Social Media Experiment - Final Update

So here is a quick update on my Social Media Experiment, to discover what really works and what doesnt.

So if you haven't read the first posts or the subsequent posts here they are.

Social Media Experiment - Tag Tag Tag #socialmedia

Social Media Experiment - Start A convo game #teaserTuesday

Social media experiment - what works & What don't

Well lets start this off with a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I do apologize for taking such a long time to post this next one, but this part of the experiment took a while to do and with all the caroling and merrying i had to do, well I Kinda got held up. 

So basically the last part of my experiment was the following: 

• Tweet well and tweet often
• Use #hashtags
• retweet your most popular tweets
• use follow websites
• Follow people that you want to follow you
• mention your twitter account everywhere possible
• post later in the day
• Thurs, Fri, Sat & Sun

So here is the break down of what happen. 

I started this experiment on the 11th of December 2012. 

This was where my klout, kred, followers etc were at during that time.
1059 Facebook friends
343 likes on facebook page
 @Cordiervoodoo twitter has 107 followers
@trashbaggery twitter has 95
 for cordiervoodoo i have a klout score of 17.34
 kred score i think was 238/2

Todays date is the 31st December and this is where i stand today:
1062 facebook friends
373 likes on facebook page
@cordiervoodoo 170 followers
@trashbaggery 100 followers
klout - my klout went up to 61 now it is currently 58
kred - 737/5

So all in all, the advice works. I have had a dramatic increase in social media in less than 3 weeks. 

But at the end, still no new leads or sales have come of it and it has been a great deal of work. reply to every mention,come up with original posts, try and keep the momentum. Not sure what happened with klout in the past few days as it seemed to have dropped suddenly for no apparent reason. 

And this experiment doesn't include my other social networks such as instagram, google+, tumblr etc. 

I will be doing experiments on those separately  only because it is too much to do it all at once, you have to almost become a full time social media poster just to keep up. 

So here is the ice breaker, is it worth it? Well if you are trying to create your own brand and get your name out there, then YES! 

It has put my name out there and I have noticed I'm getting a lot of recognition for my art. No sales, but at least recognition. 

But when do you say it is enough? Unfortunately many people see the social media nation as a leader-board competition, and they are trying to get to the top no matter what it takes for no apparent reason.  If social media is working for you already, it is sometimes best to maintain what you have, rather than crucify your existing followers with an overload of useless information and tweets. 

So in summary, these tips do and have worked. They took a great deal of work, I spent the majority of my day on my phone and computer coming up with unique tweets and posts and replying to tweets, engaging with others and so on. It has assisted with my artwork status. I have a small following so it doesn't hurt to increase my social media influence. 

If you already have a large following it may be best to keep it as it rather than bombard people with a million posts a day and risk loosing followers rather than gaining them. 

Fun experiment and will continue to maintain my influence as is for the mean time. 

Cheers everyone 

You can continue to see the transitions yourself
 on twitter:
  @cordiervoodoo 
@trashbaggery 

on Facebook - 
http://www.facebook.com/ccordier2
http://www.facebook.com/mytrashbaggery

Kred & Klout 
http://kred.com/cordiervoodoo
http://klout.com/#/cordiervoodoo

Caroline updates us all again

What works on Tumblr

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During my social media experiment I decided to do a little research in to tumblr. 

Even though I only publish one item a day unlike the majority of tumblr users, I still get a fair few reblogs and loves and follows from the minute amount I post. I dedicate almost no time to tumblr, because it really has no growth or interest for what I wish to do or accomplish with my social media influence other than getting the word out on an item or project to various tumblr users who may be interested or perhaps if I want to get a little traffic.

Tumblr has no real way of linking you with the rest of your social networks nor does it have any advertising revenue to offer or any real benefits other than getting a whole bunch of reblogs, likes  and showing your media to the tumblr world etc.

And other than being the perfect place for bloggers who just wish to blog it has no real valuable resource in my eyes for people who are trying to advertise their brand through social networks other than posting an image and linking it to an external site.

The only way people can find you on your other social networks is if you use those networks to post directly to tumblr and even then you get a tiny little grey (almost invisible) link that says it was posted from that network.

So you have to manually add your social network links to your tumblr blog page, but the problem is this. Most people love and reblog tumblr posts from the dashboard. so they dont always go to your tumblr page so again your social links are hidden.

But what is great about tumblr is you can easily share and upload various media to the tumblr sphere and link it to an external page such as informational landing page etc. Tumblr seems to have this thirsty little nation waiting for more image uploads  to reblog.

