#no idea how tumblr algorithm works or what is considered big or small post but just know i smilesmilesmile
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#MusicMonday - July 3rd, 2023
I feel like I’m always looking for a new way to do #MusicMonday because I can’t quite get it to go the same across all of the platforms I post on. I do it one way on TikTok, another on WhatsApp, a different on Facebook, and I gotta figure out another way for Instagram because the volume doesn’t work anymore.
Returning to SoundCloud works for me because it allows me to make a playlist. I’m a bit stuck in my ways, but SoundCloud kind of forces you to try new people and a lot of them tend to not be mainstream. The decision to properly blog #MusicMonday also means that I’m reviving my Tumblr blog, F Yeah Underground Music, so the artist selection on SoundCloud works best for that vision.
Just about all of the artists featured this week are all new to me and were chosen mostly by sound. I may not always catch the words, but your girl loves a melody.
MiLES.
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I don’t know too much about MiLES., but it looks like he’s from Atlanta and recently graduated high school. He may or may not have been valedictorian, but, from the pictures, he gave a speech at the ceremony. Congrats to the young man.
As I said earlier, I really pick these things by sound. As long as I can groove to your music, I’m probably going to get into it. It take me about a month’s worth of listens really get into anyone’s lyrics, and I just don’t have the time for that in regards to this measure.
What I like about MiLES’s “Oxygen” is the groove of it. I could see myself listening to this on a drive, or even playing this during a kickback. It gives me a very chill vibe, and that’s something I like on a normal day.
I’ve given the rest of MiLES’s current project Everywhere and Nowhere At All a listen, and I think it’s a solid effort. If you think “Oxygen” is something you could get into, I suggest given the rest of it a try to.
Oblé Reed
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There’s probably a lot to know about Oblé Reed, but he doesn’t seem to have an About section on his website. That doesn’t work for me. I’m not bothering to listening to enough to become a fan, and I’m not invested enough to do a deep dive.
So what do I know about Oblé Reed? He’s from Seattle, WA, he’s biracial, and he looks like he’s younger than me.
So how did he get on this list? The same way everyone else did: I liked the sound. All things being fair, rap is not my genre, and Oblé Reed only found his way onto this list because I wasn’t paying attention to SoundCloud’s algorithm. It worked though.
In my head, Seattle, WA had always been a music city because I remember Nirvana and I’m an Allen Stone fan. However, I wouldn’t consider Seattle a rap city, and, in my opinion, that probably helps Oblé Reed, not hinders him.
Kanii
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I feel like Gen Z is all over this list. Kanii is a 17-year-old, TikTok darling living his life on the Jersey Club scene.
I really need these cats to get someone to write their “About” sections, because I’m way too lazy to do more than casually skim.
I was put on to Jersey Club about the same time as I was made aware of Baltimore Club, which was about a decade ago. A former friend of mine was from Baltimore, and House music was having a small mainstream resurgence, so he felt like he needed to show me some things. I’ve been a casual fan ever since.
As a TikTokker myself, I’d be lying if I said that I’d never heard “I Know”, but not enough that it clicked while I was listening to it on SoundCloud. I actually didn’t realize what was going on until I went to make my #MusicMonday posts for TikTok last night. I won’t say that Kanii has gotten big due to the virality of his songs, but he definitely knows how to market himself well.
Kiana Ledé
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I keep running into Kiana Ledé, either because I’m supposed to or because she’s just been around since forever. My first introduction to her was a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” back in 2016, but I’ve heard that she may have been a Kidz Bop girlie back in the day.
I have no idea what Kiana is about or has been about, but bless her for bothering to have a Facebook page. Bless her for writing anything in the “About”, and being around long enough for a proper Wikipedia page. Maybe it’s because I like her that I’m even bothering to look, but I don’t trust the previous three to have even that right now. Gen Z needs to have a little mystery, and people who can’t bother to write “About” sections are unlikely to have Wikis. What would be there to tell?
In any case, “Bitter Bitch” is the first song on Kiana’s Grudges album, and I thought it was a great intro. Is it the best song on the album? Hell no, but I’m willing to hold those for another day and an official video. It’s cute though, and that’s really all I cared about.
Hiroba
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The addition of this song might raise some eyebrows, because it’s in Japanesse, but I have to remind everyone that I really be picking these songs off of vibes and sounds.
“Futatabi” is the end theme for The End of the World With You, and I have been obsessed with it since the first episode. It is exactly what I want to hear while holding someone’s hand as we wait to die during a meteor strike.
I can’t tell you anything about Hiroba beyond the fact that he’s a Japanese man. He has all of the right music accounts, but nothing that will tell me what I need to know in English. Again, I’m also being lazy about this, but #MusicMonday is really a labor of love for me, and I’m not looking to do work.
Ai Otsuka is featured on the song, and, to may understanding, she is also a Japanese artist and actually has a Wikipedia page.
If you’ve made it this far, I really appreciate it. As I’ve said before, #MusicMondays is a labor of love. It’s also a good reason to restart F Yeah Underground Music over on Tumblr. So while I can’t promise that this will be an every Monday thing, I at least can promise that I’ll do my best with it when I do.
I wanted to upload the SoundCloud playlist in full, but neither WordPress nor Tumblr is embedding it right. However, if you’re interested, it’s the post directly under this one.
Written for both eurydicehowell.com and F Yeah Underground Music
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Hello! Do you have any idea as to why the post limit is still in effect? The number seems pretty small for a current day user and it seems to me like something that would've been taken out years ago.
i have some idea. here are my thoughts. a couple main reasons:
there needs to be a limit of some kind, always, as a kind of sanity filter and technical limit to prevent one account from publishing tens of millions of posts in an hour and breaking tumblr. we have the same kind of limit in place for how many blogs can be followed. so there's that. this is surmountable but it's a technical challenge.
we need to prevent spam and bad actors from doing malicious things. having a "low" post limit is one, very old school and basic and incomplete, way of handling that. we have a lot of limits for this reason that you may never notice: limits on how many mentions can be in a post, how many API calls you can make in a day (or per hour or per second even), how many asks you can send, etc etc etc. these limits are designed to prevent one account from really abusing the platform. bad people still find ways to fly under these limits anyway, but at least there's a throttle on their behavior.
we just don't have a better heuristic or algorithm or something to replace the above two points. not yet anyway. we're working on it. automattic (the company that owns tumblr) has this product called akismet that's pretty good at fighting spam and finding these bad actors, so at least that could solve point 2. having to solve for point 1 would be easier: we'd likely switch to a per-hour limit or something you have to really be abusing tumblr to hit.
also worth considering that the number of people (not including the spammers we catch) who actually literally hit the daily published post limit per day on average is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much fewer than you think. i know the number because i put the logging in place to find them. i've contemplated making a dashboard of just them to wade through what they're posting and ask them why they feel like publishing more than 250 posts per day. i just might! if you've hit the post limit, please tell me what you're up to on tumblr so i can understand better.
also also also very important thing worth considering is the product experience for your followers. if people are able to post 5,000 posts a day and actually do so, for example, your followers' dashboards will be overrun with posts from you. we already get a ton of complaints about this kind of problem, and it makes tumblr harder to use for some people. this is actually one reason why we made the "Best stuff first" algorithmic dashboard -- it helps even out the posts on your dashboard when you're following people who can't be bothered to use the queue or not make tons of posts. that's probably a big reason why Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc, all have algo-powered main feeds.
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It's been four months since I posted about not really playing games anymore and I thought it was time for an update.
(First, a quick refresher on the old post: I theorized that a big part of my enjoyment of video games came from them enabling me to focus my attention in a way that I normally find difficult, so once I started taking focus-enhancing nootropics this advantage went away and video games became much less appealing compared to other activities. Instead I started spending my free time doing personal data cleanup and related tasks.)
So, what have I been doing since then? A few things. I have been continuing with minor tasks on my personal projects when I can come up with good ones. They're mostly not the sort of data curation or "gardening" tasks I talked about last time because I've run out of those (though the good thing about the debacle with Sony announcing they'd close the PS3/Vita/PSP stores (before backpedaling) is that getting my Vita and PS3 libraries in order was a great few-days-long gardening task). Instead, I've mostly been making small improvements to my various web projects. For example, yesterday I added entries for "fun pain" and "perfectible" to the game design glossary on the main Pixel Poppers site, which had been low priority on my to-do list for quite a while. Maybe next I'll update the site's mobile layout to put the navigation stuff in a hamburger menu instead of at the bottom.
This stuff requires more thought than the gardening tasks, so it's less relaxing, and I'm having to figure out new ways to relax. Video games have slotted back into my life as one of several ways to relax but I still approach them very differently from before. I no longer look for "go places and do things" games or seek to feel like I am occupying a world. I want the experience to feel contained and not take up space in my brain when I'm not playing it. I want it to be something I can easily pick up for a bit and have it not matter whether I ever come back to it. I've found that what works best is low-context arcade-style experiences (racers, puzzlers, twin-stick shooters, rhythm games, etc.) or story games that can be completed in a single sitting (short visual novels or walking simulators like What Remains of Edith Finch or Wide Ocean Big Jacket). Games that are based on larger-scale progression, exploration, or worldbuilding (RPGs, 3D platformers, probably open world games - which used to be some of my favorites) don't do much for me anymore and I've bounced off a few of them in the past couple months.
So it's still the case that games are occupying less of my mental real estate than before and I have less to say about them. I might still decide to post more stuff here - I have an idea file with about fifty seeds for potential posts, though I don't know how many of them are actually worth developing (does anyone care about the weird variety of ways Senran Kagura has handled DLC over the years, for example).
But the truth is... I haven't gotten what I've wanted out of Pixel Poppers for years. This could be a much longer essay, and it's one I've tried to write a few times, but in short: Back in Pixel Poppers's "golden age" when I first started posting regularly in 2009-2010, I got a lot of comments and discussion on my posts and I felt like I was actually part of a great community. I mostly stopped posting in order to focus on my job and by the time I came back in 2018, the internet was a very different place. I got a couple of comments here and there (more on Tumblr than anywhere else) but I mostly felt like I was talking into a void, which was terrible for my motivation to work hard on quality articles. My impression is that the game analysis community has almost all moved to YouTube and if I want to be part of it again I have to switch to making videos and chasing YouTube's mysterious and fickle algorithm and I just don't. want. that.
Please understand: This is not a dig on my audience or intended to make anyone feel guilty. You don't owe me comments or anything else. If you're reading this at all, I am grateful and I love you! This is just about me facing the reality of what I'm looking for and what I'd need to do to get it in the current landscape. And admitting that the advantage that I thought Pixel Poppers had over other projects - an established audience - is actually much smaller than I was considering it to be.
So I'm also thinking about switching gears to a different writing project, one focused more on things that are at the front of my mind these days. Possibly just a general thoughts blog (which, admittedly, would sometimes be about video games). Possibly a blog about what I do for a living. Possibly making more small games (I'm pretty happy with how Detectivania turned out, after all). Or possibly reviewing all 800+ episodes and films in the Star Trek franchise. Maybe more than one of these things, bouncing around with an irregular schedule, and even slotting in occasional Pixel Poppers posts along the way. And I have to decide how connected I want these things to be - part of me wants people who enjoy some of my projects to easily be able to find the rest, but I also like that right now I can have my identity cleanly compartmentalized and only attach my real name to some things (and thus it's harder for someone who dislikes my take on Dark Souls to doxx me and dig up my bad/outdated takes on other more widely-impactful things to fuel a harassment campaign or whatever).
That's where things stand today. I'm not dead. I'm still gaming a little. I may make small posts here every once in a while but I don't expect to invest a lot of time or effort into it in the near- to mid-term future. And I may or may not announce other projects publicly here. If you have feelings or questions about any of this, feel free to shoot me a DM or an email or whatever.
Thanks for reading.
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also aquinian anon again one thing i realized after typing out stuff to you is that curating fandom experiences also largely involves avoiding toxicity and doing your own thing, so I'm very interested and grateful to your insight but after taking some time to think about things I realized i was not following stuff that brings me joy or I'm in spaces with people who don't have boundaries. so if you have advice for keeping boundaries and curation of fandom stuff, im all ears too
The best I can tell you is what works for me. And I've fucked up plenty. But I'll give it my best shot.
First of all: judging by your previous asks, yeah, I reckon a lot of your headaches have been as much a result of others' boundary issues as your own. Sounds like you're already headed in the right direction just by recognizing that this isn't fun for you, and that you are, in fact, here to have fun. Keep that at the forefront of your mind, and the perspective will probably help more than anything else.
As far as setting and keeping boundaries goes, you've got two questions to contend with: what sort of boundaries exist (or don't) in the fanspaces you frequent, and what sort of boundaries you set for yourself. I'm assuming that you interact with other fans/their fanworks here on Tumblr and on AO3, that you're at least familiar with Twitter and Discord as general ideas, and that you'll have seen some LJ and/or Dreamwidth pages even if you're not a regular on those sites.
ETA: Oh, shit, I forgot the cut 🤦♀️ (And you get a table of contents again) (small one this time)
External boundaries: affordances and engagement
Internal boundaries: when (not) to argue on the internet
Spötterdämmerung: Twilight of the Gits
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External boundaries: affordances and engagement
Present-day fandom exists overwhelmingly on the internet. That means that fandom's infrastructure is the websites fans interact on. Within the last ten years, and even more so within the last fifteen, the sites where fandom takes place have changed a lot.
You probably know that Strikethrough on LiveJournal was one of the big pushes that led to AO3's creation. What's easy to forget now, even for those of us whose first fandom experiences were on Usenet eight million years ago, is that AO3 has been wildly successful in ways no one at the time foresaw. (Skip to the bottommost post, by Ellen Fremedon.) Prior to AO3, it was common for people to post fic primarily or even solely to LJ. That had a lot to do with how hoppin' LJ was socially.
