My klout score literally nosedived on the 22nd and is now the lowest it's been in ages. I know exactly why, too. I say that like it was huge, basically went from 60 to 58 after months of coasting. It was almost like I found my true negative factor, plugged it in and repelled people, and it all pointed to youtube. My Webmii score reflected that, too, although it's really interesting that the score goes up if my web presence search parameters are international, and then it has nothing to do with klout's final say. But basically, I diverted from my usual entertainment distractions, and I'll be honest, I didn't like myself doing that, either.
I hadn't checked impressions from keywords in awhile. I've been wondering what is the weirdest search parameters my blog has been lumped into, so I'm throwing darts at 141 pages of keyword searches and stopped in my tracks at something in Russian that translates to "riyet duck buy in kiev". Really, guys? Oh, yeah, my about page has a Darkwing Duck motif. But then another Russian search phrase translated to "amazing lightness", so I guess I have seriously breached Google around the globe. I seem to get a lot of Korean search referrals outside of my GWT list, and at least 7 different languages are represented in my top ten all time visitors. Top referring site is google.com, top referring URL is facebook.com. Basically, google pushes me out there, and facebook pulls people inward. I get instant hits from at least 4 different countries within seconds of sharing links to facebook, and another 2-3 countries within 5 minutes of sharing to twitter, depending on how I set up the tweet with hashtags and graphics cards. Internal tags and keywords do that rest. Statcounter says Pinky blog has been visited by 91 countries. I never dreamed this one would pull in traffic at all. I mean, it's not crazy or anything, but it's interesting watching where those hits come from around the world, because it's a difficult and therefore meaningful search.
But apparently more importantly, I come up on Google's 4th page for "allergic to ragweed", which is pretty outstanding, given how vague that is, 5th page for "desperate popstars", which is actually a little scary, and page ONE for "flowers for algernon book", like literally no one else talks about it or something, I dunno. Actually, I come up on page one for nearly 2 1/2 statcounter pages of google search phrases. "blue halloween" is my golden ticket with the most impressions (hundreds), "dr. evil leo" a close second, then "spock handshake", "rick lagina images", and "bird splat". Sorry, Benedict. *crickets* (Bird splat???) (I'm on a top ten google search for BIRD SPLAT.) (Sorry, that's just not sinking in.)
Sometimes I get these weird thoughts, like how I'm trying to fit in a causative universe, and then I wonder how in the world I even got that idea, like what does that even mean when I can't even imagine a noncausative universe. Rhyme and reason, me pushing google around and it pushing back. It wants to rate content, I litter content for it to rate. My existence is measured and found wanting during a fail week, and being human is rewarded with being quickly forgotten in a machinistic inclined society. To step beyond a tree falling in the woods, this brownie literally doesn't exist unless I talk about it somewhere. I'm eating a brownie. Now it can exist.
Probably the singlemost influencing fanvid of my entire blogging life.
This was my favorite tweet out of the entire Sharknado marathon yesterday.
In case that disappears, here is the time stamp.
Sharknado is good for my klout score, lol. They're in cahoots. Neither one is worth anything without the other saying "Good job!"
If you are not familiar with live tweeting and why it's considered important in some of the business world, this is what a live tweet does with my twitter analytics. The shortest bar up there is 59 impressions. The tallest bar is 6,999. This isn't bragging, I have friends who get way higher spikes and even higher regular activity, but they also get better engagement because they interact all the time. Some never interact and get ten times the engagement (retweets and link clicks) because they've discovered gimmicks that pull people in, however, and quite sadly, there are automated bot accounts that do exactly the same thing, so c'est la vie. Fine tuning presence is like a game, or maybe like learning to drive or fly, and there are a variety of vehicles. Klout is comparable to Google, it's been tightened up and lets you know where to tweak for more visibility. Why Your Klout Score Matters, and Why It Doesn't
~~~~~wild gear changing~~~~~~
Note- I am not a professional journalist, reviewer, or historian. This post is my opinion and doesn't represent anyone else mentioned. Please do your own research and don't quote me as a source. Media watching is my 'aspie train obsession'.
I don't know if I'm the first to suggest this, but Syfy is fascinating me with what kinda looks like an evil plot to own the world in the guise of the Sharknado series. It hit me when I saw this tweet come through during the #Sharknado4 live tweet.
One of the things (I'm guessing) holding up a Lexx franchise reboot is Syfy owning the featurettes that appear on the original print, and thereby retaining a toehold on character license. It doesn't matter who else owns distribution rights or whatever, as long as the franchise is sectioned out under several contracts, no one can touch it going forward. I can't help wondering now whether "Christine" being secured via Sharknado 4 into the Syfy contract fold will do the exact same thing, along with all the other licensed rights they purchased into.
