Tag: blogging

Before The Week Ends: Quality Connections

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It’s no secret. I pretty much blog like a madwoman so I actually have days I take off, which is the weekend pretty much with only very few exceptions. And although I should really be cleaning right now, I’d like to share something before we dig in for the weekend. Something that is on my heart, and that I also think is very important both for Indie Authors as well as anyone running a business or trying to run a business. This subject matter is concerning social media connections. And as always there is the disclaimer that this post is based on my experience and is not necessarily professional insight. For the record.

I would be very careful playing the numbers game with social media. Obviously you want more interactions, but don’t get frustrated, embarrassed, or beg if you do not have lots of Twitter followers, IG followers (I am staunchly against that app where they promise you thousands of followers. I want my connections genuine)  or Facebook Likes. The reason I would not force these connections is because you just don’t want a whole bunch of people following you, but what you want is quality connections. By quality, I mean people who could really help you in achieving your goals. What is 4,000 Twitter followers worth when 3,000 of them are family members and friends? Don’t get me wrong, family is very supportive but they are also a conflict of interest. Since they’ve known you since forever and they love you so much you cannot count on them to really be honest about your work because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They also want to see you make it, which is great, but you need more than mom and dad on your bandwagon to really make some noise.

You need a community of support that is more than just your family members. What is 2,000 email subscriptions worth when you only have a 2 percent open rate? Open rate, it’s the percentage of people who actually open your emails. This is easy to track using Mailchimp. I don’t have a lot of subscriptions to my email list personally and I love that. Not that I do not want it to increase, but I want it to increase with quality and value. For now, I’m OK with not having many email subscribers (by subscribers I do not mean to this blog, I mean to my personal email list). I enjoy the close knit family I have currently signed up (by family I do not mean blood related, I mean those who support me. I call them family because they are. If you signed up, you would be family too. Not shameless plugging, just saying) because the open rate of the emails is still in the 30-40 percentiles which are great for only about fifty or so subscriptions. This means that most of the people who are signed up are actually opening and reading the newsletter as opposed to 1,000 subscribers of which only ten are engaged.

This same thing can be true of social media across the board. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook and I don’t get overly excited about the numbers. The reason I don’t get overly excited is because though people are there and obviously find something worthy because they like the page consistently, the interaction is low. This I can compare to the email list. If my Facebook Page was an email list I would only have a few opens. For this reason, Twitter is my favorite place right now. It’s my favorite place not because I have tons of followers. It’s my favorite because the interactions are high. People are actually engaging and the people following me are either readers, authors, editors, or professional business people (Note to Authors: Careful befriending JUST authors. Authors are not going to buy your books, readers are).

We live in a world where people ravish in the idea of being Internet Famous. But  what we have to understand is that bragging is not branding. Having lots of followers and likes doesn’t mean anything if they are not coming from the right sources. What you want, more so than numbers is quality connections in an ethical / professional atmosphere. This means you want to leave what your sister in laws baby cousin Tracey did at the club last night out of your business accounts.

Re-Spinning Posts: How You Can Self-Evaluate Your Blog

OK so you know that post you wrote last year that only got 3 likes and 2 views? Come on, we’ve ALL been there.

If you are new to this blog (Welcome! Waves) you may notice that I re-spin a lot of my posts. I expect anywhere from 50-100 new followers each month, which means a lot of new faces have not seen older posts, especially those that have really proven to be valuable. I try to re-spin my poetry at least once every year for this reason. I also re-spin posts I’d like to get more exposure. New faces also mean new perspectives.

Re-spinning posts is basically when you re-post a previously posted post (feel like I’m over writing the word post here). When this happens, the post shows up at the top of the reader and it also reaches the inboxes of new  e-mail followers who may not have been around when you first published it. < Please re-read last sentence.