But the Archive of Our Own is just that: an archive. It's not a blogging platform, and there are no fora. So when the fic migrated to AO3, the rest of fandom moved onto Twitter, Tumblr, and eventually Discord.
Designers consider affordances: "properties of objects which show users the actions they can take." Good design lets users understand at a glance what they're meant to do with the tool/furniture/website before them; skilled designers can use this to steer people through the environments they create, profoundly influencing their behavior. It's both cool as hell and kind of scary to think about. Anyway. The affordances on Tumblr and Twitter are designed to maximize user interaction.
Retweeting and reblogging are super-easy and essential to the function of the sites. Liking is as easy as possible; commenting is as easy as possible; navigating on either site is hopelessly chaotic, but not knowing where the fuck you're gonna end up doesn't seem to stop anybody from tag-surfing. It's not just that everything is public on Twitter and Tumblr; it's more than that, almost hyper-public. People often liken conversations on these sites to talking to your friends in a public park—usually so that they can compare visitors engaging with their content to strangers accosting them in said park and interrupting. But there really is no comparison.
And that's before you even get to the algorithms these sites employ specifically to encourage conflict, because conflict generates more engagement than concord, and engagement is how the sites make money.
In days of yore, much of this would be rendered moot by the existence of friends-lock, and a lot more by the absence of reblogs/retweets. What constituted a community was much clearer on LJ or DW than it is on Twitter or Tumblr; as a result, boundary etiquette generally was, too. Currently, Discord replicates a lot of the community and conversation functions that LJ once did, but since it has no individual blogging/microblogging space, fandom still needs social media.
The closest thing to comms on those media are hashtags. Even discounting tag spamming/trolling/hate-reading, people interested in a given hashtag are a lot more likely to disagree about key fandom issues than people interested in the same LJ community.
And if they disagree, do they have an obligation not to talk to each other? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they'll have a much nicer day if they don't, but I don't think it's inherently wrong or in all cases rude to do it. Some people go out of their way to make sure it's rude in the extreme, but strangers engaging with other strangers' content, even negatively, are literally doing what the site is designed to get them to do.
So yeah, fans who bang their shipwank up on sites specifically designed to get their content in front of as many eyeballs as possible and then shriek bloody murder about how reblogging something to disagree with it is exactly like somebody breaking into their living room are being… unreasonable. They are setting themselves up for outrage. They are demonstrating extremely poor boundaries. They are a throbbing, hemorrhoid pain in our collective ass. But I kind of feel for them, because I think a lot of what's happening is that they unconsciously miss the clarity and boundaries that things like comms and f-lock used to provide, even (maybe especially) the generation that was never even on LJ.
Once upon a time, fans were not any more mature or less hateful than they are today, but they mostly interacted with each other on sites with affordances that created some environmental boundaries that could be readily understood and took a bit more brashness to override. Now everyone has to bring those boundaries to the table themselves, and honestly, it's completely predictable that a large proportion would fail.
Internal boundaries: when (not) to argue on the internet
Since a large proportion of them are going to fail, if you want to have a nice time, you will have to do better.
As social beings, there are all kinds of internal boundaries we need to establish and observe. I don't feel remotely equal to giving any much advice about most of them. Here are my personal rules for getting into (and out of) fights on the internet instead.
Again, I don't think it's necessarily wrong or even rude to dispute with someone (and I think some of the times when it's rude, it's still right). So I won't advise anyone never to fight on the internet, but I try to follow two rules: 1) Think carefully about the fights you pick. 2) Walk away after you've said what you came to say.
The payoff can't be something that comes from another person. Particularly if you're arguing with someone across a major divide of some kind, you are not ever going to change their mind and it's unlikely you'll change the minds of their social group. Not that way. If you're going to do it, do it because:
you want to clarify your own thoughts.
you want to make a point to onlookers who aren't already polarized.
you want catharsis.
you care a lot about saying it.
If your motivation is catharsis, really weigh the payoff against the emotional costs of conflict. I mean, do that anyway, but especially if you're wading into something because you think it will make you feel better. In the short term, at least, it probably won't.
Whatever your reason for participating in the argument, once you've said the part that was important to you, stop there. You don't have to keep going just because someone responds. Opening your mouth does not create an obligation for you to keep engaging—not even with someone you addressed directly.
I think walking away is harder than not getting involved in the first place, because most of us have internalized that once we insert ourselves, we have to stick around. We feel like the fact that people are upset with us means we're responsible for that, and thus that we owe them something. But we don't. Not only can you walk away whenever it suits you, but you should. Be open to the possibility that any anger you've incurred is warranted, but if you're careful about step one, your conscience should stay fairly quiet.
This is the part that requires you to enforce the boundaries you've set for yourself. Are people shitposting about you? Yep, they're apt to. Are they twisting your words, making ad hominem attacks, speculating about your motives and getting them wrong? Yeah, they're gonna do that, too. Are they bragging about how they clearly destroyed you, since you haven't said a word since they returned fire? Let them. If you ever want to get of the carousel, sooner or later you're going to have to shut up and leave them to it; better it be right after you've said the thing you wanted to say than after you've said a bunch of things that you never really did because you got sucked in.
Practice it. Practice walking away from the conflict. Practice saying what you want despite knowing it's assailable; practice blocking people when you're done and letting them call you a coward because of it. Practice by fucking off and reading a nice book, or writing a nice fic, or making a nice meal. Practice switching mental gears, because that is not an ability most of us get for free. It's a learned skill.
Speak to satisfy yourself. Because any time you get angry at a stranger on the internet, the only resolution to that feeling you will ever experience will come from your end.
That is true of a lot of real-life situations where the person you're angry at is not a stranger, as well. It shouldn't be, but it is. Particularly when you are experiencing systemic injustice of some kind, there will often be sharp limits to the practical redress you can extract from a company, government, other power structure, or individual within that power structure. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't work for change, but if you're going to do it, you'll need to husband your mental and emotional resources for the fights that matter.
Spötterdämmerung: Twilight of the Gits
I have no idea if it's your only fandom, but since you've mentioned ships with its characters and you evidently follow this blog, I assume you're in Supernatural fandom. SPN is one of the biggest, best-established, and most transformatively productive fandoms out there; it ain't gonna evaporate overnight. It may well be one of those fandoms that never dies at all. But it will contract.
It already is. People drift away to other things; networks reshape themselves; communities slow down, consolidate, shutter. It can be melancholy for sure, but I prefer to think of it as a renaissance, as people trying out new interests and getting excited about new stories. And another major bonus: it tends to get way less wanky.
There's always a wank bubble when series end, but the thing about bubbles is they don't last forever. Eventually, the loudest voices lose interest as they lose relevance, and things calm down. Usually what's left is a quieter place where, yeah, maybe it's not quite the hectic pace it used to be, but mostly the folks who've stuck around have done so because they care more about the story than the adrenaline rush they can get from stirring shit.
Point is, you're in the market for stuff that's more fun and acquaintances who don't drive you crazy, and this is actually a really opportune time to find some. Things are already in flux; define yourself and your space any way you want.
In sum:
pick your battles
back-button and bitch in private
accept that not everyone will like you
practice saying, "Screw you, I do what I want" at odd times of the day
get better friends
screw haters, do what you want
#asks#anon asks#Aquinian Anon#discourse for ts#fandom history#(a smidge)#fandom infrastructure#social media affordances#long post is long
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So having been on tiktok for a bit I wanna talk a little about it.
What I like
It’s actually rather entertaining to scroll through up to 30 second videos one after the other. Sometimes the humor falls flat or it’s not your taste, but the algorithim is quite good at recommending the kind of content you will like.
I joined right when there was a big trend going around about sharing your culture, and soon after a Blackout trend where non-Black creators stopped posting for a day & spread/supported videos by Black creators. So I ended up with a fairly diverse fyp or “for you page”. It also quickly gathered that I am bisexual, so I get plenty of lgbt+ content. There’s some art mixed in there, some cosplay, some historical costuming/seamstresses, lots of avatar jokes lately, musical theatre content, fashion, girls in bikinis on rollerskates (in outer space), commentary on political issues, body positivity, all the kinds of stuff I like. To get a feed that caters to your interests you just have to watch & like videos you’re interested in & eventually it gets a feel for what you’ll watch and what you won’t.
Theres a trend where people say which ‘side’ of tiktok they’re on and I get ‘science side of tumblr’ flashbacks but I’ve mostly avoided the “straight” and conservative sides of tiktok. I would be considered a part of “woke”, “alt” (as in alternative) and lgbt+ tiktok (there are separate ones for each letter of the acronym). Possibly also “theatre” and “cosplay” tiktok. These categories are nebulous and you’re usually part of multiple communities; its just as arbitray as ‘science side of tumblr’ was.
The format reminds me of snapchat a little, and I love to talk to myself on video & post dumb thirst traps for my friends (none of which I’m attracted to so idk what my goal is there) and make stupid jokes. So this app is kinda perfect for my attention seeking side & hyperactive tendencies. Its very easy to consume on a short attention span, though not as easy as vine was.
Being in quarantine, its a way for a lot of people to engage in hobbies that involve community. Cosplay is pretty popular, as its a fun way to show off a costume & dress up & have fun without having to attend a convention. I enjoy the way lip synced audios can be used to emulate the character someone is dressed as; that’s something you couldn’t really do unless you were really good at impressions. Its a nice succinct way to show the process of creating a cosplay as well.
Those who enjoy theatre, but cannot perform in shows at this time, are able to create mini-monologues & sketches as well as sing parts of their favorite songs. Its an avenue through which to perform without putting anyone at risk of the virus. It’s also an easy way to show off your talents without having to go through the audition process & actually get cast in a show as a prominent enough role that someone will notice it.
It’s a convenient format for discourse and educational videos. Nice, short, easily digestible tidbits that stay in your mind. This extremely catchy song, for example: “Black neighborhoods are overpoliced, so of course they have higher rates of crime, and white perpetrators are undercharged, so of course they have lower rates of crime. And all of those stupid stats you keep using are operating off a small sample size. So, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up”.
As well as other videos where people take the time to explain historical events, satirize racist arguments to demonstrate why they are wrong, talk about prevalent tropes in movies, teach a few signs in ASL, share facts about their culture, etc, etc. I have found there are quite a lot of people there from unique and fairly unknown cultures and backgrounds- and this is a place where they’re able to share their culture & existence with people all over the world. There are a thousand different viewpoints. Their videos are doing far more for diverse representation than any other platform, I’d argue, as everyone is extremely visible on the app. (‘Their’ as in the creators, not the app itself).
I also have enjoyed coming across new artists on the app. It’s really fun to watch the process they go through, as most art videos deal with the whole creation of a piece. It’s inspiring. I have also come across a painter who’s work I’m in love with, and a woman who makes and sells the CUTEST ceramic mugs, and I need to purchase some stuff from them both.
Now onto the bad:
Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have much in the way of a filtering or warning system. I talked about that tiktok of the kids coming across human remains? That was just on people’s fyp. Just popped up. No warning. No reason for it to still be up. Traumatizing.
You can click on a video and say ‘not interested’ (I do this to literally every video I get where some girl is thirsting after kylo ren 🤮..... like I want the star wars videos just not THOSE videos). However, it doesn’t seem to know exactly why you weren’t interested, because I still get those videos from time to time. There’s no content filter where I can blacklist the kylo ren or any other hashtag.
There’s some very shitty content. There are racist conservatives. Misogynistic teen white boys. Really weird thirst traps. Videos where people lip sync to something with a straight face and tag it with #acting. Harmful body image trends. I thankfully stay very clear of this, but this kind of content makes me worry for the minors on the app. The one’s who don’t have enough of a concept of self yet to realize they don’t need to be able to do the newest pointless beauty trend to be beautiful, to realize it’s ok for them to be gay, to realize how predatory some adults can be, etc etc.
It is extremely easy to come across minors on the app who don’t look like teens. One time I went to a girl’s page and it said she was FIFTEEN. I’m usually good at guessing ages but something about this app messes that up. I wish there was a way to separate people under 18 and adults. Where I don’t have minor’s thirst traps popping up on my fyp. Where pedophiles don’t get a chance to curate that fyp intentionally. If anyone reading this has kids, I highly recommend they make their tiktok private or only viewable to friends.
Just like any site, there are plenty of bigots. Lots of racist comments. Plenty of transphobia. Any hatred you’ve seen elsewhere, of course it exists on tiktok. I have actually zero clue if you can report people & if it works. Most people seem to send a video commentary to their haters or duet a video of a racist pointing out their racism. I’ve heard of creators blocking people, however. I remember a tiktok of a Black woman who’s video somehow went fairly viral in Poland and now she gets a lot of racist comments from this large group of random racisf Polish followers she has and its extremely time consuming to block them all, as there’s no mass block feature.
The rumors about what works with the algorithm and doesn’t abound. I’ve heard well lit videos get more views. Many people suspect they have been shadowbanned for speaking out about current events. TikTok will remove the audio from videos sometimes if they deem it controversial enough. Most of us know they were criticized recently for intentionally keeping Black creator’s videos from being seen (a catalyst for the Blackout, actually). Or you may also recall when it was criticized for widely removing lgbt+ content. Those creators are fighting to be seen the same amount as straight cis white creators are allowed to be seen with no effort.
The effects some trends could have on teen girls. So many of them are already so uncomfortable in their own skin simply because of societal standards, but the absolutely meaningless challenges people come up with on tiktok make it so much worse. One trend was based around whether your finger touched your lips when you put it in your nose. Or if you could get your clasped hands around the back of your legs and over your butt (if they get passed, you have a flat ass, if they get stuck, its big). These completely arbitrary signifiers of the things you need to have in order to be pretty, are far more ridiculous that anything I have seen yet in my life. I worry about little girls taking these ideas to heart. There is a very kind body positive community on the app & I hope more people can find that.