Syfy is worldwide. I've been watching them since the late 90s, watched Vivendi court ordered to split down into smaller company families so that they wouldn't become a media monopoly. Syfy is part of the Universal, MGM, NBC family spawned through Vivendi (how many of you didn't know American news was owned by a French company?), putting it way too simply, and now they're all over Ubisoft, and I won't go on, but pay attention to that because it explains a LOT going on out there that confuses us little casual viewers and gamers who wonder why it can't be simple. (The Time Warner list is also impressive. Here, this.) But I will say that Syfy (originally during Friday Prime on SciFi) was the first network to include web links in its viewer advertising, and I know this because the store I worked in was the first retailer to contract into this new wave of crossing social media streams.
Syfy has worked very hard for a long time to procure, produce, and rebroadcast shows from around the world. Lexx wasn't an American made show at all, but a Canadian-German production also filmed in Thailand and Namibia. Several scifi and fantasy shows have been migrated over to the U.S. from the UK and Australia exclusively through Syfy before dropping back off the American radar. Americans really had very little awareness of the scope of film outside the U.S. until it could be contracted in as import, and it seems suddenly (over the last ten years) we've become very aware of shows we're missing. The UK was the first to world-sync a live broadcast around the globe with Day of the Doctor, but Syfy was the first network to stumble onto a mass trending live tweet completely changing sales, scheduling, and production projections in 24 hours flat. Up until the first Sharknado movie, everyone had to wait until 'release' dates on however their show was contracted. Syfy threw that in the trash. 'Available NOW' became a thing overnight. (Yes, you have Sharknado to thank for that!)
While reviewers go crazy over the writing, acting, and filming, and fans go crazy over cameos and salvaged careers, a few of us are watching Syfy carefully collecting everything it needs for the winning hand. They've bided their time, carefully injecting money here and there, looking like they were wasting Fridays on sports (WWE is owned by Universal, and so is Syfy- that is a really interesting corporation history) instead of their actual programming description, rerunning Mansquito until we were all sick of seeing the title, but all along, they were collecting other properties, investing nickels and dimes, and now look at them- owning red carpet parties like they just bought out Hollywood. Quoting Star Wars and everything else under the sun like it's no big deal. Anyone who makes money on other people's stuff knows you don't just glibly rip things off as you please. I'll lay bets they had lawyers going over every jot and tittle they could do with Star Wars and everything else they could parody in Sharknado 4. And once those jots and tittles were in place... Well, I'm guessing it becomes part ownership. Not the same way they own the Lexx featurettes, but licensed to partake, as it were.
Syfy saved Lexx from a one-off season when it moved from Showtime to Syfy. The same thing happened with Sliders. FOX was going to let it go, Syfy picked it up and they kept filming. Because that's the kind of thing Syfy does, I have always been a huge Syfy fan, not because I'm a crappy film fan (I'm a huge Raimi brothers fan, along with the original Princess of Mars kind of stuff), but because I'm a Syfy network fan. I've been watching the money since the very beginning, and particularly since Friday Prime, back in the Lexx/ Stargate SG-1/ Farscape days. Lexx and SG-1 were both Canadian owned, and Farscape was Australian. Syfy was the only network (besides PBS) bringing out of country properties to American viewers for a long time. Now it's no big deal, seems like everyone is dipping toes into world film, although the big Brexit thing across the pond put a serious dent in film production lately, but Moffat announced he's passing the Doctor Who torch 6 months before it happened.. Maybe he was paying attention. Did Doctor Who predict the Brexit fallout 6 years ago?
I could go deep, but I'm not going to. I just wanted to say I appreciate Syfy's brilliance in ways regular viewers might not be noticing. I live tweeted Sharknado 4 because I think viewers are fantastically witty and make watching the show way more fun. I feel the same way about Walking Dead and several other shows, I simply don't watch them without watching tweet feeds. The best part of Sharknado 4 being so ridiculous is the hilarity and emotional roller coaster that comes through in the live reactions, the real time feed straight from the viewers. Watching pop sensation TV without twitter has become rather flat for me, a little too one-dimensional. TV writers for Syfy shows have clearly geared up and stepped up for real time viewer enhancement and takes real time viewer interaction very seriously. What do you think inspired the sudden super competitiveness in Netflix and Hulu investing? Syfy spent years setting the standard for the new business model while the world adjusts to streaming. I imagine in another ten years the next gen won't even know what a broadcast schedule is, and will think it archaic that we used to wait 8 months to see something in one country that was made in another, because of scheduling.
Oh, nothing, just sitting around my house playing minecraft. HEY, I think I figured out the horse problem on mo creatures!!! They use both original minecraft horses (which can be tamed and saddled but not named) and mo creatures horses (which can be elaborately color bred, tamed and named, and saddled with special equipment).
