About Mark

Hi. I’m Mark Tosczak, the owner, editor, founder, publisher and primary author here at MarkTzk.com.

I’ve been writing and editing for public consumption for about 19 years now, and most of that time I’ve been paid to do it. My love affair with creating content started at North Carolina State University, where I spent too many year earning an English degree. But along the way I spent four great years at the student newspaper, Technician, learning how to string words together and preparing for a career in journalism.

I went to work for several years in journalism, including stints as a copy editor, reporter and business editor at The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., a couple years as a reporter at the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and another three years or so as senior reporter at The Business Journal of the Triad (also in Greensboro). In addition to those journalism jobs, I also was communications director for the Southern Growth Policies Board for a while. I also spent a few years freelancing, sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time, doing everything from stringer work for the New York Times to copywriting and public relations for various businesses and nonprofits.

I started my MBA at Elon University a few years ago, going to class at night while I worked at The Business Journal during the day. Toward the end of my MBA program, I was lucky enough to be presented with a new career opportunity and I left journalism to work at a marketing and public relations firm, RLF Communications. If you want more career details, you can also check out my LinkedIn page. I took up blogging in 2000 and have been doing it off and on ever since.

What else do you need to know about me? I’m married and have a couple of daughters. I’m a struggling novelist (emphasis on the struggling). I think technology and computers are generally really cool, and I almost became a computer programmer (and somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve got the C++ to prove it). I am a little bit of a self-improvement junkie. I would love to learn to speak Spanish some day. I’m a fair skier who doesn’t get to ski enough, and a terrible golfer who also doesn’t golf enough. I like to cook. I try to get to the gym at least three times a week, and often succeed at that. Most of all, though, I love creating stuff — especially content.

About this blog

This blog is about my professional interests, which include: public relations, content marketing, the mass media, social media, online marketing, productivity, being successful at work, business and entrepreneurship. It represents my opinion, and only my opinion. No one reviews what appears on this blog in advance — not employer, my clients or even my wife. So what appears here is my opinion only.

Comment policy

If you have questions or comments about anything that appears here I encourage you to leave a comment or at least drop me an email (at marktzk@gmail.com). I do reserve the right to block or delete comments. It’s fine to disagree with me or others on the site; we’re aiming for a constructive dialogue here. However, I reserve to the right to delete any comments that look spammy, are obscene or pornographic, or are hateful.

Advertising, Affiliate Links and Other Things Related to Making Money

I may, at my option, from time to time run ads on this site or post affiliate links. I don’t expect to make much, if any, money from this blog – but I am open to that possibility. In general, the ads will look like ads. Affiliate links I will usually disclose in some fashion; one way I might do that is by including a “($)” with the link, another way would be just to say that the link is an affiliate link. I will not recommend products or services that I wouldn’t spend my own money on.

Colophon

This blog is running on WordPress software. It uses the excellent SEO friendly and highly customizable Thesis theme ($), with some tweaks to the look and feel that I’ve made. My webhosting is provided by Dreamhost ($). The cool social networking icons in the right-hand column are from the Polaroid icon set.