There’s also that thing where they steal your data. Like most apps. But apparently they got a lot more invasive than usual, so I would look into it before making an account; if you want to do that.
I think the apps users can be great & its a pretty intuitive set up. It certainly deserves its popularity solely as a creative form of social media. That being said, its owners are so so insidious & do the worst things. Just like all other social media, its controlled by the worst kind of people. Who can never figure out how to effectively get rid of nazis or keep kids safe from adult content.
These are my less serious gripes with the app:
1) Lip syncing
When people lip sync and don’t do any kind of skit, joke, etc, just look as if they’re saying what someone else said; I hate that. I have to go back and find the original tiktok so I can like it instead. You literally did nothing interesting by ripping off someones audio and moving your lips along to it. So many people on this app are creative and so many others lack any semblance of creativity.
Also people are too easily impressed by lip syncing to kinda-fast songs. I lip synced to like....10 seconds of the devil went down to georgia and two people praised my lip syncing abilities. Like, I can also sing and talk fast, out loud, isn’t that more impressive? more skillful? The fiddle playing in that song is impressive, not the fact I can lip sync ‘the devil went down to georgia, he was lookin for a soul to steal, he was in a bind, cause he was way behind.’ Have you ever seen someone play Johnny’s fiddle solo????? It’s insane!!!
Rather than see someone lip sync to the verse in Stressed Out 2x faster than normal (which is, extremely simple and the song was overplayed and ingrained into our collective consciousness) and go WOW what about someone.....doing the verse out loud. You can litterally just mouth random words and look like you’re saying the right ones. It’s driving me crazy lmao. I’m set to become a God of tiktok because I have a repertoire of fast songs and rap verses memorized. It’s not even an uncommon skill to speak or sing quickly, people literally make rap music for a living! Listen to it maybe.
2) “Acting”
I am begging you to stop making me sit through those horrible POVs. I cannot take another girl not quite fake crying towards the camera as she lip syncs the words from a song that apply to the random situation she decided she was in. I cannot take another boy who thinks its sexy to stare into a camera and smirk in every single situation he creates.
Back to lip syncing, making facial expressions along to words isn’t really acting. Try saying the words out loud perhaps? The inflection you use with your lines is a pretty big part of acting. Like you can lip sync all you want, just stop tagging it with #acting.
3) Comedic timing, or lack thereof
You don’t need the entire intro to sit there looking at the camera waiting until the first line starts and you can lip sync to the part that’s the joke. You could cut off at least 15 seconds. Brevity is the soul of wit.
When your joke involves both reading text on screen and listening to the song for the punchline, if it isn’t done prefectly, its so difficult to follow. I can’t read a paragraph in 5 seconds. Paraphrase.
4) self deprecating artist audio
the audio thats like ‘this wont get views’ ‘I suck’ ‘you probably won’t see this anyway’ LOVE YOURSELF
It sucks when people dont enagage with your art but it sucks worse when your value in yourself and you art is based solely on receiving that validation. Please find a healthy medium.
Also you’re asking for pity, and you don’t want that. You want people who genuinely love your art for what it is.
5) editing videos is really hard how do you make such cool & smooth transitions????
please help me I don’t understand
Finally
here’s my account if you’re interested
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Memes Kill Creativity?
Memes vs. Genes
In the 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' to describe something with symbolic meaning that spreads by imitation from person to person within a culture. This idea is an analogue to the nature of selfish gene, described similarly as a piece of genetic material possessing information required to be able to replicate themselves inside a living. The only key difference in both terms is that the gene is natural, while memes are artificial. The rest of memes' operating schemes completely mimic the genes perfectly. In our current timeline, memes as we know today are taking many forms: as image macros, short videos, and rick-rollicking music. Memes in imageboards and forums have been pushing internet porn traffic into a stalemate and putting our power grid into unnecessary burden. Of course, memes are not to be regretted, but otherwise need to be taken seriously, since they are able to put our current understanding of media industry and economic system into shame.
As with every other thing that have existed, memes are not exempt in its dualistic nature. If you ever venture to the depths of dark web, you may know that memes also took part in the infamous mimetic Tumblr-4chan War. Not only that, some memes are reportedly causing harm towards some users, even though it is often disguised or said to be a dank joke or mere sarcasm. Memes have seen its share of use in online bullying, mass shootings, and hate crimes, cowering behind the freedom of expression tag. Regardless, memes are also an extremely effective form of information transmission. Like all living systems with no set moral standards, memes do evolve and are subject to natural selection. Memes, like genes, actually work like a mindless machine. Again, this is eerily like the performance of DNA in living systems. The last thing we want from this thing is virulence.
Every day, something went viral on Twitter. Hashtags are flaring into the top trends, some videos are being watched billions of times, and another cat vs. cucumber pic garnered thousands of likes. Viral properties of a virus (duh) is defined as the capability to multiply quickly in relatively short amount of time. The term saw a huge increase in usage during the dawn of the internet age and the rise of computer malwares spread through unsecured ports of network protocol. This term is being applied to memes, as it is like a virus (which is a pure embodiment of a selfish gene). Now, a lot of people are utilizing memes to create art, because it enables them to cater the short-attention spans of current internet users. They create shorts, illustrations, inside jokes, and small comic strips. Some of you might not agree with me on this one, but stay with me now and I will explain to you why I would like to treat memes and art as a single unit of interest in this argument.
The dawn of meme-technology
Viral memes and their popularity are now often considered important in defining a time period in the internet culture. Now every netizen can somewhat distinguish the approximate age, sex, and political views of other users from the usage of rage comics, meme songs, and meme platforms they use. Intuitively we can make a generalized difference between the userbase of Reddit, 4chan, 9gag, Vine, and now Tiktok. Others, by the share of relatability with sub-genres of different areas of interest (film memes and game memes). Some others, even, in the perspectives of different social and economic class system (first world problems and third world success memes). Meme preferences to us netizens are ironically giving away our anonymous identity. Identity which the media companies are vying to get their hands on. That's where I would like to come into my opening argument: both memes and genes which originally possesses no intrinsic value, suddenly become a subject of value with technology.
How do we draw the logic, I say? The ones and zeros inside electrical systems are value-free, so does DNA in living cells. As we meddle ourselves with biotechnology to manipulate genetic material for profit, we also simmer ourselves in the computer sciences and tweak physical computation to perform better. We give value in the inanimate object by manipulating them. In our world, we often heard these expressions: that communication is key, sometimes silence is golden, and those who control the information wields the power. What’s these three statements have in common? Yes, information and expression. Memes are the simplest form of both. This is the beginning of the logic: memes are no longer in and on itself independent of external values. The infusion of utilitarian properties in memes as artificial constructs are seemingly inevitable, and for the better or worse shapes our current society.
We might have heard that somewhere somehow, the so called ‘global elites’ with their power and wealth are constantly controlling biotech research and information technology—or, in the contrary, they control these knowledge and resources to keep shovelling money and consolidate their power. Memes are one of their tools to ‘steer’ the world according to their 'progressive agenda', seemingly driving the world ��forward’ towards innovation and openness. Nah, I am just joking. But, stay with me now. It is actually not them (the so-called global elites) who you should be worried about. It is us—you and I, ourselves—and our own way of unwittingly enjoying memes that are both toxic and fuelling the age-old capitalism. Funny, isn't it? We blame society, but we are society. But how are be becoming the culprits yet also be the prey at the same time?
Middle-class artists are hurt
Now, aggressive marketing tactics using memes are soaring. Media companies are no doubt cashing in the internet and viral memes to their own benefit. Streaming and cataloguing are putting up a good fight compared to their retail, classic ways of content delivery. This is quite true with the strategies of Spotify and YouTube, other media companies alike. They can secure rights to provide high-quality content from big time artists and filmmakers and target these works directly to the end consumer, effectively cutting the cost of distribution which usually goes to the several layers of distribution line like vinyl products, radio contracts, and Blu-ray DVDs. I believe this is good, since it is like an affirmative action for amateur artists to start a career in the art industry. Or is it? Does it really encourage small-time artists to begin? Yes. How about the middle-class artists? Not necessarily.
You might sometimes wonder, “how the hell did I get somewhere just by following the trending or hot section in the feed?”. This toxicity of memes often brings some bad things to our tables. Social media algorithms handle contents (like viral memes) by putting those with high views or likes to the front page, effectively ‘promoting’ the already popular post and creating a positive feedback cycle. By doing so, they could capitalize on ad profits on just few ‘quality’ contents over huge amounts of audience in a very short amount of time. The problem is most of the time, these ‘quality’ contents have no quality at all. They just happen to possess the correct formula to be viral, with the correct SEO keywords and click-bait titles with no real leverage in the art movement. This way, I often find both the talented and the lucky—of which the boundaries between them are always blurred—overshadow the aspiring ‘middle-class’ artists who work hard to perfect their craft.
If you are already a famous guitarist with large fanbase, lucky you, you are almost guaranteed to top the billboards. What, you have no skills? Post a video of you playing ‘air guitar’ and… affirmative actions to the rescue. Keep on riding the hype wave and suddenly you get to top trending with minimal effort, thanks to your weird haircut. Those haters will surely make a meme out of your silly haircut, not even your non-existent guitar skills. But still, hype is still a hype, and there’s no such thing as a bad publication. This also answers why simple account who reposts other people’s content could get much more followers than the hard-working creators. Not only being outperformed by the already famous artists taking social media by storm, now the ‘middle-class’ artists are also dealing with widespread content theft and repost accounts because of the unfair, bot grading system. It is unimaginable how many nobodies got the spotlight they don’t deserve just because they look or act stupid and the whole internet cheers around them. Remember, this is not always about the artist, but also the quality of the art itself. I believe a good art should be meaningful to the beholder.
Why capitalism kills creativity
The problem in current art industry is that we are feeling exhausted with the same, generic, and recycled stuff. We indeed already see there’s less discourse about art now. Sure, the problem lies not in the artist or medium, but is in the viewers—the consumer of the art form—and how the capitalist system reacts to it. The hyper efficient capitalist system doesn’t want to waste any more time and money trying to figure out what’s new or what’s next for you. What we love to see, what is familiar to us, the market delivers them. The rise of viral memes phenomenon in the social media pushes the market system to the point where they demand artists to create the same, redundant, easy art form. Listen to some of The Chainsmokers’ work and we'll see what music have become: the identical 4-chord progression, the same drop, the predictable riser, and the absence of meaningful lyrics. We sat down and watch over the same superhero movies trying hard to be the next Marvel blockbuster. The production companies are also happy not to pay writers extra to come up with new ideas and instead settle with borrowed old scripts from decades old TV drama. Disney's The Lion King and its heavy use of the earlier Japanese Kimba The White Lion storyline is one guilty example.
Despite it initially being an economic system and not a political ideology, it is untrue that many Marxist philosophers usher the suppression of art. While it is ironic that Stalinist policy intends to curb ‘counter-revolutionaries’—in this case his enemies—by limiting freedom of press and media; American propaganda added further so that it seems that the ideology is also limiting art and kill creativity. We all know the Red Scare in the U.S. during the Cold War saw a popular narrative of communism and socialism that is devoid of freedom of expression. This state propaganda then further become ‘dehumanization’ and make freedom of expression invalid under the guise of equality. Marx argue that total equality is not possible, and the uniqueness is being celebrated by having them doing what they do best and provide the best for their community. Thus, an individual's interests should be indistinguishable from the society's interest. Freedom is granted when the whole society is likely to benefit from an action. According to Mao in his Little Red Book, freedom of expression in art and literature, after all, is what initially drive the class consciousness. It is capitalism, not communism, that kills creativity.
If left unchecked, the threat of this feedback loop is going to cause a lack of diversity, resulting in stale content, less art critique, and overall decline in our artistic senses. Artists’ creativity that are supposedly protected by the free internet are destroyed within itself through the sheer overuse of viral memes. Capitalism has successfully turned the supposedly open, free-for-all, value-free platform that is the internet against the people into a media in which they are undeniably shaping new values on its own: the art culture that's not geared towards aesthetics and appreciation, but towards more views and personalized clicks. How social media and media industry caters to the demands of the consumer are, in Marx's own words, “digging its own grave”.
Spare nothing, not even the nostalgia
Well, people romanticize the oldies. The good old days, when everything is seen as better and easier. Look at the new art installations that uses the aesthetics of naughty 90s graphic design to become new, the posters released in this decade but with an art deco of the egregious 80s pop artist Andy Warhol, or the special agent-spy movies set frozen in the Nifty Fifties. Nostalgia offers us a way to escape from the hectic choices of our contemporary: different genres of music, dozens of movies to watch, and different fashion to consider. We choose to settle with our old habits, that we know just works. Remember how do we throw our money on sequels and reboots and remakes of old movies we used to watch during our younger days? We don’t even care about new releases at the cinema! Did you remember how Transformers 2 and their subsequent sequels perform at the box office at their opening week?
The huge sales of figurines and toys of Star Wars franchise—if we could scrutinize them enough—came from the old loyal fanbase of the late Lucasfilm series, not primarily from new viewers. Then suddenly, surprise-surprise. Our love for an old franchise deemed dead enough to be remembered and treasure soon must be destroyed to pave way for three new outrageous sequels (the ones with Kylo Ren and Snoke) by the grace of our beloved capitalism. Sadly, nothing is left untouched by the capitalism’s unforgiving corruption. Nostalgia has become a gimmick that makes people like some art more than they should, because it’s familiar. It is another way of squeezing your pocket dry.
