I recently eschewed prevailing marketing wisdom and killed JustGetOutMore.com—the blog I’m most associated with and the one with the most web traffic.
I didn’t delete the content, but instead reposted it here on my long-standing personal website.
Nearly everyone on social media these days has their own brand, and here I am actively killing mine. I figured I should explain why.
I am not a brand.
The main reason is a five word sentence: I am not a brand.
I’m sure I’ll post more about this in the future, but for now, that’s the main takeaway.
This website doesn’t exist in order to achieve “influencer status,” so that I can charge brands to use me as a marketing vehicle to make you feel bad for not owning what they want to sell you. I don’t “create content” just to generate more clicks. Or post about something simply for the seo juice. I don’t play the follow-unfollow game, use social media bots, or care about my following-to-followers ratio.
That’s not why I’m here. It’s not why I invest the time to write or interact. It’s not the outcome I’m seeking. It’s not who I am.
Do I want to influence you? Sure, you’re goddamn right I do.
I want you to be a good steward of our public lands—and a vocal advocate for them, too. I want you to travel as much as you can. I want you to fall in love with our national parks. I want to empower you to push your limits. I want you to see as much as you possibly can of this world, and I also want you to slow down and enjoy the journey, too. And I want you to share it with others, and go solo sometimes too. I want you to think intentionally about the choices you make in life each day.
I’m not a logo, or a following, or a curated personality. Nope, I’m just some random dude who wants to help you have more adventures.
When I first launched JustGetOutMore two years ago, I posted this “mini mission statement” in the sidebar.
And that remains the mission of this website, though it’ll have a bit more of a personal touch moving forward. Because, after all, I’m a person—not a brand. I think I’ve always remained genuine and authentic in what I do, so I might as well speak with just one voice, too. And I hope that a more personal voice will make what I post a bit more approachable and relatable, too.
Please note: I am not criticizing everyone who has a separate brand for their website. Virtually everyone I know and care about online has one. But after reassessing my priorities, I’ve just decided that it’s not what I want to do anymore.
Also, you’ve been missing stuff
But that’s not the only reason.
It’s also significantly more work to manage multiple sites (and their associated social media accounts), which was one of several reasons why I didn’t publish as regularly on JustGetOutMore last year. This isn’t a business for me, so the less work it is to post, the better.
As you know, I prioritize travel in my life, so it seems silly that I haven’t done a better job of documenting all these trips—even if it’s just for myself or my close friends. So one of my personal goals for 2019 is to do a better job of posting photos and blog posts about where we went, what we did, and how it went.
As I began to do that, I noticed that it can be difficult to decide where to post things when you have multiple sites. For instance, if you’ve primarily been following JustGetOutMore.com, then you’ve missed out on the five photo-rich posts I recently published on our trip to the South Pacific. Hopefully, having just one personal site will make it easier for both me and you the reader.
Things will get even more complicated later this year when Jen and I launch Inspiring Travelers, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and empowering others to travel more. More on this effort in the coming months.
What to expect moving forward
For starters, you’ll see more posts about my own various trips. And likely some stuff about my quests and the progress I make on those quests. And you may be subjected to some other random topics, too. Feel free to skip right on over any posts you’re not interested in.
I know these changes might turn off some readers and that I might lose some followers. I’m perfectly ok with that; I don’t really keep track of that sort of thing much anyway. And the truth is, what I publish here isn’t for everyone. It’s just for those who want it.
If you want it, here’s how to get it
If you’re still along for the ride, here are a few ways you can stay engaged.
Social media
I renamed my JustGetOutMore twitter account and facebook page, but they’ll otherwise remain like before—primarily just broadcasting whenever new posts go live. Because social media platforms want ad money to show these types of posts (and I won’t be spending any), I highly recommend that you turn on notifications for these accounts so you’ll get pinged whenever something gets posted.
Here’s how to do that. On facebook, go to “Posts from rscottjones.com – formerly Just Get Out More” and the hover over the “Following” button, then select “See First.” And on twitter, go to @rscottjones_com, click the alarm bell icon, then select “All Tweets.” You’ll now get a little ping whenever there’s a new post.
A less effective way is to follow my personal accounts on twitter or instagram. I usually tweet when I’ve posted something, but it’s easy to miss in the firehose that’s twitter. On instagram, you’ll have to catch my Stories to see when I’ve posted something new, as I keep my IG feed limited to nice photos.
Either way, you’ll need to sift through a bunch of other stuff to catch any post announcements. That’s why I have the two broadcast-only accounts mentioned above, and why I recommend you follow those with notifications turned on.
Side note: here’s my personal social media policy, in case you have any other questions and/or complaints.
Email list
Another pretty good way to get notified of new posts is by subscribing to my email list. Keep in mind that I don’t email every time I publish, just occasional messages with links to recent posts along with anything else of note (including stuff I don’t post elsewhere). Think of this as an email digest more than a traditional announcement list.
If you don’t like having your inbox flooded with too many messages, this is a great option. But if you’d rather have a more timely notification of everything new, then I’d stick with the social media broadcast accounts.
RSS feeds
If you’re among the seventeen people (like me) who still use an RSS reader, you can grab the site feed.
Audio and video
I am toying with the idea of launching an occasional podcast, and I also sometimes post videos on my Youtube channel. You can also subscribe to those, though obviously they won’t include all of the things I publish here.
A few final thoughts on JustGetOutMore.com
- Man, it can be hard to find good domain names that also correspond to available social media accounts. I must have considered more than 200 possible names before settling on JustGetOutMore.com.
- Out of context, some people thought the name sounded either a bit exasperated, or a bit privileged. Neither was my goal. Sorry if that’s how it came across.
- It’s remarkable how important the Rule of Three is in marketing. Just Get Out More is four short words, but virtually everyone struggled to remember it correctly—including some of my best friends. They’d call it Just Get Outside, or Get Out More, or Get Outside More or some other similar variation. Basically, anything close but not quite its actual name. Take note: three words=easy to remember; four words=good luck!
- As a result, I spent a good portion of 2017 looking for a new name. But I just couldn’t find anything that I was really happy with. I was close to pulling the trigger on MoreExploring or MoreAdventuring, but I couldn’t even choose between them (I did buy both domains just in case).
- Speaking of domains, I’ve registered and/or used a stupid number of them for predecessor sites to JustGetOutMore. Starting with GreatHikes.com back in 1998, I’ve also owned ScottsPics.com, NationalParkRoadtrips.com, and VisitEveryPark.com—just to name a few. Here’s an update from 2009 on how I was struggling to get the NationalParkRoadtrips site started.
explore eagerly ☀︎ travel cheaply ☀︎ adventure often
QuestExpress would have been fun (it just made me giggle to say)