Owning Your Platform

In October 2021, Facebook experienced an outage which also meant that Instagram and Whatsapp also went down. And everyone turned to Twitter to complain. In early February 2022, Twitter also experienced some problems with loading Tweets. When these outages happen, I am always reminded of discussions I have had, over the years, with various corporate and media platforms on the importance of owning your platform – in other words a website that you pay for - and using social media as a way of amplifying your stories. Social media has become pervasive in ways that we initially couldn’t imagine....

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How To Be A Magazine Writer

In the last chapter of my life story, I was editor of a South African men’s business and lifestyle magazine. I also had a stint with a lifestyle magazine before that. An occupational hazard related to being an editor is that you receive countless requests to either write for the publication or for mentorship advice. Having left my previous job, I still continue to receive emails, tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn messages, etc. asking me for assistance in getting into the magazine writing world. I must say, as a quick side note, that my biggest gripe in this regard is that very few messages are...

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