For the last month, I’ve done my best to write publicly (on the internet) about my professional life, with a personal voice, as often as I possibly could. “Daily” was the original ambition. It became “often” instead.

What did I learn? Should I continue, with the same frequency?

You know, that’s really up to you — to those of you who are reading this.  I’d really like your feedback. Should I write more? More often? Less? On what?

Here’s a link:  please take the survey! (then continue reading this entry)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AlanFeedbackJune2011

Since starting this “one-month intensive,” readers have come to my personal website about 1,000 times (I have no idea how many actual readers that translates to). I’ve gained a little over 50 followers on Twitter. That’s lovely, especially if I think of these readers as friends, reading my letters. I wrote a lot of letters as a young man, and they were a wonderful way to figure out what I thought, and exchange thoughts and feelings with others. But hand-written letters go to one or two persons at a time. A “blog entry” (oh, how I dislike the language of Web 2.0) is typically read by 30-50 people (my biggest day was around 300, but that was two years ago during the Copenhagen climate summit, the recent tops is 82). And again, if I think of it as writing a letter that reaches that many friends and family members, it’s at least a more efficient way of writing to them.

Isn’t it?

Wait a minute, isn’t that what Facebook is for?

Shouldn’t I just use these channels for marketing? Ah, but then people become less interested. Of course, it’s all marketing, isn’t it?  Aren’t we all sort of “marketing ourselves” in this tweet/blog/facebook part of the world? Even when we are “baring our hearts”? Maybe even especially then?

And aren’t we all overloaded with information? Isn’t it getting harder to care, what someone writes about what they think? Harder to prioritize what to read?

You can see I’m a bit confused, which is why I’d love some feedback from you. But if you have read this far, you are clearly interested in these questions, so here is a little more information about the results of my “one-month intensive.”

# of blog posts I wrote during the period 19 May to 22 June:  10

# of twitter/linkedin/facebook posts:  about 150

# of comments attracted:  less than 10

Most popular blog post during that time:  “What Lady Gaga and I Have in Common”  (Link: https://alanatkisson.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/lady-gaga-and-i/)

No surprise there: I wrote the post partly as an experiment, to see if mentioning Gaga would increase average readership. It did, by more than 50% for that day, and it’s getting three times the hits of the next most popular posting.

I tweeted live from high-level seminars on the future of the planet, and large-scale conferences on future of our lifestyles … I reflected out loud on the ethics and practice of my profession as a sustainability consultant (including the intriguing topic of confidentiality) … I told the world about being in a car accident in Korea, even before I told my family (and I still have not mentioned it to my children). And despite all that …

Most people want to read about me and Lady Gaga. Maybe I should write about celebrities more often!

I look forward to your feedback …

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AlanFeedbackJune2011