Keidra Chaney

This is day 1 of a 30 day blog challenge that I am doing at this blog. It will be a little less promotional than what I usually post here, but hopefully more insightful.

I often call myself a writer in a complicated relationship with the internet, and as I have a 50/50 split these days between writing/content work and analytics work I go back to reevaluating what that means for my career identity.

For anyone who didn’t know me before 2007, the fact that I was not always knee-deep into digital often comes as a surprise. I mention a lot that my work in digital has been largely coincidental, it not accidental. I fell into web content exclusively after a few years of alternating non-profit marketing and a freelance writing/blogging side gig, I fell into social media marketing, not knowing it was going to be a career path, when my job at DePaul changed, and analytics became an extension of my social media work, and i had no intent of making it a focus of my career; i just liked doing it, and people found it valuable.

But I wrote the whole time, and I still write through The Learned Fangirl, though I am currently so focused on the big picture of editing TLF that it’s harder for me to write these days. Last year, I did more writing than I had done in the previous three or four years, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. But the industry is different. In a way my detour into marketing and analytics has prepared me for it; you can’t really be a writer online these days without a cursory knowledge of SEO and analytics. Writing never stopped being my first love, creating copy and content to help get ideas across, to spur conversation is a prime motivator for what I do, I’m no data disciple. I appreciate data but I love the written word, and getting those two to “play nice” is my challenge.