Many large brands are now using tumblr as a form of advertising and in this essence, it does work well. See, with tumblrs controlling ways of the tumblr world it has created a virtual stage filled with people who spend day in and day out on tumblr just waiting for another post to reblog. And this creates a chain reaction, one person reblogs then someone else does and so on and so on.

But is it a great place for bloggers?

Well here is my little problem with Tumblr. I do like to write and the one thing I have noticed is unless you write something less than 4 lines,  The tumblr nation wont read it. I have experimented this with several tumblr blogs I own and on one blog I routinely post 5 post text to 1 post image and 1 post video. All the text I post is less than 4 lines long and it seems to be a tumblr blog that gets a great deal of views, loves and reblogs.

Another tumblr blog I own I only post long text posts. And it gets only a few likes and reblogs. And the posts that do get the likes and reblogs are the posts that are in lists or point form and have interesting facts. Its called "Caroline is bored" and I post random weird facts that most people don't know. But if I choose to write a typical blog post, then it often gets ignored or neglected.

My main tumblr is mostly images, and these are images I draw. So basically I write and draw inspirational quotes and motivational's and take a photo of it. Some of them I will have someone hold the motivational or on some I take just a photo of the paper itself. It does well in Tumblr, but Have figured out it only does well if I label it well.

I have tested uploading images etc without labels and zero, zilch, nothing. Then I can re upload the very same image with some great labels that are relevant and get many loves, reblogs etc.

My other little bone to pick is the notes section on tumblr. When someone reblogs my item, its great that tumblr tries its best to show where the original came from. But it doesn't really enforce or get the user to go to you so again unless you have linked that image or post to an external site, you are loosing valuable traffic.

Also there is no easy follow system, if someone does reblog your post, there should be a little follow this blog button next to the original content poster so that people can follow that blog rather than just the blog that reposted it.

So all in all it is a great little system, I still use it and will continue to use it, but I don't waste a great deal of time on it, I primarily use it to do my motivational's, try and get my name out there as an artist and writer, as t does have a great deal of users and can at times help with recognition.

But as a blogging medium or as a "get my opinion out  there" posting site, Tumblr can not compete with having your own blog or website. But here is the draw back, tumblr does certainly have all the traffic. So the trick of the matter is how to use it to funnel some of that traffic back to you and your brand.

Tumblr is basically a simplified facebook without all the apps, mess, pokes, notifications and status updates. But it has many great abilities and can definitely help you get the word out there quickly.

So how can you succeed on tumblr?

• Keep your blog posts less than 4 lines
• post various images and videos 
• Reblog posts that have something relevant to your blog
• Don't be Emo -- there are way too many people with depressing photos and posts on tumblrs and The tumblr nation just cant take any more. 
• Follow relevant blogs - they will generally give you ideas and inspirations
• Post comments - yes believe it or not, you can post comments on tumblr. It seems to be the one little known function most tumblr users forget exists. 
• Post every day - Tumblr is a fast moving network. The average person follows roughly 100+ blogs so your post will fall low on their dashboard quick and Most users wont sit there and scroll down for too long. 
• Post Several times a day if you can - the one thing I noticed is most tumblr users will post an average of 5 posts a day. This consists of original posts and reblogs
• Schedule posts - This little scheduling feature is great. I use it to schedule all my posts once a week, this way I am guaranteed that i will have a minimum of one post a day. 
• Link your images - If you have a post or a website, link your image or post to that website. This will get you some extra users to your page. 
• Signature your images or posts - Use a little signature - nothing to big or bulky but perhaps a one line signature with your website address and twitter address on all your posts. This will give you a chance to get extra views and followers from the reblogs. 
• interact - people like it when you like their posts or share them. So will you when someone does the same back. 
• Label label label - use those labels to the full extent. dont worry about having to many, break up two three word labels to individual labels
• use point form - if you do want to post something long, then use point form, keep it simple and straight to the point. Try an minimize too much text. 
• Ask a question - in all the time i have owned my tumblr blogs, I have never received a question and this is more than likely because most tumblr users only view posts on their dashboard. But by asking a question, you increase the chances of the same person returning the favour. 

