On March 28, 2008, I posted my first blog post “My First Webinar” which is what you find at the bottom if you scroll through all the posts on this blog. So I can say I have been blogging for 11 years… sort of.

If you look at the archives on the right of my blog you will see that there were only a couple of posts in 2018 and also not very many in 2017, so talking of my 11 years of blogging is like saying that the two pictures to the left represent my 10-year challenge – yes, but a bit of time is missing!

This post is effectively a relaunch of two blogs –   http://www.serviceinnovation.blog and http://www.SMM4Biz.com – that ran for nine years. Both of those blogs had some success and made multiple lists of best blogs in innovation and in social media marketing. In part, because two blogs were too many, I burned out on blogging. But I have the urge to get in pajamas again!

This blog will concern both innovation and social media marketing… with some higher education issues tossed in. I tell my students in my social media marketing class that such a choice is too broad – that with 300,000,000 blogs out there it is necessary to narrow the topic, but fortunately, I am not a student of mine!

I worry a bit that the new title of the blog “ProfessorGary on Marketing and Innovation” hits the three Ps of blogging: pompous, pretentious and presumptuous. However the title is definitely NOT intended to be in the spirit of “Kotler on Marketing” or “Aaker on Branding,” or the tablets come down from the mountain. By using my Twitter handle rather than my last name, I hope to impart the idea of a conversation… and one that is not too heavy.

I am more than a little nervous about restarting my blog after being dormant so long. My blogging friend Ana tried her best to ease my concern: “I find that the longer you leave between blog posts the harder it is to come back because you feel you need to come up with something special to make up for the silence. Do you feel that, too?” Do you think this was some friendly mental games between bloggers?

I realize that I have lost momentum and probably some credibility by my absence. I will be interested to see how the hundreds of SMS and email subscribers of this blog respond to the new posts. But I am also excited about the opportunity for a new start!

Please pass along your ideas and suggestion for the new/old venture!

By the way, I am not the only one in my family to not fully capitalize on initial success in online content. My special friend, Ditka, posted only one YouTube video, 13 years ago, which has had over 75,000 views. Imagine if he had started a YouTube channel and had posted monthly for the past 13 years… move over Logan Paul!