Not that it is bad to make derivatives like covers or remixes, but the trade-offs are far too high. Consequentially, the number of original arts is now very little, because artists don’t bother making new stuff if they just aim for a quick buck. Most of the young adult novels are essentially the same lazy story progression with only different time setting and different character names. Most of them even have the same ending! No more a beautiful journey like the thrillers of Dan Brown or the epic adventures of Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings, which defines their respective times. Do we seriously want to consider Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey as a unique work? Isn’t the Hunger Games and the Maze Runner essentially the same?
If you play video games, you must have known that the trend always starts over. Game developers are making gazillions of sequels, and only a few of them that are actually good. Most are outright trash. Oh, wait, old video games like Homeworld are also getting remasters to cater the demand of nostalgic consumers. No new Command and Conquer release from EA Games? Re-release the 25 years old Red Alert because people will re-buy it! Profit!
15 June 2020
8.03 PM
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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, July 19 2020
Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late June report, although some may be older than that.
I‘m still working on Etsy search testing and a few new blog posts and pages for my website, so it is still difficult for me to get this summary out more than 1-2 times a month. All suggestions on solutions to my time crunch are welcome.
If you have an questions, comments or suggestions about my Tumblr or my blog, please contact me here or on my website. I’d love to know what you think!
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Latest change from Google: the free Google Shopping listings will now show up in US organic search as part of product knowledge panels. Unfortunately, since they are only doing this for product knowledge panels to begin with, it likely won't help handmade sellers, but could be useful to sellers of vintage & supply items that are known products that will have a knowledge panel. It may be a sign that they are planning on moving free ads to more Google "surfaces" over time, however. Note that it appears that all product knowledge panel ads will be free starting this summer (US only), so that means that any Etsy paid ads for these types of items will become free ads that you won't have to pay EOA fees on if you get a sale. Google claims the free ads are bringing more searcher engagement to Shopping.
Amazon announced they will begin to show US sellers’ business name and address on the Seller Profile page as of September 1. The same requirement already exists in Europe, Japan and Mexico.
The USPS will no longer be delivering mail as promptly every day, to cut costs. This potentially affects anyone shipping to a destination in the United States.
How 7 different companies grew profits during the last recession - there will still be business opportunities during the upcoming recession, but you have to be positioned to take them.
ETSY NEWS
Etsy Labels no longer offer USPS international shipping options for all packages under 4.4 pounds other than Canadian orders, replacing them with the Global Postal Shipping Program (GPSP). Many US sellers dislike the GPSP, and have moved on to outside providers that integrate with an Etsy shop and other services, such as Pirate Ship, Shippo, Stamps, and Shipstation.
The quarterly category & attributes updates are limited to face mask & hand sanitizer attributes for July. Etsy also made some other minor updates recently, including allowing us to set a message auto reply for up to 5 days.
You may have noticed that Etsy is really pushing Etsy Ads on sellers right now, despite the numerous complaints about the average cost per click becoming far too high last year. I’ve turned mine off permanently, but if you are interested in trying them or fine-tuning them, Etsy released an article and a related podcast with a transcript.
Louisiana and Mississippi have been added to the list of states that Etsy collects sales tax from.
Etsy raised fees on Reverb to 5%, “to make further investments on behalf of our sellers.”
Etsy will release the second quarter results on August 5. We already know that April and May were record-setting, and June was also probably pretty good.
The site has continued to receive decent media coverage for the mask initiative; Etsy is mentioned in several articles/broadcasts a day as a place to get masks, including stylish ones. This article briefly interviews a seller and looks at what Etsy will do next, as the mask demand peak might be over.
Now that people think of Etsy for things like face masks, Etsy is continuing to market itself as a place to buy everyday items, something it shied away from for a few years. (Remember when Etsy was all about “owning special”?) They’ve added “Everyday Finds” links & Editors Picks pages, and have published tips on what pandemic shoppers are looking for. (Note that the year over year values compare this April to last April, and so were during peak lockdown for the US.) “Keeping surfaces clean is top of mind these days, and shoppers are searching on Etsy for many types of cleaners, from all-purpose scrubs to washable sponges...134% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “ceramic sponge holder.”...”74% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “mug”...”352% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “diy”.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but this page on the search and ads algorithms appears to be relatively new.
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
The sea change in online buyer behaviour during the pandemic may mean that you need to update your keyword research. Keyword volumes have changed, some very dramatically. For example “‘adult bikes’ shows a massive upturn.This represents over ten times as many searches for this term compared to just under a year ago. If you projected this back in 2019 you’d probably be laughed at.”
Speaking of keyword research, if you need a refresher on why you should do it and how to approach it, here is a recent article.
There are many different ways to get backlinks; here are a few that are pretty easy [video & text].
Are longer blog posts better for SEO? Not necessarily, as long as you cover the topic well. The exception is that blog posts under 300 words are usually not worth writing.
Most SEOs think there was an unannounced Google update around the third week of June. Some are reporting that sites that specialize made gains, as opposed to those who have more general material. That same study reports Etsy had one of the largest traffic increases, but not as much as Pinterest (I’ve been seeing a lot more pins when Googling lately, so this seems likely.) Government websites also seem to have received better visibility. “As Google has described in their document on how they fight disinformation, they describe that their systems are designed to prefer authority over other factors “in times of crisis”. If this truly is related to what we saw happen in June, these changes could possibly be reversed once the worldwide pandemic situation improves.”
Bing released a few basic tips on how to use its keyword planner.
(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)
TikTok has moved out of Hong Kong, while the US government may be looking at banning them, following India’s move on July 6. With TikTok in peril, many people are now downloading its competitor Byte.
If you use Facebook for your business, please read up on the changes required to comply with California’s new privacy law.
Instagram is now testing an Instagram Shop tab, which allows users to filter by category.
Twitter is planning on starting a subscription service, but deleted some of the details from the job listing just hours later.
One of the results of the big Twitter hack on July 15th was Google removing the Twitter carousel from its search results.
Pinterest searches involving Christmas started way earlier this year, with a 77% increase YOY in April. “That includes a 3x increase in searches for “Christmas gift ideas”, while other queries like “holiday recipes” and “Christmas” were up more than 90% and 80% respectively.” These are good stats for marketers to have, helping us decide when to release and promote new products.
ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)
Spending too much on Facebook ads? Here are some common mistakes and some suggestions on fixing them.
If you already know that ROAS stands for “return on ad spend” then some of this article may be old news to you.
STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING
If you are using Google Shopping with your website, be aware that the Google bots may be inflating your abandoned cart rate.
Google Analytics can help you track the effects of changes to your website, or other business conditions. You can also get alerts when certain types of events happen, or when traffic is abnormal.
ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS
Walmart is expected to launch Walmart+, similar to Amazon Prime, this month. But note that while many brick & mortar businesses are now doing a lot more business online, it is more expensive for them.
For those of you who use Stitch Labs, they have been purchased by Square, and the existing services will likely be cut in 2021.
Deja vu for Etsy sellers - eBay was apparently offering incentive payments for signing up for their new Managed Payments system by mid-July. (Etsy did the same with its Etsy Payments system, but only for Americans.)
Is Amazon Handmade as good for small makers as it claims? Maybe not. If you sell on Amazon, consider these strategies to protect your core business from being swamped by the big A.
Wix has introduced an ecommerce version with a lot more options and integrations.
Shopify’s new “Shop” app has some good features but also some issues. [podcast & edited transcript]
BigCommerce filed to go public, and added Ayden as a payment option. More details on the Ayden move here.
Did you know there are sites you can use to sell your ecommerce business? Here are 10 of them.
BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE
US ecommerce sales are now expected to grow 18% this year, while overall retail is predicted to be down 10.5%. “In a pandemic economy, consumers have gravitated toward trusted and reliable retailers. As a result, we can expect the top 10 ecommerce retail businesses to grow at above average rates (21.8%). Amazon will gain US ecommerce market share this year, while Walmart's accelerating ecommerce growth will take it to the No. 2 position for the first time.”
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a factor you can use to drive sales; here are 6 tips.
Generation Z is acutely attached to internet use, and is more likely to be planning on starting their own business than any other generation.
MISCELLANEOUS
It’s possible that the increase in people working from home will lead to more work hours and therefore more burnout.
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a suggestion from me to you, my figure skating rpf pals
Practice good RPF boundaries.
What I mean by this is: think about who can see your work, when and why. We often only think about the visibility of our work in terms of fandom and readers (Is everyone reading this who I want to read this? Can I get more comments and kudos if I post here instead of there?). But the internet is a smaller world than it seems, Google algorithms get more sophisticated by the day, and even though AO3 can feel like an oasis from the world, it still shows up in search results like every other internet property.
This is maybe less of a big deal in larger RPF fandoms, ones where the celebrities are incredibly famous. A lot of you may have been in fandoms like this before. But in figure skating? We already know that figure skaters name search on Twitter, see all the fanart of themselves on Instagram, and follow their own news. Brian Orser is on record as saying that he looks at stuff about his students online, and he can’t be the only coach who does this.
With the exception of Yuzu, figure skaters aren’t celebrities. They don’t have pages and pages of search results about them or teams managing their public image. It’s not hard to scroll past the news articles and wikipedia pages and find fic as part of the search results. It happened to me when i was researching Kikuchi for “we make hope from every small disaster”, and then again when i was researching Ghislain for my current WIP. It could happen to a journalist, a curious new fan, a skater trying to find an old protocol of theirs. Your work could be reaching people who were never supposed to see it, and who won’t understand it.
The ethics of RPF are slippery. Some people say that all RPF is unethical, and that writing it is violating someone’s personal boundaries. I say that RPF is a natural human impulse, something that undergirds most writing, and that writing RPF is generally morally neutral at the very worst.
However, I also believe that RPF should be kept away from the subject of the story, and that RPF is best engaged in when everyone involved knows it’s fictional, and writers and readers alike understand these characters are based on public images, not true knowledge of the person. Where RPF becomes unethical, to me, is when it is forced on people who don’t want to see it, when writers and readers begin to believe it is true, and/or when it begins to affect the public lives of the people written about.
We all know what the constant Instagram comments about Yuzu have done to Javi’s expression of public affection towards him. We all know that Tessa and Scott are hounded from pillar to post about a romantic relationship that does not exist. Some of us know that One Direction was deeply affected by fandom conspiracy theories about them, and their friendships with each other were damaged. When we practice good RPF boundaries, we keep our favorite skaters from feeling self-conscious or awkward about their relationships and friendships. We protect ourselves from ridicule and hatred that comes from virulently anti-RPF quarters. We help keep misinformation and rumors out of public forums. Good RPF boundaries help keep fandom safer for everyone - people who read/write RPF, people who don’t and hate seeing it, and the athletes themselves.
What do good RPF boundaries look like? Here are some examples. If you think that there’s a chance someone in your work (or their mom, or their coach, or their partner) could find your work in a cursory google search for themselves, consider making it locked to AO3 users only. Do your best not to promote your work on an unlocked Twitter account, or an Instagram account, where the boundaries are even more porous and random people can find it even more easily. If you post about your work on Tumblr, it’s a good idea not to put it in the tag for the athlete’s name. As much as you can, keep RPF talk to the RPF tags on tumblr, fandom channels in places like Discord, locked Twitter accounts, or private messages.
I know everyone has different limits around this stuff, and I’m not interested in being the fandom police. I’ve unlocked fic temporarily in the past to get those sweet, sweet extra kudos and hits, so I know how it goes. And I don’t think failing to do one of these things makes you a bad person, or uninterested in fandom safety. But in the tiny, dramatic world of figure skating fandom, things can get blown out of proportion fast, and things that were said to a small audience can become matters of wide public discussion in no time at all. It happens with scoring discourse, and it can happen with RPF too.
In other RPF fandoms, people have had their fic publicly mocked by fans who don’t understand RPF, and I don’t want that to happen to any of you. I know most of you would be very uncomfortable knowing that your fic could be read by the people in the stories, or by the general public. I don’t want our fiction to bleed into someone’s real life and harm their relationships. Let’s think before we post, make sure we keep boundaries in place, and do our best to keep figure skating RPF fandom a positive, safe and private place.
#figure skating rpf#here endeth the lesson#been wanting to get this off my chest for a while#if i had photoshop skills i'd make a meme about this or something but#alas
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yo got any tips on how to get my gwenvid fic out there?
Ah, this is tricky, and I gotta be honest I think I only lucked out because I wrote the first real Gwenvid fic out there and no one had any other options. But since “go back in time” isn’t really plausible, I can offer some things that I think might be helpful:
1. Make sure you’re tagging them correctly! On both Tumblr and AO3, it’s really useful to make sure you’re using the most-viewed and/or official tags for your content. For example, “campcamp” is the official CC tag, and as far as I can tell “cc david” is more successful and widespread than “david cc” … but that might not be as important as I think it is. But definitely be smart with your tags, especially those first 5, since according to Tumblr Lore those are the ones that … do something something algorithm idk. As for AO3 tags, I’m not really sure how they work, like if the site lumps “Gwen/David” in with “Gwen (Camp Camp)/David (Camp Camp)” – ah, what we had to use when the fandom was still so young and tiny – but I’d err on the side of over-tagging, personally. As long as you’re not one of those people with 30,000 tags it takes ages to scroll past, why not?
2. Reblog a lot! I always feel really really self-conscious resharing my own stuff, but it works! It introduces the work to a new crop of readers and makes a big difference.
3. Use your friends! Use people you barely know! Seriously, if I didn’t have @ciphernetics and @hopefullypessimistic84 aggressively stanning my work I don’t think anyone would read it. XD And I’m always happy to give someone a shout-out, as long as it’s not something that makes me uncomfortable.
4. Get involved in the fandom! This is a more general thing, but answering asks, doing memes, participating in appreciation weeks, and just generally filling up the tag with content is not only super fun, because we suck up CC and especially Gwenvid content like we’re starving in the desert, but it also helps to get your name out there and get people interested in your stuff. I know I’m considered “the Gwenvid person” by a lot of people who’ve never read my fics and don’t even know I have fics, because I just have so goddamn many screenshots to fling in every direction and ramble about my love of the ship. You can also use that involvement to plug your writing, like the many wonderful fanfics I’ve written that you can check out if you like my other stuff!