After I tp'd my original named moc horse and left the game for a week and came back, I tamed a regular horse (which I talk about here) in another location without realizing it wasn't an moc horse. I thought I neglected to name it because I was in a hurry and didn't notice it was unnamable to begin with. I couldn't get it into a corral, so I tp'd it in, and then got the bright idea to tp the named horse into the same area. The command is /moctp <petID#> so the original horse transport would be /moctp 1. The coordinates in this snip is the pen the horse was before it *poofed* out, and now it shows up as being 'unloaded' on a coordinate block where I was tp'ing it to.
Now (below) you can see that 'dead' moc horse in the location I tried to tp it to (but it doesn't show up), along with my newest moc horse, Brizon. The regular horse I tamed had ID -1 (negative one, gone now because I killed it), so I'm thinking tp'ing it must have corrupted the code block for the moc horse when I tried to tp it later, because its ID is 1 (positive one). After a lot of reading, I'm thinking the long-standing pet glitch I see in old forums might be that people are accidentally corrupting code blocks for moc pets when they load regular mc pets.
By the way, 'unloaded' didn't seem to affect my rabbit at all. Yes, you can wear some of your pets on your head. Great way to transport them but you can't do anything else like open a door or gate without them jumping off.
When I look up I see this. Kinda like a cat on a glass table effect.
By the way, once I found and tamed Brizon, I didn't even attempt to tp and risk losing him, so I had to ride him like the wind across the lands through a day and a night, and those moc horses can really run fast, jump high, and climb steep. Regular mc horses are duds compared to moc horses, so I'll never make that mistake again. I had tried taming another horse in between and wound up getting killed twice, and even the horse got poisoned by a witch and staggered around after I was off of it, so I just killed it and started over. Brizon outran all the mobs like a champ, it was marvelous.
Ok, this is the desert temple project. It world spawned nearly completely buried in sand, so I'm digging it out.
All this was under sand. I feel like an archaeologist.
I think the village looks pretty cool over there.
Well, this got ridiculously long. For some reason, I'm not sleeping much alla sudden and in super focus mode. Thus begins my 4th week on cartia and neurontin. Countdown to follow up on Friday. omg, someone get me off this blog post...
Statcounter has this new thing bugging me about my growth plan profile and my overall industry rank and how my growth plan compares to my competitors. I got a D-.
Your Annual Site Contribution is a prediction of how much money your site will make your business per year in its current state. This is calculated by robust predictive analytics. Many online factors contribute to your site contribution such as visitor experience, mobile optimization, traffic, and social marketing, as well as offline factors like how much your typical customer spends, zip code, etc… We’re here to help you grow your Annual Site Contribution as much as possible. Ex: If you are a veterinarian, once you finish your profile, we will predict how much your website contributes to your clinic’s revenues on an annual basis. This would include how many new people hear about you online then call or walk-in and become new clients.
Well, someone showed up with my house once with a *gun*, so dang if I'm going to care about my walk-ins.
Anyway, now I can get analytics overview over the last 30 days with a 30 day forecast (I really miss sitemeter, they had ALL this stuff and more and were sweetly unobtrusive), plus objectives for linking other social media (beat ya there, guys), and if I start this 'track' and go pro (always a catch), they can help me lower my overall bounce rate by 50%. Um... Google analytics says my bounce rate is 30, which is an A++ for a blog, so take your growth plan pro and shove it. I'm not in the mood for the 'you need to spend more money' crap.
The problem with statcounter is it can't see most of you real people guys, because it just doesn't play well with others, even though it swears it does, and even tries to prove it by hooking in your GWT (dismal fail that time GWT got *cough* hacked *cough*). I've already got over half of you filtering in through Google login, so *bing*, you're invisible to statcounter. THIS is how much Google proxy (Chrome browser in particular) has affected my statcounter.
Yes, numbers have gone down because I've had a rough spring and summer, but this is a more accurate representation of actual traffic. (Don't even get me started on bots, less than 5% of my traffic is bots.) (You wanna see bot swarms? Go back to your Xangas sometime, it's hilarious. Xanga is my fave botcatcher now, I'm able to ping other sites and see how many bots swarm right back at me. Some of you really public review sites have some really bad bug problems, and those problems translate to reader tech being compromised, so yeah, don't even get me started.)
So, NO. Not paying for pro and advice like I'm an idiot. My klout score is doing just fine for someone who's barely been able to keep a brain in for several months, thanx.