Well good luck tumbling and here are some of my tumblr blogs and where you can find me should you want to randomly stalk me or bug me or just i dont know .. something . 

http://cordiervoodoo.tumblr.com/

http://trashbaggery.tumblr.com/

http://carolinaisbored.tumblr.com/

Friends blogs I help with 

http://rocknsunka.tumblr.com/

Again you can find me on facebook and twitter and send me any comments and ideas.

http://www.facebook.com/ccordier2
https://twitter.com/cordiervoodoo

You can find my web geekiness self at http://imthewebgeek.tk or you can always just find out more about me on http://about.me/cordiervoodoo

Social Media Experiment - Tag Tag Tag #socialmedia

Ok so this is a follow up article on my little social media experiment. If you have no clue what Im talking about then you need to go read this:

http://cordiervoodoo.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/social-media-experiment-what-works-what.html

My first test for experiments was to Convo game - you can see the results here:

http://cordiervoodoo.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/social-media-experiment-start-a-convo-game-teasertuesday.html

So for today's test I decided to try Tagging. Which was number one on the tip list. (check first link)
So to do this, is quite hard, as I am also doing some of the other tips at the same time, so its quite difficult to see if its working or not.

If you read through the tip list in the first post, you will see there are some tips which are difficult to monitor such as adding your twitter and facebook link to everything known to mankind. Which I have done. And the only way to really monitor that is to perhaps feed those social links through an analytic site. But then people may add you just by copying your twitter username.

Using Hashtags is another difficult one to monitor as I am using several hashtags and its difficult to see if you are getting followers due to those hashtags, though your post or tweet may be getting more viewers, there is no real way of seeing if someone followed you due to those hashtags, so I will do my best to post accurate information.

So in saying this, the tag tag tag experiment is also another difficult one to monitor, especially since I have already started experimenting with Hashtags, linkage etc. But I will do my best to record accurate information.

For the past two days I have started convos with various twitter and facebook users. I have also check out my crowdbooster, kred, klout etc to see who my most influential followers were in order to tag them in tweets and hopefully get some of their followers.

I have to admit, I was presently suprised to see how many people actually reply to your tweets publicly and also tag you back or begin to retweet your tweets.

 I didnt see a remarkable increase of followers as of yet, but like most things this is something that takes time and I will have to keep you updated.

What I did notice was my Influence on kred, klout score and crowdbooster score seemed to go up as I was having users with influence tag me and vice versa.

My Tweeter followers as of today stands at: 141
My facebook is 1061 friends
My trashbaggery twitter stands at 95
Trashbaggery Facebook page: 343

Klout score is 59
Kred: 731/5

After doing some analysis I found my highest reach tag - which happened to be one of my tagged #teasertuesday tweets where I was congratulating a twitter user for getting the right answer.
That tweet alone had an exposure of over 4595.

So a combination of tagging and running the convo game did get me a large increase of influence and views. Will keep you updated how it goes through the remainder of this month.

You can continue to see the transitions yourself
 on twitter:
  @cordiervoodoo 
@trashbaggery

on Facebook -
http://www.facebook.com/ccordier2
http://www.facebook.com/mytrashbaggery

Kred & Klout
http://kred.com/cordiervoodoo
http://klout.com/#/cordiervoodoo


Cheers and until next time..

Social Media Experiment - Start A convo game #teaserTuesday

Ok so this is a follow up article on my little social media experiment. If you have no clue what Im talking about then you need to go read this:

http://cordiervoodoo.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/social-media-experiment-what-works-what.html

so for my first little experiment, I decided to turn my facebook and twitter into a gaming page so to speak. I decided to try and get users to interact with me by posting riddles and who ever answers firsts gets put on my follow list at the end of the day.

This was tip number two in my social media experiment article - Start A convo game

At the end of the day I posted 7 riddles. I didn't want to overwhelm everyone with way to many posts, so I posted each riddle in hour and half intervals.
I thought id make it easy by calling it Brain  #teasertuesday and each riddle had its own individual #hastag.
#btt1, #btt2, #btt3, #btt4, #btt5, #btt6, #btt7.

I found twitter to be unresponsive to my riddles to be honest and with the character max limitation it was quite difficult to shrink the riddle to have it still be a riddle and still make sense.

But to my surprise, Facebook reacted quite well to this. I didn't expect it, in fact i expected it to be the other way around. I thought my facebook friends would probably block me or unfriend me due to the amount of posts I was doing in such short bursts, but i was pleasantly surprised  the majority of people that answered, liked and commented were on facebook.

What really surprised me was how quick people were responding. As soon as i posted the riddle, within 5 minutes I already had someone answer it, or attempt to answer it.  It may have been a better idea at that point to perhaps increase the number of riddles and shorten the intervals in between them, to keep people participating, rather than letting them go away and come back perhaps. But as I said before, I didn't want to flood people with riddles on facebook.

to get twitter more involved in my experiment, I had asked my facebook friends to send me their twitter account so I can still add them to my follow list at the end of the day. And many of them re tweeted my follow list.

