I have achieved a 118 day blogging streak. How’s that for a consistent effort?
I just wanted to say thank you for the encouragement to everyone who has motivated me by reading, responding, liking or commenting on my blog posts.
They seem like such small things to do, but they really are significant in the life of a blogger.
They help me know I’m not just typing into a void. They help me know I’m not alone in this big old bloggerverse. And it’s fair to say that they remind you of the same things.
Thank you for sharing the ride with me so far.
Stay tuned, folks. For my next trick, I plan to see how far I can make the streak last!
Due to recent trends, my algorithm has been realigned.
You may notice that your invitations to boost my posts or create advertisements will receive zero attention. Some may be marked as spam due to lower perceived relevance to the audience.
If you won’t show my posts to the people who do follow me, I most certainly will not be paying you to show them to people who don’t.
Because, as you say so often yourself, “it’s all about engagement”.
Fortunately for the rest of us, there are other places to “engage”, too. Are you aware that Twitter neither suppress nor hides anything I post? As soon as it’s sent, BAM, it’s out there for the whole Twitverse to see.
We’re you aware that WordPress allows me to use tags, categories and SEO to make my posts available beyond those who already follow my blog? And they do it free of charge. Ingenious, no?
I’ll still give you a little attention, Facey. But not as much as you want. And not to help you make money. From what I have heard on the news, you’ve already got quite enough out of people like me.
This weekend is crazy busy. One evening and two full days of rehearsal for the show I’m in, which hits the stage on the first two weekends of May.
The show is Monty Python’s Spamalot, performed by Camperdown Theatre Company. We’re working hard and having a blast rehearsing it, although one of the hardest parts is not laughing at the genuine comic talent of the actors.
It’s enormous fun, but it’s fair to say it’s exhausting.
While most of my social media for the weekend could be scheduled and was organised by Friday, and there were only a few “on the spot” things I needed to do, I decided ahead of time to spend as little time online as I could over the weekend. Any spare time I have will be spent resting and relaxing, which means reading.
One of the lovely things about poetry is you can read it, and keep thinking about it at odd moments during the day. It adds a dimension of beauty and calm to a hectic schedule, and opportunities for reflection that might not otherwise offer themselves. Even just a few lines can change a perspective and transform a moment into something that lifts the entire day.
Another lovely thing about poetry is the sense of connection the reader has with the poet. Despite the fact that many of my favourite poets have been long dead, I can still experience a moment of empathy and understanding that reminds me that I’m not doing life in a bubble.
That is my hope for my own poetry. I may not become famous, or even widely known, for the poems I write, but I know that my own readers experience that same connection with me because their reviews and communications tell me so.
So, even in the midst of a busy weekend, I’ll always make time for a little poetry.
Despite the crisis that had unfolded overnight as I slept, I woke this morning to find that the sun had risen, gravity still worked, and the earth continued to turn on its axis.
I had breakfast, got ready for work, and headed into a very busy day. Surprisingly, I found that the work deadlines and professional requirements that were in place yesterday still existed today.
My students, however, were despondent.
Them: Facebook is gone! Instagram doesn’t work! Me: Imagine how much work you might get done in the meantime! Them: You’re not very sympathetic. Me: And that surprises you because…? Them: Rolled eyes and sighs. Some lovely moments of dramatic pathos that I shall try to draw on in drama class.
This left me wondering: what on earth does the world do without Facebook and Instagram? It seems the general response is to complain.
Many of the real social media junkies responded by rushing over to Twitter to complain and commiserate with their followers and the social media world in general.
In all honesty, some of the responses are pretty funny.
Others demonstrate that many people are much worse at dealing with this kind of thing than they should be. I mean, really, Australia? Emergency services? That’s… pathetic.
This one has to be my favourite. It cuts through the whining and combines the sublime and the ridiculous with glorious snark. Jenny Bean Edwards gets an A+ for World Studies.
Cheer up, folks. I’m sure Facebook and Instagram and their enormously profitable algorithms will be back soon.
Until then? You may actually be forced to either read a book or have face-to-face conversations with real people.
Alternatively, you can head to twitter and follow me!
Mar Garcia knows horror. She reads it, draws it, and blogs about it as The Bold Mom.
Mar’s website TBM Horror Experts offers recommendations for the best in horror books and films, as well as promotional opportunities for horror writers and bloggers.
If you are looking for top quality horror, Mar is the perfect person to follow.
With all the attention given among the Indie community to the removal of book reviews by Amazon, I’m amazed at the number of authors who still post dirty links to their books on social media. This is a rookie-level mistake that can actually do more harm than good.
A dirty link helps the algorithm at Amazon to determine if there are connections between author and reader that might suggest collusion or partiality.. Even if a review is from a verified purchase, a simple connection via a shared link can be enough to make them suspect that it’s not unbiased or from an unrelated party.
If the link used by multiple customers can be traced directly back to the author, that’s one of the reasons they will start flagging and eventually removing reviews.
The simple solution is to ensure your links are clean before you post them.
A dirty link occurs when one copies and pastes a URL without removing all the extra information that gets tacked onto it by searching for a product, copying links from a website, linking from another product, or using a bookmark created from a searched item.For example, if I search for one of my books on Google and click on the Amazon link, I get this as the URL:
This is more information than is needed to actually find my book. In the image below, I’ve denoted the “dirty” part of the link by making it red.
The highlighted part of this link is the “dirty” part. If I were to give this link to someone else to use, it tells Amazon how they got the link. All you need to post is the part of the link that directly goes to your book page. In the link above, that’s the part that is still black. Once the link identifies which display page your book has, no further information is necessary.