5. Credit people! This sounds weird, and may have a tiny bit to do with the fact that I’m salty about this issue, but if you use someone’s AU or headcanon, or even if they just got you inspired by enjoying their work? Tag them! Not only will they be happy that you liked their ideas and are acknowledging their contribution, but it gets them to pay attention to your fic. And hey, if someone inspired you so much you used their ideas, it feels amazing to have them pay attention. (This is also how you make friends in the fandom. Seriously.)
I’m also gonna give a few more types of advice, ranging from making an awesome fanfic to attention-getting. But since the world is kinda unfair, entertainment is very unfair, and fandom is an impossible beast, I also wanna give you some thoughts that I’ve developed over the course of being in this fandom. Under the cut since it’s only tangentially related …
I’m starting with what I personally think makes a fic worth reading. It might not guarantee kudos, but it might be worth thinking about:
1. Get a beta reader. Honestly, having someone comb through your work for things like consistency, characterization, and grammar is hugely important. There are a ton of great fics that suffer for not having someone run their eyes over it, and the fandom is one big happy family; you could throw a rock in any direction and find someone who’d be happy to help you out.
2. Figure out what makes your story worth reading, and emphasize it. This is gonna sound kinda dumb, but I swear half the stuff on AO3 is the same fucking “David adopts Max and may or may not be a serial killer” fic. I realize this is kinda petty of me, but I do think it’s a good idea to know what about your fic is special and worthwhile, because that’s going to be what makes people enjoy and recommend it. (This doesn’t mean don’t use popular tropes or plots, but just to be aware of what you’re bringing to the table, what cool twist or je ne sais quois it is that made you wanna write it. It’s also a great way to prop yourself up when you’re getting down on your work, because it reminds you that you’re doing something original and special.)
3. Consider short chapters (3,000 words or less) and a regular updating schedule. I don’t do this. It’s a problem. But seriously, people enjoy bite-sized content, and regularly adding to it keeps your work at the top of the tags/queue while also keeping the people who like your fic from forgetting about it.
4. Use small paragraphs. No one wants to read a giant block of text, and I know more than once I’ve clicked away after seeing the entire chapter was one big paragraph. Again, bite-sized. Getting people to read a fic is difficult, because it’s asking for an investment of time and mental energy they could be spending on something else. So do what you can to make reading as easy and enjoyable as possible for them.
5. Be mindful of standard grammar. I’m not trying to impose my Western-centric ideals on other people, because there are a lot of valid ways to talk/write and using “proper” grammar doesn’t mean you’re more intelligent by any means; I’m also not trying to discourage the creative and poetic use of nonstandard grammar (lord knows I abuse my artistic license to mess with grammar all the time). But in the name of making things a bit easier to read – especially, as I understand, for ESL readers – adhering to generally-accepted rules of “good” grammar is worth considering.
Unfortunately, your story still might not get the attention it deserves, and I’d like to start by saying I’m very very sorry about that. (I went from the only Gwenvid writer to being, like, that former high school football player who reminisces about the good old days before all these talented whippersnappers came around to upstage me; I’m just saying that I know how much it hurts to feel like your work isn’t being appreciated, whether you think you deserve the appreciation or not.) It sucks, and it hurts, and I’m sorry. I wish more people saw your stuff.
But some thoughts about dealing with those feelings as well:
1. Get a cheerleader. This is another super useful thing about having a beta, btw. Sometimes you’re going to feel like crap, and you’re going to need someone to prop up your ego and tell you that they think you’re amazing and that they believe in your story. Get as many of these as you need and feel comfortable leaning on them when you’re feeling down.
2. Beg. I make posts begging for compliments on like a twice-a-month basis. It’s kinda pathetic, but it really really helps, so if you have followers, there’s no shame in asking them to say nice things when your self-esteem has taken a beating.
3. Know that attention =/= quality. Like, okay, there are some incredible fics that are rightfully getting their due (fucking Netics and Mouse, talented bitches). But legit, the second-most-kudos’d fic on AO3 is also one of the worst ones I’ve ever run my poor undeserving eyes over, and only the fact that this is under a cut and unlikely to be read by many people is giving me the pettiness to say that. My longest fic, the one I’ve poured the most of myself into, has fewer kudos than a masterpiece called “Camp Campbell’s Cum Dumpster.” I wrote an entire post enumerating just a handful of CC fics I think deserve more attention, and if being well-known and -loved correlated with talent, they’d all be topping the leaderboards in my worthless opinion. But seriously, sometimes your stuff won’t be appreciated. Maybe it doesn’t have enough fluff, or enough angst. Maybe it doesn’t have enough dad//vid. Maybe it’s the fact that nothing will ever grab positive attention like dan//vid and there’s nothing we can do about it. Fans are picky and tricky, and sometimes trying to figure out why something becomes blisteringly popular while something else doesn’t is impossible, but it doesn’t mean your writing isn’t amazing. Believe in the story you’re telling, and that it’s worth telling.
4. Don’t compare yourself to other writers. I feel compelled to put this one on here because it’s good advice, but ahahahahahahahaha I’ve never done this and I’m pretty sure I never will.
5. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Your writing is worth reading, and some things are out of your control, so just cut yourself some slack. Ahahahahahahahahaha fucking I’m such a piece of shit I don’t think I could do this if there was a gun to my head
#ask forest#not sure any of this is useful#a lot of it's me rambling and being salty#but listen#sometimes that's part of the writing process#especially when you're a petty competitive bitch#Anonymous
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In The News: Tumblr, Medium, and Patreon
Large and small changes in the blogosphere
Strange to see two apparently unrelated new announcements on the same day:
David Karp, the founder and CEO of Tumblr, has announced that he will be leaving the company following the acquisition of parent Yahoo by Verizon.
Ev Williams, the founder and CEO of Medium, has announced that he is searching for a head of design.
On one hand, the two companies and their situations might not seem related, at all. But there are deep currents in the blogging platform world that both are experiencing, and which could be instrumental to these changes.
And there's a small additional bit of news: I am transitioning workfutures.io writing to Patreon, about which more later.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Re Tumblr
Tumblr missed the rise of mobile in a big way and has struggled to remain relevant in a world dominated by Facebook and messaging apps. As a long-time and regular user of Tumblr I'm astonished at how little the platform has changed over the ten years since its founding, how little innovation has gone on. Perhaps it was the failure to develop serious ad revenue, but at any rate, Yahoo had written down the $1.1 billion acquisition price by two thirds prior to the Verizon deal.
Tumblr has never implemented simple social features like comments because of David Karp's distaste for them, let alone experimenting with innovative ideas like paragraph-linked 'side notes' (as seen in Medium).
I'm sure Karp will build something else that's interesting. In fact, I wager that he will create a son of Tumblr under a different name, with a mass of innovations that never found their way into Tumblr. Perhaps the recent lack of innovation is due to him stockpiling ideas for a new company? In this, he might be following the footsteps of Williams, whose Medium is a return to his roots at Blogger.
Relative to the future of Verizon's Tumblr, I hope that Karp's leaving will allow his successor, president and COO Jeff D'Onofrio, to kickstart some real innovation here at the second decade of Tumblr's lifespan. Or else we might all be transitioning off the platform to somewhere else.
Considering the furor around Verizon's stance on net neutrality -- they support the current FCC push to deregulate -- perhaps Karp's leaving is related? He makes no mention of that in his announcement, but...
At any rate, my stoweboyd.com blog on Tumblr has become more of a writer's daybook in recent years, where I keep notes, collect quotes, and publish poetry. I transitioned nearly all my professional and technical writing to Medium a few years ago, which brings me to the next bit of today's news.
Re Medium
Ev Williams posted Come lead Design at Medium, tweeting it out this morning. Reading between the lines, Williams is looking for someone to take over as the head of design, a role which he's been filling on a de facto basis, I think.
The company has has zigged and zagged a great deal. Remember Medium is not a publishing tool in May 2015, when Williams turned away from building a staff of writers working on Medium-owned publications? And then he dropped the ad-supported business model for third-party publications in January 2017, which he wrote about in Renewing Medium's focus.
That 2017 shift was very disruptive to publishers -- like me -- who were trying to build branded publications on Medium and to tap into the ad network he had said he was building out. But in January he jettisoned that model, firing his advertising team and publications support organization.
Williams has pivoted to a very different model, one that makes Medium into a meta-publication, and downplays publications in favor of a for-fee membership subscription approach, where individuals (and some publications) can publish posts behind the Medium membership firewall, and ultimately make money based on a complex formula linked to 'applause', which are more or less likes under a different name. But this model favors individuals over publications, and a freelance contributor model rather than contracted writing for a fixed fee, or the use of full-time employed writers.
Seems like Medium has become the Uber for blogging, except Uber drivers probably know how much they are likely to make for a ride once they start driving.
My experience as an invited writer for several of these regimes has been poor. I worked to create a publication, attracting contributors to workfutures.io, and then was blindsided when Medium pivoted before I could even try the advertising solution being developed. And under the recent regime, I was making much more than the average contributor, but it only worked out to a few hundred dollars per month. The most anyone was making this summer was just over $1000 per month, according to what Medium shared with its approved writers.
Perhaps it will work out. Who knows. But the opaqueness of everything -- the relationship of 'applause' to money, the algorithms used to place stories on readers' landing pages, and what Medium's plans are -- led me to look for an alternative. Which brings me to some personal news: I'm transitioning my professional writing from Medium to Patreon.
It's not whether it's open or closed, it's who is holding the key
Medium has become a semi-open platform for writers to publish on, and Medium offers to take over some of the headaches for the writers, like collecting and distributing money. But the reality is that Medium's model diffuses the writer's brand dramatically. A Medium member does not agree to pay a certain amount monthly or per post to me, Stowe Boyd. They are buying a subscription to Medium, which is playing the role of the New York Times or The Atlantic, and distributing some unknown fraction of that money to the writers.
However, unlike a New York Times or Atlantic contributor, I am neither an employee or a contributor paid an agreed upon price per post. I'm getting some fraction of the overall membership fees paid to Medium, based on an applause algorithm.
This is the opposite of the model at Patreon, where those who opt to be my patrons are paying me (minus Patreon's fees), and as patrons sign up, I can estimate pretty well how much money I can see each month for my efforts.
Both Medium and Patreon are semi-closed, since I can opt to make content either open for all to see or placed behind the paywall. The difference is that on Patreon I am the one holding the key: I set the fee for different tiers of sponsors, and what those tiers provide. On Medium, I don't.
Big News for Me, Small News for the World
So, three bits of news today in the world of blogging: David Karp leaves Tumblr, Ev Williams is hiring a head of design for Medium, and Stowe Boyd begins a transition from Medium to Patreon.
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033: THIS IS WHY YOUR PRODUCT BUSINESS ABSOLUTELY NEEDS A BLOG
Today’s talking point:
I'm a college student. I'm considering getting my four year degree in marketing. Do you think starting a blog would be beneficial to me if I were to pursue that degree and if so, where do I even start?
Blogging is not dead. Today I'm going to walk you through why: why blogging can have a place in your business and why it should be a priority in your business. I'll walk you through:
How to get started
How to actually make money blogging
What goes into writing the perfect blog post that will benefit your business for years to come
So let's get into it.
THE VALUE OF BLOGGING
I have published so many blog posts. When I first started, I used to blog every single weekday (and never missed a day for about two years). Let's just say I don't exactly do that anymore, but it served me well and it became a part of my brand. Now, I’ve restructured how I focused on blogging and prioritise quality over quantity, posts that aren’t super time sensitive and will live on long beyond the publish date.
Blogging is alive and well, it's just grown up with our generation and with that we have to adapt. Now, I have over 30,000 people visit my blog each and every single month. That’s over 30,000 eyes being exposed to me and my content on my site.
WHY BLOGGING MATTERS
My blog is what helped me launch my business. And at the time I didn't use anything other than a blog to start.
#1| Content Lives On
Blogging content lives on longer. Instead of thinking of my blog as a journal where the posts are read and then forgotten, I think of each and every post as an opportunity to attract new people to my site that may be interested in a very specific topic, such as: “marketing activities in one hour or less.” Then, I can serve them up great content and ultimately invite them to go deeper with me and my brand.
I recently checked out my 10 all-time top blog posts. Some of them were published way back in 2016; that means work I did three years ago is still attracting new people to my site each and every day. To me, that tells me that blogging is 100% alive and well.
#2| Control the Audience Experience
Besides attracting this new audience to your site with specific content, once they're there, you're able to better control their experience than anywhere else online.
What journey do you want the reader to take?
What do you want them to feel as they visit your site?
How do you want them to connect with you beyond the post that they're currently reading?
These are all things that are in your control on your blog, that you can't control on social media. I always teach my private clients that social media should be the handshake or introduction. The real invitation is where I invite people to land on my corner of the web, to my blog or my website where we have the opportunity to go deeper and continue that conversation.
Now I don't have to worry about pesky algorithms or not getting my work seen or the reader to get distracted by other things trying to get their attention. I get to be in charge of that user and how someone interacts with me or my brand.
#3| Blogging Data
Blogs provides enough valuable data to direct your priorities. Numbers give certainty and they help guide business decisions. One of the best ways I decide what my audience wants from me is by looking at what posts they are clicking on the most.
Dig into that data and think:
What were the most popular topics?
How can I create more of that type of material?
Do I see any trends that would give me insights into future podcast episodes or products or services or courses or free content that I should create?
This information will help you serve your target audience even more. Unlike social media and the algorithms, we actually have control here.