Imagine what I could do if I weren't physically and cognitively disabled. And had staff. And about $10K.
it's real, click
Do you know how long it's been since I really went off about stats and ranking and stuff? Day 7 and I'm ready to fling the internet around before coffee. Thank you, gabapentin. Man, I hope I'm able to continue on this med. I'm right at the mark now where lyrica cascade fail on a major highway turned into a comedy club style acid trip type inner convo about betting whether I'd roll off the highway and die because none of us knew who was driving. You can imagine the PTSD from both that and a very real accident I've had palling around with me in town yesterday. Once I figured out how 'friendly' I was in Walmart, I knew I'd be ok and came on home.
What am I doing today, Zuul? I got sideswiped mid-week with that drowsiness thing, and boy they weren't kidding. I slept 7.5 hours night before, took a nap yesterday, another 7.5 last night, I srsly wanna stay AWAKE today. So let's see what I can get done today.
Get on that auto-pay alert thingy from Geek Squad about protection I cancelled months ago.
Get on a wonderful application that came in the mail for medicare to pay for my ride into town 3 weekends ago during the chest pains (medicare won't pay unless deemed 'can't walk' kind of stuff, so the ride guys are evidently on my side calling this 'necessary'). Don't worry, I'll photocopy and practice fill-out on that first for @bonenado to approve. O_o
Get on wrapping the Bunny birthday gifts so that's all done before next week asplodes.
Get on wrapping up a thing I started earlier this week that needs to get posted elsewhere. It's easy, it's fun, and it's probably disappointing someone that I suck, but I'm being a good spoonie and not letting that part bother me.
Get on a workout PLAN because this being scattered all over the map thing for 2 months isn't cool.
click for great example of cute monetizing I'm almost jealous
I can save 80 calories a day if I drink my coffee black. I've been using 40 calories of evap milk in each cup and get 2 cups, and I'm right at that line where something's gotta go. I drink really nice coffee, so it's not like black coffee will suck that badly. I'm going to go to 20 calories a cup for a week and see how I do. I know, some of you are all like why not just stop drinking coffee, some of you are shocked I'd go black, some of you are rooting for me all the way, and some of you think I'm making too big a deal out this. I'd love to offer betting, I bet some of you would take it. I'd have silent anonymous bets coming in from deeper lurkers and never know which of you bet what and it would make me even more insane over my trackers. Some of you would like that, wouldn't you?
Do what you love, be who you are, embrace your moments. Coffee, sans coffee, 1000 calorie coffee, it's all good.
I think it's safe to say I'm out of the fast lane now. What a pace I was keeping up, eh? Let's see how my twitter is doing since I last checked 2 months ago (and I was already slowing down then, too).
This was February.
This is April.
My link clicks are down by an average of 75 over that last 28 days compared to 2 months ago. That's probably because I've not been tweeting a bunch of links like I used to do. My retweets went up, lol.
Let's see how my klout is doing. Holding rock steady, I see.
So basically taking the spring 'off' isn't hurting my platform that much.
I am reeeeaaallllyyyyyy tired of coughing. I used a rescue inhaler only one week and got thrush almost immediately. Made the executive decision to just crank the benadryl up around the clock and ingest a steady diet of zyrtec twice a day, plus pepcid for H2 blocker, and the rest has pretty much been just staying in the house as much as possible, keeping my workouts and chores light, and focusing through the suckage by keeping my mind busy on something. All I can keep saying is thank goodness for minecraft, because this is possibly (so far, fingers crossed) the first April in years I haven't needed to call an ambulance for airway. (I usually need airway assistance within the first couple of weeks, worst year was allergic reaction to the propellant in the inhaler I was prescribed). I've barely touched cheese and chocolate, which are bad to spike histamine levels even if you're not allergic to them, mostly just proteins all day long, and I can't believe how low my pain level is. Once in awhile I have a super tough day where I just can't talk to anyone (besides still keep losing my voice) because the sensation overload is just too much, but I'm still keeping up with dishes and laundry and meals. In years past I would get violent week-long headaches and crippling joint pain, sometimes pleurisy. This year is more like feeling super crabby but still very functional, so I can hardly complain.
this is required reading if you want to be friends with me
ok, j/k, but click it
I know there are a lot of people out there struggling with asthma and diabetes and fibro and all the other things that plague us, and I know I'm very blessed and lucky that so far I'm doing this well on as little medication as possible. Every bit of it is strategy, self monitoring, and planning ahead. I'm controlling my life now instead of falling into all the potholes. It takes skill and attention and a deep commitment to WANTING it. All you guys out there who feel helplessly sucked down massive drain holes and barely hanging on with meds (been there, many hugs to you)- how badly do you want to control? I started planning in 2008. The lengths of dedication I've gone to have created monumental changes in my life since a time I could feel it all slipping away and knew I would be dying soon if I didn't. And I don't kid myself, it could still all go poof any time. I live with odds that aren't easy to stand up to. I just know I want to live.
