Being that this is the first blog, and it’s a Monday, I haven’t got much to write about regarding work, I’d much rather be writing about my weekend, because for once that was productive. Alas, this is work, and with work comes responsibility.

I guess I should start off with what it is that I do here at DDA, break the ice so to speak. I have been here at DDA for about 5 years, or at least it will be in June. Prior to DDA, I’d been in the programming/tech field for 3-4 years doing everything from programming to tech support, so I know a little about a lot. It makes for fun conversation at least. Once with DDA, I started out being the lone programmer that just sort of maintained some of our larger ColdFusion sites, made some forms work, pretty mundane programming tasks. I am now the lead of 4 programmers, each of us with our own sort of specialty (some still stuck doing mundane forms), working on projects on the larger scale. Dynamic intranets, CRM applications, fancy ColdFusion and Ajax interfaces have become my mainstay.

My goal here will be to throw in new stuff I find, or little web programming or database programming code snippets that I’ve found useful, so maybe something I find will be of use to someone else (if only to just say, what the heck is she thinking!?!?) I’m not always on the cutting edge of technology, it is difficult to hold a productive job and stay up to date with things and still have a happy home life…but hopefully there are nuggets of goodness in there somewhere.

My job here is varied. I do little bits of several different things, for many different areas like taking care of actors and website maintenance. I have learned that DDA can practically do it all, from Web Design to Video Production. Our Graphic Designers and Writers are insightful into the needs of each individual client, and the Programmers and Videographers are amazing at bringing it all to life. Each day I see something new and creative from the talents here!

Not one sentence into my first post, I’m finding that writing a blog is more challenging than writing search engine optimized web content. Maybe this is because my expectations of what a blog should be are warped and outdated. My first introduction to blogs was in high school, when Diaryland started a self-disclosure craze among the bookish types, whose recounted weekends involved more moping than partying. Now that writing a blog had become part of my job as an advertising copywriter, I’m racking my brain for templates to use as a model for my blog, but all I’m coming up with is memories of band geeks’ slander and people using code names for their crushes. That will have to do, I guess.

Working for an advertising agency that has extensive experience as a search engine marketing service has taught me a lot. Working with established clients and developing new business has meant moving away from the norms of college online writing (heavy reliance on the odious slang known as abbreve) and into DDA’s world, where search engine optimization specialists and experienced copywriters have shown me the importance of economic, keyword-rich language when writing sell-sheets, web content, scripts and more for clients.

I initially though this position would be like the copy editor job Elaine Benes (from Seinfeld) had when she worked for J. Peterman, but it’s much better. Perhaps because I don’t write copy about urban sombreros, and instead have the opportunity to help establish products and services as diverse as jewelry, health care services, windows, and more.

That’s it for today. Back to SEO copywriting (search engine optimized copywriting) and my other duties at DDA.