On that day My klout score improved by almost 40+ and my Kred improved to 738/5
I believe I also got a few more followers on the day, something like 10 followers on twitter. No added friends on facebook, but It was interesting the amount of interactivity, comments, likes etc I did get.

So all in all it was a productive activity, it did help with my social networking and It showed an overall increase all across the board.

Stay tuned for tomorrows experiment. Not sure which to do. Tweet me your suggestions.

Again You can see the transitions yourself on twitter:
  @cordiervoodoo 
@trashbaggery

on Facebook -
http://www.facebook.com/ccordier2
http://www.facebook.com/mytrashbaggery

Kred & Klout
http://kred.com/cordiervoodoo
http://klout.com/#/cordiervoodoo

Social media experiment - what works & What don't

So we all know that Social networking can be extremely beneficial to promoting your brand, business or event or even yourself. 

But what works and what doesn't? 

It can be so confusing with some many so called experts sending you all over the place, telling you to do this and do that, so well, I've decided to try them all. 
This is an experiment I am doing with my own accounts. So below I am going to list a few articles links that I have taken lessons from and applied to my own social media influence, but here are the most popular tips and advice I have found and the ones I am willing to try.

As I speak I have currently - 1059 Facebook friends , 343 likes on facebook page , @Cordiervoodoo twitter has 107 followers and @trashbaggery twitter has 95 - for cordiervoodoo i have a klout score of 17.34 and kred score i think was 238/2

needless to say I have never much promoted my social media pages and thought i'd start now. so here we go: 

• Tag Tag Tag - Start conversations on twitter and reply and comment to peoples tweets and posts. sounds easy enough, but i have found its hard to find people posting and tweeting things that are comment worthy. Most people auto tweet from blog posts etc But I will give it my best crack
• Start A convo game - Make it user interactive, after all that is what twitter and Facebook and most social networks are for. Start a game such as caption this or finish this sentence and offer users a reward such as adding them to your follow list or promoting them in some way
• competitions - Run some kind of basic competitions where you offer your loyal followers a reward such as a tshirt, post card, inbox, signed autograph etc
• Submit next weeks topic - allow your users to submit a topic that you will dedicate a day or post for. Give credit to the user for submitting said topic
• Tweet well and tweet often - according to wikihow they say you should have atleast one post per day but preferably two or more. But be interesting, post pics and media links that will peak peoples interest
• Ask people to retweet you - Wikihow also suggests to ask to be retweet - though I don't think il be trying this one, as i would prefer to be retweeted due to content merit rather than because i hounded someone to death.
• Use #hashtags - use hashtag with keywords that refer to your posts. 
• retweet your most popular tweets - If you have found a tweet to get a great deal of interest, then retweet it so more people can find it interesting i suppose??
• use follow websites - Use these sites to find related people and get them to follow you. 
• Follow people that you want to follow you - If you want those people to follow you, follow them first. many have auto follow and will follow you. 
• live tweets and live shows- draw a crowd by hosting a live show and tweets - have people watch and tweet you at the same time.according to Social Engine Journal live tweeting is becoming a big trend and used often in conferences and webinars.
• mention your twitter account everywhere possible - self explanatory 
• post photos - according to mashables photos get the most likes and shares
• post later in the day - posts between 6pm and 8pm tend to get more likes according to mashables
• Thurs, Fri, Sat & Sun - these days seem to be the highest commented days 
• use a like gate - Well its fairly simple, attract people by putting up a coupon or contest on your site and for them to enter the contest or get the coupon they will be redirected to fb and have to click like. Can also be used on youtube etc. 

if you have any tips and ideas that may have worked for you, feel free to leave a comment and let me know. 
Now the next upcoming 

Ok so here is the deal, I will be trying, experimenting and doing all the above (or as much as I can) and dictating what occurs and what changes I experience. 

You can see the transitions yourself on twitter: 
@cordiervoodoo 
@trashbaggery 

on Facebook - 
http://www.facebook.com/ccordier2
http://www.facebook.com/mytrashbaggery

Kred & Klout 
http://kred.com/cordiervoodoo
http://klout.com/#/cordiervoodoo

Some sources and references: 
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-More-Followers-on-Twitter
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-get-twitter-followers/29960/
http://www.inc.com/janine-popick/5-ways-to-get-more-facebook-likes.html
http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/23/how-to-get-100000-facebook-likes-for-your-blog-fan-page/
http://mashable.com/2012/06/19/how-to-get-more-likes-shares-on-facebook-infographic/
http://kimgarst.com/how-get-more-facebook-likes
http://allfacebook.com/facebook-pictures-engagement_b66150

wish me good luck and again if you have anything for me to try out then let me know.. 

gnaaww another boring update

Ok so we have another lovely Hump day – half way done with the week woot – here is a bit of what I am up to and why.