Back to reality. I'm tired. Not the kind of tired I used to be, thank goodness, but still tired. Part of my dream last night was about bringing a Ginsu steak knife to a slime block brawl. If you have a clue what a slime block is, you can imagine how useless a tiny knife would seem, especially against several big blocks and dozens of smaller ones. But in the dream, it wasn't just about hacking with a tiny knife. It was about strategy and timing and higher ground. It was about understanding how the slimes move and track and attack.
One of the neatest things I've picked up playing survival mode in minecraft is that hostile mobs can be used against each other. How many times have I dived into 3-4 (and more!) mobs spawning around me in caves or dark fields and their own algorithms bumping each other back just enough for me to get away. It doesn't always work, but mobs don't have plan Bs in case their A strategies fail. They don't anticipate and plan accordingly. I've been surprised how many crazy really bad situations I've been able to survive by charging straight into them. Even catching on fire falling into lava or being poisoned by a witch, with my last few ticks of health it's all about getting to a spot where I know I'll be able to come back for all my stuff. I still panic once in awhile. Yesterday I lost several blocks of obsidian, my cool enchanted chitin armor, and a diamond pickaxe because I slipped into lava and didn't keep a cool enough head to use my pickaxe to break a block and jump up a couple steps before I croaked. All that work for nothing. No, not for nothing. I learned something. I learned to drop off my stuff instead of carrying it around in dangerous situations. I learned that obsessing and not taking a break was what wasted my time. I learned to get smarter, think while I do. And then I basically rebuilt an entire floor underneath the obsidian bed because there was live lava under every bit of it, and I was patient enough to want it that badly.
Not all obsidian has live lava underneath. I cleared a whole other bed of it easy peasy because it was just sitting there on cobblestone. And I found that boring, because I didn't have to think about what I was doing...
Real life is like that. We're all bored, aren't we? We want to be entertained, but we really don't want to work for it. Life sucks and it's not fair and we're bored.
We are in a real game. We want to live and not be killed right away. We want the freedom to do things and the means with which to do them. We must think. Strategize. No one owes us anything that we aren't willing to get up and try to do for ourselves. No one is going to miss us if all we do is whine.
My first real post on twitter analytics was about 10 months ago- twitter analytics. I've noticed that twitter still fails big time with a certain thing- I can get direct stat feedback from a blog that actually says how many referrals came in from a specific tweet link, and twitter still to this day does NOT live up in it's own analytics to that count number. My engagement rate is actually a lot higher than what twitter tells me it is, and I have the stats to prove it. I've seen plenty of times where tweet activity reports waaaaay fewer link clicks than what my blogs or SyfyDesigns will say is happening. On the other hand, G+ is dumping 'impressions' while twitter is still pumping up impressions as their selling tool. Impressions don't mean anything except potential. I mean, yeah, it's fun to see a really big number sometimes, but the true test is favstar keeping track of actual interaction.
Years ago I noticed that fans in forums sit around doing and saying the same things over and over and over, year in and year out. Years have gone by, I go back and lurk, same people, same thing, over and over and over. Twitter is exactly the same thing. People making almost identical tweets year in and year out. One person says they never get sick every year on a certain month, but without fail gets the nasty crud on another month every single year. Another person is very healthy and works out, but never fails to self sabotage with injury during workouts, and healing winds up lasting longer than the work out time spent, and this has happened several times now. And on and on. I have an eidetic memory for things I see in print, especially with timestamps, and I can usually find things I can remember seeing very quickly. It's all there, unless someone closes an account. I'm a speed reader, a search queen, and I remember nearly 4 years of twitter.
Some of you really need to get lives. Your repetition is stultifying, unless it's part of your strategy for the world to believe your life is really that empty and boring. Those of you who are homebound or dealing with stuff you haven't shared out loud, all well and good and many kudos to you (been there), but seriously, repeating yourselves for years, how in the world do you guys not notice you are doing that? (You too, celebs...) omg, I've written probably 3 millions words now, and I'm still always finding something new to write. Nearly 4 years on twitter and I'm bored to tears with it. I'm sure that's a really good way to vilify myself on twitter, but I'm not actually saying it ON twitter.
I should probably apologize. My brain is brined in antihistamines. Oh, btw, the blog title is a pun on ergonomics, because I'm a narcissist going in slo-mo this month.
Yeah, so life in the slow lane, as it were. Oh, the bee swarm was smoked and gently removed into a hive yesterday. It's funny I had noted just a few days earlier that I hadn't seen a single bee yet this year, which is odd because I've never been able to get close up pix of my flowering trees without being in bee danger, and suddenly there's a swarm of thousands all gobbed on a tree like bee hell burped them out.