I didn’t start off re-spinning (I still believe you have to be blogging for at least next to a year to build up material before re-spinning so it doesn’t get stale). In fact, I didn’t even know what it was. I remember the days I engaged in conversations with other bloggers about it, trying to understand it. After a year or ten months or so of blogging I decided why not? And I started re-posting previous posts just to test the waters. While I am still learning, so far, one of the main advantages I have noticed about re-spins is being able to self-evaluate my blogs content:

Self-Evaluation

What I have come to understand about blogging is this: There is no one method to doing it “correctly”. There are so many different elements that may make a blog “successful”. Sometimes people have tons of followers but not many views meaning only a handful of those thousands of followers are actually tuning in (Reminds me of social media in general, where numbers can be deceiving. Out of 4,000 Twitter followers, for instance, how many of them are actually valuable followers? Meaning, how many of them, for a business account, can actually provide insight and leverage to that business verses how many of them are family and friends?) Some people have lots of viewers but only a handful of followers. Some people get lots of commentary coming in along the comments section (what’s up with my alliteration today actually?) but not many likes on the posts. Content and social interaction also play a role, time of day, I can go on and on. This is why Blogging Confidence is important because there’s no one way to do it. The more confident you are in your blog and writing in general the more others will connect with you. Lots of followers or lots of viewers can mean nothing or it can mean everything depending on how you look at it.

While there is no one way to do it, re-spinning posts in my opinion has become a great tool in self-evaluating the quality of content on this blog.

The Process

You have to understand that in your mind the post is nothing short of brilliant. You put your whole foot and every other body part in it. The fact that everyone else didn’t understand your brilliance is beyond you. But, if you really want to see if others are benefiting from your writing (besides yourself), here’s what I do to self-evaluate:

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I search through my posts, picking and choosing a certain category. Let’s say poetry. I find a poem that didn’t get much attention. “Hmmm”, I think to myself. “Why?”

I click on edit and look at a few things. Can I rephrase how this was written? Is the photo taking away from the post? (Which it sometimes can). What about those tags? I have come to discover some poor tagging habits in my past! Sometimes the tag just didn’t make any sense and had nothing to do with the price of tea in China. And what about structure? Could it have been formatted differently? (I’m totally in love with the “Justified” paragraph formatting! Everything is lined up and it just looks super neat).

Edit

Before I re-spin a post I edit something about it. This isn’t to say grammatically or the content necessarily but something else about it. The tags for instance is an example of what I usually edit. Rotating the tags also grabs the attention of people who  blog under certain tags and have therefore never seen your post before. After rotating the tags I make sure everything in the content is spelled correctly and makes sense (at least to me). I also make sure the post is in the appropriate category. (If its a poem don’t put it in articles, put it in poetry! If you write poetry and you don’t have a poetry category– unless all you write is poetry– make one now and make sure all poetry is in its own category. This will increase its visibility when people search “poetry” or “spoken word”) Bam, we’re ready. I schedule it to post again.

NOTE: When re-spinning successful posts (lots of views/likes) I wouldn’t edit it too much. It was successful for a reason. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Observation

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This is an important part of the process. If a post that got poor attention before now blows up I know that it wasn’t the content itself, it was just how I published it. Maybe I used five tags instead of fifteen or perhaps it had too many typos. However, if the post still gets poor attention its not that I’m a bad writer, it’s just that the blogging world obviously does not get how brilliant I really am.

Seriously though, if the post is still not attracting attention then you know its time to check the actual content of the post. I have found that it’s not the words themselves, but it is how the words are presented. I have re-spun lots of posts that were poorly written and re-written again. In this process, I have noticed that the re-written article, with slightly different wording, did better than its ancestor.

Define Your Goals #MayChallengeDay14-15

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I always say that I don’t really sit down to seriously write a book until I know how it ends. The reason I stick to this strategy is the same reason most of us have such a difficult time reaching our goals: We don’t define them. If I don’t know where I’m going with a story, the ultimate ending, I usually have a hard time getting into the flow. The flow. Its that first draft stage where you put your head down and you do not come back up until the work is done. Not even for air. You worry not about the technicalities of the work or what other people are saying about the publishing industry. Those things will become nothing more than a distraction. Well, at least to me (I can’t speak for you). So, as for me, once I do get started I can’t  worry about typos, editing or what Stephen King said. Not right now. Not in that moment. At that point I’m just trying to get the basic layout on paper. But how can I lay the foundation that will lead me to a certain point if I don’t know what that point is? I cannot build a brick house until I know I want it made of brick, least I lay the foundation with straw.

The same can be said of our life, our blogs, or whatever it is we set out to do. One thing I’ve learned over the years is the power of patience. Oh patience! I was in such need of it. If I could have bought endurance in a bottle I would have done it. I realized that my lack of patience was draining all of the potential out of my work. Why? Well because I was rushing an idea and not sitting down to seriously analyze what it will take to bring that idea forward. And not only to bring it forward but to seriously consider the plausibility of the idea. Does it makes sense? Is it real? And not only is it real, but do I believe in seriously reaching this goal that I have set for myself or is it just a dream? I hear people talk a lot about following your dreams. People are fond of dreaming, but as long as we are still dreaming our goals will be just that: imaginary.

