards and its overall purpose, in the long term.
Another lesson learnt is that it took much longer then anticipated to complete the first day. I must speed up if I want to finish with these tasks this year.
What actions have I taken as a result of day 1?
The concrete actions that I’ve done is to update my about page to include the elevator pitch in a ”about this site” section. I’ve also updated the site slogan, as well as my twitter profile, to reflect my elevator pitch.
Day two here I come…