HOW TO START A BLOG
Are you reading this and panicking because you're only relying on Instagram as your main form of marketing right now, and you don’t have or use a blog? Don’t worry. Here are the exact steps that I would take today if I was just starting out with a blog.
#1| Choose Your Platform
Popular blogging platforms to choose from include: Squarespace, Wordpress, Wix, Blogger, and Tumblr. When you go to choose a platform, make sure you are asking yourself these questions:
If it's one you have to make, how easy is it to set up?
Is there a big learning curve?
Would the setup need to be outsourced?
Where do you want to take your blog in the future and does the platform have the functionality to support that?
Sometimes it can be difficult to transfer a blog, so it's best to really weigh these things now and make the best choice for your business.
#2| Design Your Site
The next thing you need to think about are the other elements you want to add to your site. Elements basically extend the functionality and add new features to your blog.
One of the key elements you need to think about is SEO. Make sure your blog posts are SEO-optimised, and connect your email list to your site. So connecting your email service provider, installing Google Analytics. There's all kinds of things.
#3| Plan Your Content
Without content, everything else is meaningless. You can't just create a presence online and think people will come.
That's the number one mistake business owners make is: they think that “I build it, then they will come.” You have to build it and then maintain it. The content you write is going to be what makes people come back for more and more and helps grow that trust and relationship between you and the reader.
CREATING A CONTENT PLAN
Here’s the secret: approach a blog with strategy and have a plan.
So let's talk about some content ideas to last all month long so that way you can rest easy knowing you have something amazing to share. First you simply want to commit to creating new content, even one day a week. Start small and work your way up.
It's not as complicated as we make it out to be. The best part is these ideas aren't just for your blog. You can use them on your Facebook, Instagram, Podcast, YouTube channel, whatever medium you choose. They can be repurposed and translated across different platforms. You want to create powerful content that can be repurposed. Each of these posts help write a bigger story for you, your business and your brand. They're not random. These are strategic.
Topics to Help You Get Started
Personal Post Inspiration
There is a difference between a business and a true brand. We want your audience to get to know the person behind the business. How can you share more about you, your life, your family, and your passions? Think of what you can do to connect yourself to your audience. These are easy post ideas, so here are some examples.
10 things most people don't know about me
How I prepare for my job
A tour of your workspace
What's in your bag
5 things you can't live without or different products
What I love about being an XYZ
What I love about creating XYZ products
How you became what you do
What goes into the creation of your products
Behind-the-scenes look at life beyond your work
My top 10 favourite images of summer (autumn, winter, spring)
The last five books I read
Your go to recipe for a dish that you're most known for
Product Post Inspiration
After the personal ones, here are some product ideas. You sell a product. These ideas might get your creative juices flowing.
10 reasons to fall in love with ______ (your product )
How to pick the right _________ (product you offer)
Things to consider when planning ______ (whatever your product relates to)
Feature a client using your product
Spotlight a new product that you're selling
Five creative ways to display, use or enjoy your product
Frequently Asked Questions
There are probably a handful of questions that people ask you all the time, and your blog can be an amazing place to answer those common questions. Turning questions into blog posts can provide valuable answers and drive more traffic because people are curious about the answer. That's why you get asked it all the time.
Top 10 questions I get asked
What clients have said about working with me
What to look for in a product business coach
What's your process? Provide a peek into what it looks like to work with your company or be a part of your offerings
Share what the experience actually looks like
Client interviews: ask your favourite clients questions about their experience with you
Client interviews: ask your favourite clients questions about their experience with you.
why they chose you; fears they had; what their results or outcome was; and why they would recommend you to other people.
Share the barriers to sales
I know that probably feels scary, but put yourself in the shoes of potential customers and think about the reasons why they may not hire you. Then answer to those fears to show that you've really understand how to make their life easier.
Inspiration Posts
Not all blog posts need to be elaborate and content heavy. Pick some of your favorite images, add a quote or a and hit publish. You can keep these types of posts in your back pocket for times when you're too busy to put together a longer article.
Create an Instagram collage each month and show your readers what you've been up to
Create a mood board that inspires you
Share inspiration for your clients.
Lastly, repurpose things that you've already done. Do you send out newsletters? Do you post out loads of content on social media? Use that content in a new way and repurpose it for a post to direct people to a new way to hear from you without adding any extra work.
THE ANATOMY OF A PERFECT BLOG POST
I've written an entire blog standards guide for my business, for when I hire future employees to keep everyone on the same page. I thought it would be perfect to just share my guide with you, to give you an idea of the components that go into a blog post.
Title
Is the title something that will make people want to click? Does it share the promise of the post, or tell people what to expect if they open it? Think clickable paired with a promise that will over deliver.
Photos
Is the featured photo either the same, or aligned with the content inside of the post? I want this to feel cohesive. If someone clicks on the preview of the post from Facebook, they feel like they've landed on the right page. Opt for colour images are clean and compelling and either use a stock photo or yourself.
Introduction
Does the introduction inspire someone to keep reading? Those first few lines can make or break the entire post. Is there a compelling question or relatable sentiment? We want to pack a punch because this line can show up as a preview on Facebook when the post is shared. So don't neglect the importance of this line and then use this first paragraph to give readers a ruler of the promise of the post to make sure that we're measuring up.
Post Headlines
Are all of the headings formatted the same? Do they contain the same punctuation and the same amount of words? Do they stay on one line? Make sure that these headings are like a roadmap for the reader so that they can find the information they need quickly and that they're all formatted cohesively and correctly.
Break Up Paragraphs
The number one way to make a post and more readable is to not have super blocky paragraphs. There have been visual studies that people will keep reading if paragraphs are similar sized and not super long.
External Links
Basically anything that would pull people away from our post: are they all opening up to a new tab? Now remember, we want as few external links as possible because the goal is to keep people on our own site, so we only include necessary links and save a running list of them for the bottom section of each post .
Affiliate Links
Are we an affiliate for anything that is hyperlinked? If so, are we using our affiliate links to collect commissions? We want to make sure we take advantage of any opportunity to use links that provides results and still making sure that they're opening into a new tab out of the post.
Additional Links
Keep the bottom of a post for any sort of additional training or sponsors for the podcast. This area should be as clean as possible, don’t have a super long call to action, but a direct invitation. Nothing vague, no fluff.
SEO
Is The post search engine optimised? Is it formatted correctly? Are the images loaded with the correct keywords? Is the URL something that makes sense for the post? You want to go through that SEO checklist and get every single box ticked so it's got the best chance of ranking on Google. Check out episode 32 to get more of an idea of what needs to go into a blog post when it comes to SEO
Opt-ins
Is there an option to join your email list? what opt-in will perform? How can we add value to the content with a call to action? Every single post should have an opt in strategy that includes either an affiliate link page or a Freebie that compliments the subject of the post.
Credit Sources
Be sure to check that you credited our any sources used to create the post. I want to make sure we are doing diligence and creating: if we don't want to originally create, this is super important to give credit where credit is due.
Run Grammarly
Ensure that Grammarly is on and run it through the post. Check any errors that are coming up, correct punctuation and grammar before publishing. Before you hit publish, triple check the formatting in preview mode. Make sure all headings are loading correctly, make sure the photo looks good, the paragraphs and line breaks are all correct.
SHARING YOUR POSTS
Now it's onto sharing your post. So here are some of my tips for launching your blog post, both for the first time and for promoting posts into the future.
Stack Up Content
Try to have three initial blog posts for people to dig into before you start promoting a new blog. We always want readers to be able to continue their journey on our site. Incorporate batch working into your creation process. When I'm on my game, I can be months ahead. It's a great way to continue to show up for your audience even if you're not actively working each and every day.
Get Platform Specific
Now, when you share a blog post, always think about your audience on each specific platform. For example, you may share it differently on Facebook than you do on Instagram. On Facebook, we might write a compelling question that the blog delivers on to entice our audience to click through. On Instagram, we might instead share a story around the topic on my Instagram stories and direct people to read through that. On Pinterest, we're focusing more on the pin graphic and thinking through keywords to include in the description.
Capture the Traffic
It's so great that so many eyes read the blog, but if you're not converting that traffic either to your email list or to actual paying customers, then you’re kind of doing all this work in vain. The best way that I know how to convert them is to invite them to subscribe to your email list, make it super clear how they can do this, whether it's a call to action in your post using a popup or a sidebar on your blog. I'd like to encourage you to not just have a generic “sign up for my newsletter box,” but to actually have some sort of offer that people are going to be willing to exchange their email address for.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY
How does blogging actually make people money?
#1| Affiliate Income
Affiliate income or sponsorships, recommending products and services that or this create in order to make a percentage of the sale. This can be a great option for people just starting out who don't have their own products or services to sell yet. The key with this is creating content that relates to products or services you're promoting or pushing out. Such as “the ultimate guide on how to use ____”
#2| Promote Yourself
Sell and promote your own products or services, so blogging can allow you to serve your audience with free content. Blogging can build trust, educate and set you up as an expert. You don't have to wait until your product is ready. You can start blogging and building an audience long before you're ever ready to sell anything. Then, you can generate income from your blog in this way with coaching services, selling ebooks or courses, or products.
#3| Move the Needle Forward
Have the ultimate goal in mind to help direct your blogging efforts in the beginning. While you build your audience, you want to be able to set up a ruler to decipher how your blog is moving the needle for you, whether it's through traffic, affiliate sales, email list growth, or more bookings.
RECAP
It's not too late to start a blog. You're not behind the curve. Just follow the steps listed in this post. Map out your next 4, 8, 12 posts, sit down and start creating.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
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Social media advertising: Everything you need to know
Unfortunately, word on the social-street is that organic reach is on the decline. Long gone are the days where businesses can rely on unpaid distribution alone. After altering algorithms, the world’s largest social media platforms are now focusing on giving users more content from those who matter most to members – think more updates from Auntie Mabel and fewer posts from irrelevant corporations.
“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people,” said Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg in a press release in 2018.
While the big dog of social media may have spoken, it’s not the end for businesses wanting to connect with consumers on some of the world’s most influential and visited platforms.
The light at the end of the tunnel comes in the form of social media advertising. But what does it mean, how does it work and why is it so important?
What is social media advertising?
Social media advertising is the term used to describe online advertising efforts focused on social media network sites. From Facebook to Pinterest, YouTube to Instagram, this umbrella covers a broad spectrum of sites – all of which share a total number of 3.5 billion active users!
This large pool of people that are liking, tweeting, sharing and commenting each and every day is extremely attractive for businesses aiming to increase their reach and get noticed in an ever-growing competitor crowd.
However, size isn’t everything. Phew!
While impressive, the large pool is more attractive to businesses because they can take this huge audience and segment it into smaller, specific target groups. This is made possible thanks to social media advertising’s ability to combine current targeting options, like geographical, behavioral and psychographic targeting. This allows businesses to create more tailored advertising campaigns that can better target the people who they actually want to see them in the first place! This isn’t the only advantage to social media advertising, however.
There are plenty of other reasons to consider advertising your product or service across social media…
What are the benefits of advertising on social media channels?
Now more than ever, businesses are beginning to recognise the great opportunities that come with having a positive online presence. While identifying the importance of such is, well, important, it’s just as crucial to grab the bull by the horns and do something to bring your ideas to life.
Yet to don your business bolero? The merits of advertising on social media channels speak for themselves. However, we want to ensure every business hears them loud and clear, so here we with our megaphone in tow …
Increased brand awareness
Imagine a magpie inside a kaleidoscope store (stay with us). With brilliant colour and shine around every corner, we can imagine how difficult it would be for the stealer of sparkly things to stay fixated on just one object,
How could he possibly choose out of such an attractive and abundant choice?
No – we haven’t lost our marbles (dang magpie). In fact, this shiny scene can be used to describe just how hard it is for businesses to stand out to customers on social media platforms.
With various brands saying they’re the best, it’s incredibly hard for customers to stay fixated on just one – much like Mr magpie in the above scenario.
So, what can businesses do to stand out and stay above competitors?
Social media advertising is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing methods used to increase visibility. When your ad appears and people interact with it, they’ll remember your name. Next time you show up on a social feed, they should recognise you. This is called brand recognition, and it helps build familiar relationships between customers and businesses. Once they know who you are and have a positive experience with you, the more likely they are to recommend your brand to others, therefore increasing your brand awareness.
More inbound traffic
By now, you should understand that social media is kind of a big deal. With more people than ever logging on to engage and interact with friends, posts and content, there truly is an unlimited world of potential when it comes to marketing your business on the web.
Without creating ad campaigns on social media channels, this wide variety of people may never come across your great product or service, and your inbound traffic stays limited to your usual customers. While you know you can rely on the usual order from Sally down the road, without social media advertising you’ll find it much more difficult reaching anyone outside of your loyal consumer circle.
So, if you’re looking to increase revenue and expand, a social media advertising strategy is a must. Every ad you create is a gateway to your website, giving more chances for customer conversions.
And, as we’ll explain later, the cost of advertising on social media compared to the revenue you could get from a new acquisition is extremely effective.
“Without creating ad campaigns on social media channels, your inbound traffic stays limited to your usual customers.”
Better return on investment (ROI)
Everyone seeks to get the best bang for their buck – and it’s no different in the world of advertising. Thankfully, social media advertising can be one of the most cost effective forms out there and has the potential to get great ROI – even when spending as little as $3 per day!
Out of all social media channels, Facebook is one of the most renowned for potentially increasing ROI. This is because businesses can set budgets for different ad objectives (more on this later), which can be as low as $1 per day. While small, these ads still target who you want to target, i.e. your desired audience.
It’s important to compare this against traditional advertising methods, whereby you could spend more than $2,000 for a billboard that advertises to roughly 500 people in a day. You have no control over who sees it and therefore over your demographic. With social media advertising, you have the power to advertise to those who best fit your target audience, and thus, are more likely to buy from you.