I've gotta enjoy my last two days of real freedom (today and tomorrow). Thursday and Friday are booked up, and next week I start back into physical therapy. Time to tackle that upper core strength again, see if I can get past that wall now that I kept hitting and splatting on.
I really need to gather my brain back up, get it into coffee cup, get some clothes on, get a plan going, get on some kind of track today.
Hunting up and down for a baby picture with a shark, like you do. Got a snip off a vid. Hoping the one we really want got backed up off my old phone onto @bonenado's computer. Amazing how the one pic we'd actually go back for is the scarcest one to be found anywhere, which is ridiculous since I've been all over social media and Sharknado since it first happened.
Checking on my top 5 playlists for the month, so far popularity is in this order. It's kind of a big deal since youtube playlists are still pulling in nearly 25% of my klout score, and I make it an experiment by watching the difference between searchable playlists and linking protected playlists so that they're only played if I source them out.
gaga- protected, mashups aspienado- public, with specific description joker/oswald- protected, kinda psycho z- protected, pure Benedict luvs for God knows why vp- protected, Vanessa Paradis
Since old lappy is still in the redzone for nuclear meltdown, I avoid running playlists on it, especially if I'm trying to do other things, so webtime minutes come from other people- for this month, across 9 countries, biggest day was January 3rd. If I ever have any doubts about some of the numbers being me running the playlists while I'm working out or doing chores, the "z" list has the longest web only watch time, and since that is one playlist I definitely don't waste my web time on (Ben's face floating around doesn't do it for me, and I can't sit that long, anyway), that one is my control list. It's both protected and unwatched on the webs by me, so the ONLY way it's pulling webwatch stats is me linking it out. Also, I have other searchable lists, and watched my LadyGaGa list suddenly pop in a few countries during the Golden Globe Awards, but it's interesting that my shared protected lists got more views overall for the month. I link, people click. It's called driving traffic.
And this is how Pinky plays with statistics. Not that it really matters for me personally, but some of you out there take klout pretty seriously. I keep getting added to klout lists.
Have spent a little time learning how to split like a photon and be in two places at once again. Been a long time since I've been both underground and public. Back then it was all about myspace and forums. Now it's all about facebook and twitter. And G+ and youtube and linkedin and pinterest and instagram and...etc. I'm spread pretty thin. Still getting my workouts in and keeping up with chores around the house, which is fantastic this time of year, but I've been airing out my brain and steeling my will for a really big plunge back into grind writing, where I barely come up for air and forget to eat for hours.
Yes, I see the checking back every day for the Mantrid post. Love you guys, I know I super suck (going on 3 months now), but I've been scraping my soul back off a rock and reconnecting with my muse.
And then I facepalmed because it hit me that just taking a blocking cookie off doesn't change a thing if I don't reset the counter code...
Anyhoo, time for end of year assessment. My investor asked me yesterday if I've set a new sales projection, and after that we went through a quick review of where I'm at and where I want to be while we drove around a Walmart parking lot looking for an open space. He said I've been a crabapple the last couple of days, and I agreed that I've gone off course ever since the Pond of Death and I need to review my mission statement (ha, only people with the password can see that, nyahnyah) and set up a new projection timeline.
One of the biggies in the convo was how my original motivation to create this job has flipped. When I first came up with the idea to go public and studied how to create a launch platform, it was out of desperation, a means of distraction to keep me from drowning in depression. Some of my best writing has come out of the sheer need for escape during high pressure social situations, like holidays. That didn't happen this year because I didn't go through my usual aspienado shutdowns and survival maneuvers into FOCUS! and instead actually participated nearly 100% throughout the holidays. I could moan about this being a writing problem, or I could feel elated that I've broken through a very serious social deficit problem I've cringed through for many years. In short, this job I've created, whether it reaches financial success or not, has successfully helped me integrate my whole self into demanding social situations that normally have me going through avoidance behaviors, yay!!! So right away, that's a big ol' plus on the assessment agenda.
So now, one of my goal revamps will include a new (and presumably more emotionally healthy) writing plan. This is no longer a job of desperation, but of joy. I really like that realization, although sadly for friends, this means less time playing on social medias and more time doing actual work. Some of you, like me, nearly got stuck wondering where to put commas in that last sentence. When in doubt, throw commas out. That's my motto. The most properly written way would have gone- "although, sadly, for friends, this means..." Riiiiight.
Hang on, need a break here. Yes, this song. Not just for Benedict.
You know when people ask who you'd want to play yourself in a movie? I always say Austin Powers.