Social media experimenting – I am vigorously trying out new social media tools and seeing if any of them really work and  what works best. I have seen so many of these so called “how to get more followers or views etc” articles but then when I follow these authors and check their social networks I see they rarely follow any of their own advice. So Inspector Caroline to the rescue. I am actually trying out these bits of advice and sites that claim they are social tools and I will get back to you and see how I go.  So either follow my blog or twitter @cordiervoodoo  to see how I go.

Trashbaggery redesign – still struggling with this, cause each time I progress with something I get another bright idea which means reinventing the wheel .. arghhh .. Stop you crazy brain can.  Still in need of a new webhost.. recommend away people

Web Design back shelfed till future notice – I am so busy that I have had to stop offering web design services. Yes that’s right, I know I get a great deal of requests for custom style and designed websites. Because my sites are custom and many of them require me to hand draw their design then scan, edit, re edit, design, custom code php, do mysql, set up social stuff and more it takes a great deal of my time and frankly not enough pay. And I just can’t keep up so for the time being.  So I am putting that career on the back shelf and only will do websites that offer me a very tempting offer.

Artwork – I’ve been lazy this week so I have only half finished art work 4 of the 8 piece series I am doing. Yes I know I deserve a slap on the wrist for it. I only have a month left to finish them all so basically I now have to spit out a piece a week.. Don’t have a clue  how I’m going to do that. I’m asking for the gods of art to help me out here.

Doggy fostering – Yes I am a doggy foster mummy and I am super excited. I love my puppies and I will be posting updates on here and on youtube, facebook and instagram with who I have with me and showing you their lovable personalities etc. because I love them to bits it’s going to be hard to give them to their forever homes but atleast I know I have done something worthy.

VLOGGING: yes I am moving with the tech of the world, it just seems so much easier to vlog rather than type and spell check and etc so I will be doing my best efforts to vlog rather than do this whole writing business. Even though I will be writing articles more often I promise.

So peeps this is just an update not so interesting i know but i will be puting up designing articles this week and i also have opened  a new blog called living to write or write to live  - which will be filled with writing challenges etc.  

Happy hump day

Save me ohhh web host Adonai

Damn web hosts and their resources. I have another website called www.trashbaggery.com  and its run by myself and a whole group of volunteers...

And we have a pretty crappy web host and there are times when we get a whole lot of visitors to our websites all at once and it just seems to kill the crap out of the web host....  so much so that for the 5th time this year they have restricted our resources on our web service.

But now with this restricted resources we can't even run the basic word press software. how lame is that.. so back to the drawing board we go

We need to find a new web host, transfer everything over and restart everything within 50 days.. arghhhh worst thing is trash baggery is a not for profit site that promotes Sydney talents, like performers, artists, writers, photographers, musicians, models, fashion designers and more. So our funds are very limited. So limited that so far I haven't been able to find a web-host that can give us what we need for a cheap enough price..

So if anyone out there in the blogger world can recommend one, then please let me know. :)

Where oh Where is Caroline???

Been so super busy i have forgotten about my blog ... :(

 how bad am i???

 Anyway, here are some of the things I've been up too .. enjoy and check it out .. ps. my tumblr gets updated more than this, cause its just way to simple to use from my phone and connects with all my other networks making life a little easier.
 Tumblr: http://cordiervoodoo.tumblr.com 

Anyways here is some my not so amazing arwork.. it is what has been keeping me super dooper busy lately. I have made them available as prints on zazzle.
Whats my Zazzle store url I hear you ask??? well, let me not keep you in suspense.
 it can be found on the link BELOW

.... http://www.zazzle.com.au/n8vart and now for the pics

so all these above have taken a great deal of time, plus im on assignment custom coding a social Facebook application and I am doing the be happy project (creating inspirational images each and every day )
plus i am editing a book that i have finished .. sooo much to doooooooooo

 So ye, sorry I havent been around and I hope to put up all the promised tutorials soon. Take care geeky peeps

keep an eye out cause i may convert my tutorials to videos, cause its just easier and Im lazy ..