Anyone can set goals. We’ve all been to school or to some educational setting even if it were our own living rooms, where someone told us to sketch out our short term and long term goals. In short, many of us know exactly where we want to go, and where we want to be. The problem is not the goal itself. It’s not that it is too difficult or too simple. The problem is that we have no clear vision of how we plan to get there.

The chart in this post is a great start. Make sure that your goals are: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. I tried to think about which of these was the most important, but I think they all are. If your goal is not specific enough then it won’t be measurable. If goals are not measurable then they won’t be achievable and a goal that is achievable is naturally also not realistic. If your goal is not realistic then there is no real time limit that can be placed on it. Which in turn means its more likely to stay in lala land than put into action.

What I Learned About Blogging, Writing, and Life #MayChallengeDay 11-12

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Sometimes we just want the easy answer. The easy answer, and the smooth path. We want to lower mountains, and bring them down to our understanding. And we want as many tips on how to do so as is possible; we want things to be as easy as possible. But what I have learned, whether about blogging, writing, or life in general is this: You can have all the talent, and all of the opportunity in the world but if you do not have the persistence, the endurance, or the discipline to keep working then you do not have anything. Determination is called drive for a reason, it moves you.

Social Media and Networking

“Had I stopped after the first “failure” you would never have heard of this site. You would not be reading this right now. How much is lost because people simply give up.” – JC

(Keep Grinding People)

EC Quote Friday – MayChallengeDay6

Yayy, I made it through the first week of the May Challenge! Is anyone else playing? Because I feel like the only one lol. I rest on Saturdays so unfortunately I will not participate in this challenge on Saturdays so I will see you all Sunday. I plan to incorporate some flash fiction and poetry into Week Two, time permitting. In the meantime, below is your EC Quote Friday:

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Why I Go #UNDERGROUND

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If you could go back to Harriet Tubman’s days and with what you know now, help her to free more slaves based on your knowledge of the future, would you be able to help her? With what you know about history today, would you be able to assist her in carrying more people to freedom? With all of the technology and historical knowledge and books and slave narratives and everything you’ve stored away to this point, could you honestly say that you could help her? Many of us don’t even know what direction the sun rises and sets in, let alone navigate without GPS. This is why I watch shows such as #Underground.

What amazes me is that when a Tyler Perry movie comes out, we don’t hear nothing about how we’re tired of seeing black men in dresses. I don’t hear anything about how we’re tired of seeing black men and women run around joking all the time about nothing. We make excuses for that. We don’t hear nothing about Fifty Shades of Black, Get Hard, or throwbacks like Don’t Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. When Noah and Gods of Egypt came out, I didn’t hear nothing about all the biblical inaccuracies that can be proven just by reading the first few chapters of Genesis. But when it comes to a show comprised of information we need to know, now we’re tired of slave movies even though many of our brothers and sisters don’t even know what the half of slavery was really about and the psychological trauma it still holds today.

I’m still hearing people say that the light skin slaves were house slaves but this is not historically correct. The Mulatto was the first to be sold because the mistress did not want to look at the proof of her husbands infidelity with the “niggers” every time she looked at those children. Not that mulattoes were not in the house, but the point is they were “field niggas” too. There was a ranking system based on skill and worth and it didn’t matter what color you were a slave was a slave. Whether in house or in the field none of it was esteemed over the other you was still a slave. Some of us still think Rosa Parks was the first to refuse to give up her seat on a bus. She was not, but that’s the point. There’s still lots of people who don’t know. We don’t know what Reconstruction was about. We don’t know what Jim Crow was about. We don’t know what The Harlem Renaissance was about, or for a more earlier term, The New Negro Movement. We don’t know what The Civil Rights Movement was about. We don’t even know who The Black Panthers truly were aside from the hateful militia group people tell us they were. Prince just died and they say he had no will. Prince was a man who sued people all the time in regard to the legalities of his career. He’s not the kind of man who would not have a will but this is what they tell us. The point is that we don’t know half of the black history that we think we know and even what we think we know, we don’t really know. What Harriet Tubman and the many others had to endure, I had to endure too. For we are all connected, the human family. We are the bloodline and the experiences of our ancestors  still runs through our veins. They say that if you don’t know your history, that you are bound to repeat it.  This is why I go #Underground.