Ok, back to the assessment. Over this last year I've injected $1300+ into my ongoing projects and my tech exec has invested $2200+ on equipment upgrades, so that's at least $3500 just this year on a goal I set 3 years ago. By now we're probably at least $8000 in. This year I tied my properties into google analytics and discovered my web rankings are getting pretty sweet, besides my content being picked up by other curators. I'm still struggling with EU cookie compliance on my older blogs that are still in server move recovery, but nearly everything is verified for ownership, and the next step, once I reach sales, will be promotion. Every bit of this is organically done, not one shred of it has been done for me by a hired service or paid staff. Three years ago I was sharing the challenges I had starting this up, but with hard work and diligence, my overall health continues to improve and I'm managing to keep up with the daily disciplines of writing and checking on my social medias.
I've set and readjusted several goals, keeping in mind that family and 'real life' take priority over work, even though work is the distraction that soothes the continual problems I have with ASD complicating several triggers with anxiety and depression, and over this last year I realized that powering through isn't the answer when one is writing delicate material. I'm learning to oscillate in and out of a more singular focus on one blog in favor of the compulsive scattering across the broken slew of blog personalities I used for several years sorting myself out. I feel I've made significant personal growth with reintegrating #allmystuffs and focusing more easily on holistic thinking. I could have finished this first project on the side, disregarding what this could mean for a better product, but I'm glad I didn't. I feel slowing down and taking more time will mean a better quality finished product. I decided from the beginning that returns on this first project isn't the goal so much as the quality, which will hopefully boost returns on subsequent products.
By the way, I've had a few private offers to help get this done, and while I really do appreciate the offers, I just can't imagine using fundraising investments to do this. Giving me money won't make this move any faster, point blank. Some people can hire housekeepers and babysitters and office staff, but they miss everything about the writing process doing that. The whole point to live blogging through my process is to share my personal challenges and personal growth, my path through the jungle, as it were. Some people might be able to discipline themselves into regular work hours and so many words a day, but I have days where I easily do 5000+ and even 10,000 words, just not all on one project. And then I have days where I barely get a blog post done over several hours with lots of help from a Bunny. I missed so much of my kids on real jobs for many years, like games and dances and even my youngest graduating, so no, there's no way I'm going to miss a single second of Bunny.
Lotta big words. Let's take another break. This is me working on my first book irl.
There are a few changes I hope to make over this next year. It's obviously a huge year for Lexx fans, and I need to put at least as many hours into writing for Lexxperience that I do for my Walking Dead live tweet reviews. There's no Lexxcuse for slacking there when I've put so much free time into other movie and TV show reviews and discussions. Part of writing for a worldwide fandom means paying more attention to the fans involved in the fandom, so I'll need to figure out how to reallocate some more of my time for personal interaction in fan groups.
Enough of the big stuff. Where am I at on the particulars? Numbers are fun!
Top post ever on Surveypalooza at 248 views is Future Survey, currently 4552 total overall over its 15 month history.
Pinky's Sox has only 6 posts and 2106 total views over 12 months.
Blogger makes it pretty easy to weed out spam and bots and watch generalized stats.
I've come to intensely dislike WordPress and haven't spent very much time on those blogs, despite owning two domains over there and using gravatar to help verify other sites connected to WordPress. I should probably download the kit and do it correctly... We'll see what happens over this next year. Who knows, I might go into a brain spasmy fit and suddenly obsess over it. I've seen some other very nice WordPress sites, but I fail to be jealous and inspired to do the same. If Blogger ever streamlines more toward WordPress style, I will go into a severe depression and weep.
We must take another break and cheer me up.
I kind of let Klout slide earlier in the year until I discovered YouTube playlist hits jacks it back up, so I'm holding pretty steady again, which is preferable since I'm listed in some serious twitter lists regarding higher klout scores. I think it's kind of silly, but some jobs actually hire and fire over social media scores, believe it or not, so I may as well keep it up there. This is from today.
I'm not going to be redundant and go over all the other stats observations I've made through the year. I'd love to hand out banoffee to everyone who survived my Lady Gaga and Benedict Cumberbatch obsessions this year- wait- oopsie. Was about to link you guys to 'pink banoffee', but apparently it's a new color in a risque lingerie line now. I can, however, hook you up with Benoffee. You're welcome. Oh, and it clicks out to a real blog post about banoffee.
But I think the most fun I've had this year (yes, even more fun than stats) is all the smashing on youtube. It's not enough making fanvids and shipper vids any more, now it's about taking the DJ pop and rap smashes and smashing several fandoms into those smashes. I've found hundreds of awesome vids this year, but if I were to boil one favorite down, I'd pick this one because the simplicity is so elegant and the irony is delightfully exquisite.
But why? I haven't done anything different. So checking sources for measurment....