You can check the clean link you want to post by pasting it into a new browser window and seeing that it goes directly to your book product page. Even if you use a link shortening service like bit.ly or buff.ly, or a customised branded link, you must ensure that the links you provide are clean. Just because you and your audience don’t see the extra information on a shortened or customised link doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
That way, stores will have no reason to suspect you or your readers’ integrity, and your verified purchase reviews will remain proudly on your book page.
I stumbled across this article thanks to a friend sharing it earlier today.
The advice offered is helpful for new and old bloggers alike, especially given the dynamic world in which we live and blog. Things are changing all the time, so any constructive advice is a great thing!
Just for context, the world was still in the grip of the Great Depression, Hitler had not yet risen to power in Germany, Thomas Edison had just passed away, and Al Capone had just been sent to prison for tax evasion. Don Bradman was playing cricket for Australia and Phar Lap had won
My father grew up in Rotterdam in The Netherlands before moving to Australia with his parents and sisters. Life was certainly different after WWII, and even more different on the other side of the world where the seasons were back to front, everyone spoke English, and water swirled down the drain in the opposite direction.
If someone had told Dad in 1951 that those were not the biggest changes he would encounter in his life, he probably wouldn’t have believed them. There was, however, so much more to come, such as:
Marriage. Dad and Mum married in 1953 and enjoyed almost 58 years together.
December 19, 1953.
Four amazing and incredibly talented kids.
Yep, that’s me giving the photographer the stink eye. Cute, eh?
Colour TV.
Electric typewriters.
A change of career from industrial chemistry to bookstore owner.
Computers.
The CD.
Mobile phones.
The Internet.
Smart phones.
Digital books and music.
Studying online.
Dad has taken it all in his stride. He hasn’t let new things scare him off or make him feel obsolete. Time after time, he has shown his willingness and aptitude to give something new a red hot shot.
He hasn’t always found new technology easy, but once he’s got the hang of it, he’s proven that he can send a text or an email, make a call, and waste time on Facebook and Instagram as effectively as anyone can. He has been studying Biblical Hebrew online. He has the Kindle app on his iPad, on which he reads the books his daughter has written, which he has purchased online from Amazon. He also uses the iPad to listen to his son’s sermons and keep in touch with his relatives around the world. His grandchildren send him pictures of their kids via instant message, and he saves them on his phone to look at them again later.
I’m proud of my dad. Things aren’t always easy for him now, especially health-wise, but he’s still going and he’s still doing his best to enjoy all those things that make his life interesting and entertaining.
At the age of 87, he is not only the father of four but also grandfather of seven and great-grandfather to six.
He’s had a quiet day today, but he has been spoilt with a few special treats and received some phone calls from friends and family that he has really enjoyed. We’ve enjoyed some time together, too, and I treasure the moments where we can still just hang out and enjoy each other’s company.
I know it won’t last forever. Nothing does.
But my dad is still on the wicket with a score of 87, not out. Howzat?
I have begun the mammoth task of adding all my book reviews and recommendations to BookBub. My plan is to work systematically through my list, doing a few at a time, until I get them all done.
Some might ask why I bother – aren’t all my reviews on Amazon, anyway? Yes, they are. And they’re on Goodreads.
They’re also on my Book Squirrel blog, which I do hope you’re following.
There are some good reasons for doing it, though.
Not all readers use Amazon. I know, it’s hard to believe, because they’ve really got Indie authors in particular thinking they’re the only vendor out there. They may be the dominant vendor at the moment, but Kobo is building its business worldwide and we mustn’t forget other contenders like Nook and iBooks.
Amazon have a very nasty habit of deleting reviews. I know many authors who have had a review removed for whatever reason Amazon deemed appropriate, and that hurts. If my reviews and recommendations can be plastered all over the internet, maybe it will do less damage to the author concerned if Amazon decides to pull one – or more – of mine.
BookBub is gaining popularity to the point where some see it as the place to go to check out books, much like Goodreads used to be before it was bought out and things got much more Amazon-like over there.
It can’t hurt to add reviews for Indie authors in another place where they are building a presence and a market force in competition with traditionally published authors.
So because I have nothing else to do in between writing, teaching, planning, grading papers, reading and reviewing books, and maintaining three blogs, this has become a project of importance to me.
I enjoy using Twitter to share great content. It’s pretty straightforward, without the ever-changing parade of increasingly ridiculous rules that seem to accompany Facebook.
There’s really only one thing you need to avoid with Twitter, and that’s posting the same tweet over and over. That will get you suspended.
In reality, that’s a pretty decent rule. Who of us wants to see the same post time and time again? We all appreciate a little variety, and it’s not that hard to change your tweets up.
It’s important to use trending hashtags that people are using for their searches. We need to use hashtags that people are familiar with, and learn to look for, because that is the key way to attract new people to our content.
Some of the best ones that I seem to use over and over include:
So, I’ve decided I’m going to do something about it and try to make it happen. This is what I’m calling “The Hashtag Challenge”.
I don’t propose that we try to make all of those tags develop a life of their own at the same time. Starting one by one is probably a smarter way to go.
As of today, I’m going to start using #WorthReading in conjunction with high-trending tags like #Authors, #greatreads, #BookReview, #BookRecommendations and #WhatToRead
Maybe if a bunch of us start doing that, we just might achieve something great.
Are you with me?
I enjoy using Twitter to share great content. It’s pretty straightforward, without the ever-changing parade of increasingly ridiculous rules that seem to accompany Facebook.
WordyNerdBird 