While no one can say for sure that Facebook ads guarantee conversions, any number of clicks you get on top of your average clicks from organic efforts are welcome. If you have ads that promote an asset download or a newsletter signup (some sort of form fill) and a person completes this action, you’ll have acquired important information. Sales teams can use these details to follow up with the person which could increase your chances of converting them into a customer. This is just one example of how a small amount of money per day can work to increase reach and hopefully revenue.
Better yet, social media ads have come on leaps and bounds in terms of appearance and format. With a reduced use of flashy borders and garish colours, consumers are now less aware they’re being advertised to, and can be more receptive to your ads.
The Different Types Of Social Media Platforms To Serve Ads
As discussed, there are many different types of social media platforms. While they may share similar qualities such as the ability to share or like, they’re all special in their own right. Here are some of the most popular and how they are best-suited to serve social ads:
Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+).
Microblogging (Twitter, Tumblr).
Photo sharing (Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest).
Video sharing (YouTube, Facebook Live, Periscope, Vimeo).
So how do you decide which social media platform is right for you?
Which social media platform is best for you?
While they’re all ripe for the picking, it’s best to not overcrowd your business basket with too many social media platforms when getting ready to advertise. Instead, keep your finger in one pie for the time being. Once you’ve nailed one, then you can work on tackling the rest.
But where do you start?
It’s important to understand that different social media platforms attract different audiences, and these groups act differently on them. Therefore, there’s no one size fits all rule.
For example, Snapchat has found strength in numbers within the younger demographic. Data from a Pew Research Center survey shows that 73 per cent of 18-24 year olds use the social media site, compared to nine per cent in the 50-64 age category. Furthermore, 68 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 29 reported using the app multiple times a day.
However, on the other end of the spectrum, Facebook continues to dominate in all age categories, with 76 per cent of 18-24 year olds and 68 per cent of 50-64 year olds claiming to use the site regularly.
While you’re never going to please everyone you advertise to, we do recommend advertising where your audience is. Opting for a platform that is already performing well organically is a great place to start. With all eyes on a particular site, such as Facebook, the potential for ad revenue is greater than a channel with lower engagement rates.
Once you’ve tracked and measured the best places to reach your target audience, it’s time to start narrowing down your choices. Here are some of the most popular social media platforms businesses choose to advertise on.
Facebook advertising
No doubt you’re familiar with Facebook on a personal level, but as a business, it’s deemed the big cheese of social media advertising. In the year ending December 31, 2018, Facebook generated more than $55 million in advertising revenue alone – up 37 per cent from the last year. And this is expected to keep rising!
Over the years, Zuckerberg and co have worked hard to amass a Facebook following of almost 2.4 billion monthly active users as of March 31, 2019. (Facebook data). The site also estimates that 1.6 billion of these users are connected to at least one small business on Facebook.
But what does this mean for advertisers?
For starters, Facebook is the leading social media platform across the majority of age groups, with Instagram only stealing the teen category. So, not only do you have access to a potentially large share of your target audience, you can alter campaigns throughout the year to make your advertisements even more specific to different demographics in your overall audience group. For example, if you own a plant store, you could create banners that advertise trendy succulents to people in their late twenties during the winter, and come summer, peonies and gardening mats for the older demographic. All of this can be achieved in one easy-to-use space in a variety of ways.
Facebook’s various advertising campaigns are built on specific objectives. Altogether there are 11 advertising objectives, held under three parent categories:
Awareness
Brand awareness.
Reach.
Consideration
Traffic.
App installs.
Consideration.
Engagement.
Video views.
Lead generations.
Messages.
Conversion
Conversions.
Catalogue sales.
Store visits.
The above objectives are what you want people to do when they see your ads. You must decide which outcome is most important when creating your ad, whether it’s increased brand awareness or downloads of a whitepaper. This makes choosing the right category simple, and helps narrow down that two billion-strong Facebook audience more easily, too.
Selecting the right objective isn’t the only choice budding advertisers have to make. When it comes to Facebook, there are a whole host of different ad formats to select from …
No matter which objective and format you choose, Facebook makes it extremely easy to create compelling and eye-catching adverts. They’ve even compiled a handy checklist of everything you need to do:
Choose your objective.
Select your target audience.
Decide where you want your ad to run (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger – or all three!)
Choose your budget.
Pick an ad format (like those in the image above.)
Place your order.
Manage and monitor your ad!
Simple!
While it sounds easy enough on pen and paper (or monitor), many still need an extra helping hand to ensure everything goes off without a hitch. That’s why Facebook has created several different tools for ad creation:
Ads Manager.
Business Manager.
Ads Manager App.
Catalog.
Creative Hub.
Still, a lot of businesses who aren’t as passionate about content and digital marketing as others (cough cough) choose to outsource this important job to a specialist agency. Putting your feet up sounds good, hey?
Instagram advertising
Us humans are a visual bunch. We’re wired to view images better than any other media. Experts estimate we process imagery 60,000 times faster than text, and retain nearly four times as much visual content than written. As such, it wasn’t long before business brains got together and created the social media powerhouse known as Instagram.
The photo-sharing platform is used by an estimated one billion people every single month, according to the site’s own data. Of these, 80 per cent follow a business on Instagram. More specifically, in an advertising sense, Instagram estimates that 9.7 million of its users can be reached by adverts on the platform (data published in a We Are Social report).
This is great news for businesses looking to immerse themselves in a more creative and visually-focused area of advertising.
It’s important to get down with the kids when creating your Instagram advertising campaign, however. As previously mentioned, the social media platform boasts the highest share of teen users than any other. Therefore, it’s crucial to consider how you’re going to shape your content to appeal to this audience.
Thankfully, doing so is easier than you think. The image-heavy platform is under the Facebook umbrella, meaning we’re in the safe hands of Mark and the gang. As such, advertising on Instagram follows the same structure in terms of objectives:
Awareness.
Consideration.
Conversion.
However, because Instagram one of the more visually oriented social media platforms, the types of ad formats available differ to Facebook.
Stories ads
An estimated 500 million Instagrammers use the app’s ‘stories’ feature everyday (Instagram data). Thankfully the company saw this as an opportunity for businesses and gave plucky brands the chance to feature adverts in this section.
Ads can take the form of photos or videos. Photos are shown for a default of five seconds whereas videos can roll for a maximum of 120 seconds! However, in both cases, these marketing moments only last for 24 hours – so first impressions count. Stories ads are great for limited time offers and product deals, so including images is crucial.
The full-screen format eliminates added distraction and ensures the user’s attention is on your ad and your ad only.
Photo ads
Get your message across to your audience in a simple yet stunning way through Instagram’s photo ads format. They look like a regular Instagram post, with the exception of a small sponsored logo on the top right of the image. This makes it transparent for users and lets them know when a post is paid for. When creating a photo ad, always ensure it follows the same style as organic posts to maintain a theme and let users know it’s from your brand.
Video ads
Give your target audience that little more by adding motion and sound to your ads. Instagram video ads are great at providing unbeatable visual appeal. They can take the form of landscape or square format and play for up to 60 seconds. Note that videos autoplay with sound turned off, so optimise your own to work well with and without sound.
Carousel ads
Have more than one image to show off in your advert? Instagram carousel ads give users the chance to swipe and scroll through different images in one ad. Always make sure all visuals are tied together by a common theme to maintain cohesion and style.
Instagram uses the same advertising tools as Facebook. This makes it easier for businesses to create, run and track campaigns in the same way as Facebook ads.
Twitter advertising
Around the world, many people are going cuckoo for one particular social media platform. That’s right, it’s time for Twitter. Giving users the chance to share stories, insights and trending topics in a neat 280-character limit post, Twitter is the go-to social media platform when it comes to finding out what’s happening all across the world.
As such, businesses have jumped at the chance to advertise their products and services on the site.
Twitter’s variety of ads help brands stand out amongst the millions of tweets that are sent each day. The social media site’s own Q3 2018 data revealed a 50 per cent year-on-year increase in ad engagement and a 14 per cent decline in cost-per-engagement – not bad hey?
A Twitter ad is built around one of five business objectives:
Awareness: Designed to help businesses maximise their reach.
Followers: Created to assist with building a bigger and better Twitter audience.
Tweet engagements: The goal here is to increase all types of engagements with promoted tweets, such as retweets, likes and replies.
App installs: This is a way to promote a mobile application.
Website clicks: Designed to encourage people to head over to a website.
And the choice doesn’t stop there. Just like the Facebook and Instagram ad set-up, Twitter also boasts its own range of ad types. Here they are in a little more detail ….
Promoted trends: This type of ad shows Twitter users a ‘sponsored’ topic at the top of Twitter’s own “trending topics” box. It reflects what’s hot right now in terms of time, context and event-sensitive trends. They are clearly marked as promoted.
Promoted tweets: Whilst they have all the qualities of a regular tweet, there’s one big difference here. They show up at the top of searches on related subjects, user’s timelines when someone follows the account, and pretty much well, everywhere!
Promoted accounts: Oh it just gets better. This ad format suggests promoted accounts to users that don’t already follow them, but might find interesting. It’s a great way to get your foot in the door and start sharing your great content to the right people.
Starting with choosing your objective and ending in selecting the tweets to put in your campaign, Twitter’s process for getting started is straightforward and effective.
The tip of the iceberg
We’ve already delved deep into Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – the three big kahunas of social media. However, there are other sites and apps vying for consumers’ attention. From LinkedIn to Pinterest, Snapchat to YouTube, there are heaps of other social platforms that give businesses the chance to advertise to various audiences. This shows that the power of social media advertising is infinite – there’s so much potential to reach new demographics, increase brand awareness and find new ways to build long-standing consumer relationships.
Tips on creating successful social media ads
We’ve gotten you this far, so it’s only fair we leave you with a little more expertise to help you succeed in the social media advertising world. Here are some of our top tips for creating successful social media ads:
Know which business objective you’re trying to achieve: It’s hard to achieve your goals if you don’t know what they are to begin with. Decide on your objective focus beforehand as this will help guide your ads strategy.
Create your ads with mobile in mind: You don’t need us to tell you what a mobile-dominant world we live in. As such, you can estimate that the majority of your target audience will see your ads from a smartphone. Always ensure your ads meet requirements for mobile viewing for the best user experience possible.
Test your ads to determine ROI: Use each site’s specific analytics tools to help gauge exactly how your ads are performing. From here you can work out what needs to change, what can stay the same and what it takes to create the ultimate social media ad!
from http://bit.ly/2vwG9ie
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Why I Deleted All of My Social Media and 60,000 Followers
Yesterday morning, I woke up and deleted all my social media. My Instagram, Twitter, and personal Facebook accounts (I deleted my Facebook business page a year earlier), all gone. I ghosted from the party. As a small business, it’s a bold move (if not insane) to walk away from such successful pages (I had over 60,000 followers between the three platforms). But I had had enough, and here’s why.
I started a podcast last year wherein I interview photographers throughout the industry. In one of the interviews I interviewed Italian photographer Sara Lando. In our chat, we discussed what it’s like to create art in the age of social media. She raised a fantastic point about how social media trains creatives to be inauthentic. At the least, social media trains us to stay within the lane of our “brand”. An ill-curated feed results in disorder and unfollows galore. At its worst, social media changes the way we create, fundamentally.
In our conversation, Sara makes a point that over time, social media trains us to create and post in a manner that pleases the apps’ algorithm. If a post does really well and followers respond well to a certain kind of image or technique, we begin to form a Pavlovian drive to replicate that response.
For example, when I post an image with a lot of red or shutter drag, those images would outperform my other posts by two or three times. Over time this began to motivate me to not only post more images with movement or red, but I would also shoot more in that manner. My art was becoming a meme.
Aside from the social media affecting the type of work that I create, there is also the human element to consider. Personally, I am someone who gleans much of my information through external data points. I overthink everything. This makes social media a minefield for someone like me. I would analyze likes and follows and unfollows and draw conclusions based on what were likely benign engagements, and I would arrive at concrete and final conclusions that negatively impacted real-life relationships.
It sucked, to put it mildly.
I personally believe that humans aren’t built to have relationships with thousands of people. We can care for a core group of friends and family, and beyond that our interactions will be short and shallow, and relationships will inevitably fall between the cracks. This was a conversation that I had in a different episode, with Jay Gullion. Yet I continued to push myself to try and make social media work, to have no enemies, to love everyone I interacted with. In the end, it proved to be an impossible task.
For years I viewed social media as a necessary evil. I invested thousands of hours and even more dollars to promote and position my brand (self?). Running a small business is work enough, without factoring in how to leverage work and art in the ever-changing social media game. I went back and forth, debating whether my business could survive without a social media presence.
I launched my LLC in January of 2007, meaning that my business never existed in a time without social media. At the time I used Myspace and Flickr. Then it became Tumblr and Facebook. Then Twitter and Instagram were the obvious choices. All the while I held the thought that if I pushed my social media accounts hard enough, my work would be seen by the right people and the big clients would start rolling in. So I kept pushing.
The main reason I had selected Jay to interview for my podcast is that he maintains a posture that stands in opposition to current society. Though Jay is a photographer (and designer and director, etc, etc), he has no website, his Instagram posts are vague and infrequent, and yet his business is thriving. He creates campaigns for a number of luxury brands (Land Rover, Hermès, Bottega Veneta), and yet he rarely posts about it and almost no one knows who he is.
This echoed what I had been long told by industry elders: it’s about your network — who you know. No social media account or agent or client is going to be your savior. Word of mouth is always the key to success in a small business, which comes from doing right by your clients and creating work as often as you can. Jay’s curious case study gave me just the data (and permission) that I needed to take the leap.