And at this point Strong Bad's voice erupted through my brain saying "YOUTUBE? Since when has youtube been part of my klout score? How in the world did it suddenly give me 23% more support?"
Dismiss for a few seconds that I'm pretty much a nobody who does very little on youtube nowadays, and my lifetime views plummeted from awesome to eat dirt when I nearly pulled the plug, and ever since it's been little more than a basic flatline from near extinction. So why is klout suddenly telling me youtube is giving me 23% of my overall klout score ~now~??? Well, I've had playlists going for awhile, right? Sherlock has been a really huge deal with me. I've been getting some politely respectable (laugh if you will) sorta back-from-the-dead playlist numbers ever since last April.
But that doesn't explain why now.
And then I remembered- Oh, yeah, I started a new Lady GaGa playlist just this week. It has this description- Could be anything Lady GaGa related as long as it helps me clean #PinkysHaus
And then I proceeded to hash all manner of despicable fan abuseries in between official VEVO releases. But, but... do playlist views count on klout now? Why yes, yes they do! Youtube seems to be rolling out cool new analytics stuffs. It's still a mess right now...
BUT the analytics are getting even more analytical (you can practically watch your visitors brush their teeth now). I mean, when I can see someone checking my stuff from a game console, yeah. And the little charts are getting groovy. I haven't checked this in awhile, but I'm pretty sure it's kinda new sometime this year. I can choose from six chart types. These are traffic sources in stacked area chart mode. Neat, huh?
And when you mouse over you get metrics.
Not all of the analytics are available for playlists yet, for instance, I went in circles going around 'not available right now' until I finally got into a couple of charts and was then able to kind of back track into what I couldn't direct link to in the analytics menu.
Yeah, what's up with 7-25-15? >=l No playlist embedded into a post that day. Kinda wondering if that's when I put the Khirk playlist into my side bar, but I play that one all the time on my phone while I'm in the shower and I'm not getting device analytics on it yet because it's still web-only mode, probably because they're still working on it, plus the hit dates don't match for that particular playlist.
Well, turns out it's my Sherlock 2 playlist, BING. Absolutely no idea why that day unless I linked it to twitter, but I'm not going to dig that deep on twitter and find out, but guess who is my biggest web visitor for that playlist. Waving to Japan, hi guys.
There were more, but you get the point. Also keep in mind that's web-only.
Ok, anyway, my POINT is that my klout score suddenly bumped up just in the last few days because youtube suddenly jumped into the game, so I think what's happening is youtube is rolling out a new deeper analytics model that feeds your social media analytics hubs like klout. I got an email from sumall recently about a new rollout they're doing, too, so I bet there's a lot of syncing going on in the coding world, finally. I've talked before about the big information gaps between this tracker or that, and how they read differently from google analytics and stuff, but I think, given a little more time, it's all going to start mashing up more sweetly.
And thanks muchos nachos to Benedict Cumberbatch and Lady GaGa for being big dealios because my klout score went up just because I made some playlists. And thanks to Strong Bad on general principal.
This is like the big taco of Haus of GaGa, it's got parodies, Sherlock, Star Trek, DJ mixes, fan smashes, and of course, the Mother Monster herself.
:edit: 9-19-15
Thanx to stat stuff running back through some older posts, I discovered that I made this public playlist on the day of the big spike and linked it the next day in this post that I never shared a link to, but which pretty much confirms that date for me. I didn't realize that playlist was that old. Again, thanx Ben, u rock.
I hadn't visited Klout in awhile and boy howdy, was that ever a surprise. After nearly two years of hovering around the 60-64 range (and sometimes higher), I find I've dropped to 59 and have an admonition awaiting me about not blogging enough, even though I'm leading the twitter pack in the point-one percentile. I'm in the tippy top of the top 1% of blogging "experts" (according to Klout), and I'm not blogging enough.
And I'm apparently an expert in several dubious fields, including Batman (eat that) and Benedict himself. If Klout knows so much about me and Benedict, why doesn't it know about my *cough*prolific*cough* blogging, even though I've got my blogger connected??? #bencongruity
I think Klout is punishing me for not claiming any of my perks this year (I should sell perks) and not playing the game. I've apparently been bumped from my bottom bitch status.
So I guess I'm going to dig in there and learn the new game rules and see what the crap it takes to get my 64 back. I'm actually in high number Klout lists on twitter. I have a reputation to keep up.
I really do have a post called #blogwhore, but it had more to do with my months-long angsting over an old friendship on a public blog than blogging. If you are stuck and needing a good long story to get you through an even longer week, start here and piece together my ragged past along with me. In the meantime, I might look into Klout's tweet scheduling and start hyping my own content.