One other idea we discussed in our conversation was the philosophical idea of “if a tree falls in a forest”, but in terms of art-making. If I create something beautiful — something I am immensely proud of — do I need to share it on social media? Do I need others to affirm it? Can the act of creation be enough? Can I keep the beauty for myself?
Though I didn’t have an answer at the time, I have decided to try and find out for myself.
About the author: Nick Fancher is a Columbus, Ohio-based portrait and commerce photographer. You can also find more of his work and writing on his website. His popular books can be purchased on Amazon. This article was also published here.
source https://petapixel.com/2019/02/19/why-i-deleted-all-of-my-social-media-and-60000-followers/
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Why I Deleted All of My Social Media and 60,000 Followers
Yesterday morning, I woke up and deleted all my social media. My Instagram, Twitter, and personal Facebook accounts (I deleted my Facebook business page a year earlier), all gone. I ghosted from the party. As a small business, it’s a bold move (if not insane) to walk away from such successful pages (I had over 60,000 followers between the three platforms). But I had had enough, and here’s why.
I started a podcast last year wherein I interview photographers throughout the industry. In one of the interviews I interviewed Italian photographer Sara Lando. In our chat, we discussed what it’s like to create art in the age of social media. She raised a fantastic point about how social media trains creatives to be inauthentic. At the least, social media trains us to stay within the lane of our “brand”. An ill-curated feed results in disorder and unfollows galore. At its worst, social media changes the way we create, fundamentally.
In our conversation, Sara makes a point that over time, social media trains us to create and post in a manner that pleases the apps’ algorithm. If a post does really well and followers respond well to a certain kind of image or technique, we begin to form a Pavlovian drive to replicate that response.
For example, when I post an image with a lot of red or shutter drag, those images would outperform my other posts by two or three times. Over time this began to motivate me to not only post more images with movement or red, but I would also shoot more in that manner. My art was becoming a meme.
Aside from the social media affecting the type of work that I create, there is also the human element to consider. Personally, I am someone who gleans much of my information through external data points. I overthink everything. This makes social media a minefield for someone like me. I would analyze likes and follows and unfollows and draw conclusions based on what were likely benign engagements, and I would arrive at concrete and final conclusions that negatively impacted real-life relationships.
It sucked, to put it mildly.
I personally believe that humans aren’t built to have relationships with thousands of people. We can care for a core group of friends and family, and beyond that our interactions will be short and shallow, and relationships will inevitably fall between the cracks. This was a conversation that I had in a different episode, with Jay Gullion. Yet I continued to push myself to try and make social media work, to have no enemies, to love everyone I interacted with. In the end, it proved to be an impossible task.
For years I viewed social media as a necessary evil. I invested thousands of hours and even more dollars to promote and position my brand (self?). Running a small business is work enough, without factoring in how to leverage work and art in the ever-changing social media game. I went back and forth, debating whether my business could survive without a social media presence.
I launched my LLC in January of 2007, meaning that my business never existed in a time without social media. At the time I used Myspace and Flickr. Then it became Tumblr and Facebook. Then Twitter and Instagram were the obvious choices. All the while I held the thought that if I pushed my social media accounts hard enough, my work would be seen by the right people and the big clients would start rolling in. So I kept pushing.
The main reason I had selected Jay to interview for my podcast is that he maintains a posture that stands in opposition to current society. Though Jay is a photographer (and designer and director, etc, etc), he has no website, his Instagram posts are vague and infrequent, and yet his business is thriving. He creates campaigns for a number of luxury brands (Land Rover, Hermès, Bottega Veneta), and yet he rarely posts about it and almost no one knows who he is.
This echoed what I had been long told by industry elders: it’s about your network — who you know. No social media account or agent or client is going to be your savior. Word of mouth is always the key to success in a small business, which comes from doing right by your clients and creating work as often as you can. Jay’s curious case study gave me just the data (and permission) that I needed to take the leap.
One other idea we discussed in our conversation was the philosophical idea of “if a tree falls in a forest”, but in terms of art-making. If I create something beautiful — something I am immensely proud of — do I need to share it on social media? Do I need others to affirm it? Can the act of creation be enough? Can I keep the beauty for myself?
Though I didn’t have an answer at the time, I have decided to try and find out for myself.
About the author: Nick Fancher is a Columbus, Ohio-based portrait and commerce photographer. You can also find more of his work and writing on his website. His popular books can be purchased on Amazon. This article was also published here.
from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/02/19/why-i-deleted-all-of-my-social-media-and-60000-followers/
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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, late-January 2020
Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the mid-January report, although some may be older than that.
Right now I am trying to get at least 2 of these out each month. Is that enough? Too much? Am I missing topics you want to see covered? Please let me know! Comment here, message me through Tumblr, Twitter, or my website.
Also, I am once again working on plans to start an ecommerce business forum, where small business owners can learn and discuss topics like the ones I post about here. If you have any preferences for a suggested platform/forum space,please let me know! I will be running a survey once I narrow down my list.
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Etsy introduced alternative shipping for US sellers shipping outside of the US & Canada, run by Asendia. Etsy Labels will no longer offer USPS First Class International for those shipments, but faster levels will still be through USPS. The Help file doesn’t give that much more detail; discussion is here.
Having educational/information pages on ecommerce websites can help product page search rankings. Blog posts, pillar pages and tutorials can all be a good investment.
Excellent article on how to keep your existing buyers (aka customer retention) rather than always going after new ones. It cites decent research in the area, with examples. (As regular readers know, I love Help Scout’s customer service articles!) For example, “When it comes to highly rated customer service, quality and completeness matter more than speed. According to research from Gallup, customers were nine times more likely to be engaged with a brand when they evaluated the service as “courteous, willing, and helpful.” “Speedy” service, on the other hand, only made customers six times more likely to be satisfied.”
ETSY NEWS
More updates to listing categories, including a new Presets & Photo Filters category, and Cribs & Cradles is now called Moses Baskets & Hammocks.
Tips on marketing your Etsy listings for weddings. “Etsy wedding shoppers are often drawn to Etsy because they identify as creative people themselves, an asset you should consider when developing and marketing your products. By offering DIY versions of some of your popular items, you can draw in crafty shoppers, who may end up purchasing a finished handmade item from your shop instead. Offering both options can also be a great way of hitting multiple price points.”
If you sell jewellery and/or accessories, here is Etsy’s advice for marketing in the first half of the year. “While high-end jewelry is often a carefully considered purchase, more affordable everyday items make easy impulse buys and gifts due to their small size and approachable price points.” Also, people are still shopping by gender: “70% YoY increase in Jewelry, Accessories, and Bags category searches containing “him”.
“We expect the bags category to grow the most out of these three categories in the next year, led by the increasing popularity of small leather goods such as wallets, dopp kits, and items for travel. A recent increase in average order value within the Bags category suggests buyers are willing to pay more for high-quality materials like leather.” But note that “Buyers tend not to use the term "purse" in their searches.” Finally, “From July through September 2019, over half of Etsy US and global GMS came from purchases that shipped for free.”
In case you missed it, Disney is going after Etsy sellers of Baby Yoda merchandise. Some speculate that they are mostly focusssing on the listings making the most sales. More sarcastic & humorous take here.
Interesting interview (podcast & transcript, including a pdf) with CEO Josh Silverman, on business strategies. I do like this quote: “When you’re successful, what can be really hard is to tell you’re successful because of some things and in spite of others.” To be very honest, I have this problem a lot, and have seen other business people misjudge their success as well.
This is telling, though “And you have until December 31st to ship it.” I have a hunch that is what happened with Etsy Ads and the free shipping tools. So they shipped unfinished tools, and that was bad for the business.
Finally, “HOFFMAN: Until this point, Etsy’s focus had been on its sellers. It saw itself as a marketplace for handmade items, and the people who made them. Josh knew he had to change this perspective…
SILVERMAN: It was a really big shift in focus. I think Etsy, like many two sided marketplaces, has very deep empathy for sellers, so much so that it can forget to have empathy for buyers. And when you talk to your sellers, they really mostly want three things. They want buyers, they want buyers, and they want buyers – in that order. In order to serve the sellers, you’ve really got to focus on buyers...By the end of my fifth week almost everyone in the company had a new job.”
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
Google confirmed a core search update that started to roll out January 13 and took about 3 days, and showed substantial changes on most tracking tools. Early analysis indicates this has once again affected sites based on trustworthiness, but big winners and losers are still unclear. The take from Moz is that this hit health sites like previous updates, but also hurt diverse sites such as Orbitz, Yellow Pages, Poshmark, USA Today and Forever 21. RankRanger noted that there was more volatility in finance rankings than the December update.
Remember Google’s algorithm change late last year, called BERT? George Mueller offered a bit of advice [text and video] on how to optimize for it: “if ... there’s anything that you can do to kind of optimize for BERT, it’s essentially to make sure that your pages have natural text on them...So instead of stuffing keywords as much as possible, kind of write naturally”
Google is now highlighting some products (clothing & accessories) in organic search results on mobile in the US & India; you have to have a Google Merchant Centre account set up, but you do not need to buy ads to get this organic boost. Here’s the Google help file on how to optimize.
If your website has many related pages on a specific topic, organizing the info on one “content hub” (aka pillar pages, or even category pages in some cases) is an excellent way to get user and search engine attention.
Brief video from Google for SEO beginners: how to optimize images for Google search. They also link to their support file on this question, which has more advanced info. And here is another beginners video on Google SEO considerations for your website. (More links in the video comments.)
Google has a “SafeSearch filter” that removes porn and other mature content from search results, but sometimes it catches innocent sites as well.
Another good article on how internal linking can serve multiple purposes on your website, especially keyword ranking.
Sites that get the “featured snippet” position in Google search results can no longer get organic ranking on the first page. This could change, though.
CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)
Excellent tips & advice on how to make email marketing work for you. Not using emails? You should. “...email has over 3.8 billion daily active users. Take a minute to think about that. Most people who use email probably fall between the ages of 15 and 64, and since there are only about 5 billion people on the planet in that age range, that means email has over 75 percent market penetration.” And “Almost three-fourths of people prefer to hear from businesses via email.”
Do you think that every email campaign needs its own landing page? I’m not sure, but there are some convincing arguments here. And don’t forget to plan to send your emails at the right time for your list subscribers.
Updated for 2020, HubSpot does an excellent holiday calendar that can help you plan social media posts and other content ahead of time, including hashtags where applicable.
Tips on converting your existing content (blog posts etc.) into podcasts. “Podcasts tend to be longer-form content than video or blogs. Many videos that companies produce are relatively short, ~2 minutes. For someone looking to listen to your podcast, this may not be substantial enough in terms of the information covered.”
Here’s a useful list of demographics of social media users - think about which sites would work best for your business based on who is using them.
Reddit is an excellent source of content ideas (video & transcript), as people are usually discussing and upvoting things that interest them, and it is all organized by topic for you.
Instagram is adding direct messaging (DM) access to their website.
Facebook is accused of denying data access to potential competitors.
A surprising number of American adults use LinkedIn, and their numbers are growing faster than expected. “LinkedIn users make up around one-third of all social network users in the U.S.”
ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)
Another tutorial on setting up a Google Ads account.
Google ads were less evident in organic search results, for about a week. This mirrors the changes on mobile several months ago, & includes favicons next to brand sites. But more people complained about the desktop layout, so they have backed down and will continue to test new versions.
Facebook, Google & Amazon are not the only advertising options out there.
Short infographic on how to advertise on TikTok.
STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING
If you haven’t set up Google Search Console for your website or blog, you should. [YouTube Video, from the Beginners series]
A good basic guide to using the Google Keyword Planner, including more tips on how to get in without setting up a paid ad campaign.
Instagram is most useful when you track your stats - use Insights to track your reach, clicks, impressions etc.
ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS
The growth of ecommerce purchases has been detrimental to US retail sales overall, due to brick and mortar store closures, lower b&M profit margins, and fewer jobs. Remember that Amazon now gets around 50% of ecommerce purchases in the US, meaning that the increase of online retail is more consolidated than the lost brick and mortar sales.
Amazon will now be reporting counterfeit goods sold on its site to the authorities: "The hope has been that Amazon’s coveted data will help law enforcement make connections about criminals."
Amazon has started a delivery program in Australia called Amazon Flex. Requiring drivers to sign up for shifts up to 4 hours that they choose, driving their own vehicles, the program is being compared to Uber.
Shopify now has over 1 million merchants, and is growing rapidly. “This past Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, the company saw $2.9 billion in total sales; during its peak, Shopify software was processing $1.5 million in sales and 16,000 checkouts a minute.”
BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE
Smartphone purchases continue to increase: $5.9 billion spent on Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and 48% of online purchases in the US on Christmas Day.
Supposedly, USPS is the most trusted brand in the US, followed by Amazon, Google, and Paypal. Actual quote: “levels of distrust are high in America, but it found that brands can win trust by protecting consumers' data privacy, not hiding important information in fine print and treating employees better than the minimum required by law.” I’m struggling with Amazon & Google in the top in particular, given that quote, but at least Facebook didn’t make the top 25. 😉 Note that age is a differential factor here: “Google is the most trusted brand among Gen Z and millennials, while USPS is the most trusted among older generations like Gen X and baby boomers.” Study details & top 25 list available here. (There is a large difference between the generations, according to this study; it’s worth a scan.)
MISCELLANEOUS
If you are looking for a new search engine, here are 7 that aren’t Google. Some of you probably hadn’t heard of all of them, because I hadn’t.
Anti-virus software Avast is still selling user data to major companies.
#SEO#search engine optimization#search engine marketing#EtsyNews#etsy#analytics#stats#statistics#Social media#contentmarketing#content marketing#Ecommerce#Smallbiz#SEOTips#customer service#ppc advertising#Onlinemarketing#CindyLouWho2NewsUpdates#ecommercetips#emailmarketing#socialmedianews
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