Extremely Average

I like Google Plus, but the days of ‘Circle You, Circle Me back’ have started.  I’m getting inundated with new people who have added me to their circles.  It sounds like a good thing, but really, it isn’t.  70% of them have ‘Circled’ 1500 people and only have 187 people who have circled them.  If you have been trying this, your aren’t fooling me.  You don’t care.

There is an unwritten rule on Twitter, which says, ‘Thou shall not follow greater than twice the number of people who have followed you, lest you look like a spammer.’  The observant reader will note that I spent one evening following a bunch of people I didn’t know.  All told about 200 people.  But they were all people who happened to be followed (read circled) by cool kids I know from Twitter.  I haven’t done it since and it appears about half of those people, didn’t circle me back. I’m fine with that, they are interesting, and eventually, if I interact, they might.  But even if they don’t, it doesn’t matter to me.

It was a quick way to play around with G+ and I was tempted by the ease of getting new people.  I did it in small numbers though and this let me see what they were like.

The people who are ‘circling’ me like a wagon train under assault, will eventually take me out of their circles.  There may be a few who say hello, or write a haiku which makes me giggle, and then I’ll add them to my ‘following’ circle.  (yes, not a very clever name, I admit)

What is different about how I approach Google Plus, from my slash and burn (read block and report) mentality with Twitter, is that I don’t care how many circles I am in.  I do care how many followers I have, on Twitter, and I want to make sure they are all real people.  That is why I block.  Social Media is important, especially to a struggling author.

My year and a half of building @ExtremelyAvg has been a success.  When I launched HWDA on Saturday, I sent out DM (Direct Messages) to 24 of the 1750 people who follow me, and asked them to help me out.  Twelve of those people did send out a message to their followers.  In addition, another 24 people who saw either my tweet or theirs, RTed the announcement about the launch, which led to the announcement being sent to 139,144 people.

I consider that a success.  Since then, additional tweets have gone out to an additional 75,000 tweeple.  The reason people send out my tweets when asked, is because they are friendly, and engaging.  I’ve sent out their tweets.  We help each other.  It is how it works.

The people who are trying to amass big numbers of ‘circled’ are doing it for one reason…vanity. Building relationships takes work, a bit of humor, and a willingness to help.  I won’t follow you back, just because you circled me, but say hello, and I just might.

[Note:  To the ‘normals’ who might have wondered into the blog tonight, the constant interchanging of ‘follow’ and ‘circled’ might seem confusing.  It isn’t to us nutters who love Social Media.  If you should meet a Social Media enthusiast, away from their natural habitat (behind a keyboard), just smile, nod and move slowly away, as we frighten easily.]

The week’s schedule was frightening, he thought as he looked at his outlook calendar.  The three major projects Thomas was working on were all past due, by several weeks, and he had to finish up the power point presentation to explain why.  Deadlines were rarely met, but it seemed to be harder to get things done than usual.  He looked at his watch and took a sip of the Starbuck Double Mocca day starter, and opened the browser.  Work would have to wait.

With years of experience creating presentations explaining technical stuff, in such a way, that stupid people (read upper management) could understand, had made him rather savvy with Photoshop CS.  He opened his folder of company photos and found one, from the Christmas part of ’07, and neither person in the shot still worked there, so he thought it would be perfect.

The next 3 hours were spent adding the Google Plus and FB logo over the two women’s faces. After cancelling his meetings for the afternoon, he got back to writing clever captions.  The projects would have to wait. This could go viral!

Such is life in corporate America for July 2011.  It will be forever known as the lost month

I’m sold on G+, no question about it.  I’ve grown tired of the partisan bickering though.  I’m not talking about Democrats and Republicans, but about Geocrats and Facebookicans.  The first couple of weeks there were lots of jokes about G+ kicking FB’s butt, and I chuckled.  It has grown boring and if I never see another animated gif with G+ beating on FB, it will be too soon.

I realize that as a species, we need to vent our anger somewhere.  Saying, ‘Serenity Now’, over and over, doesn’t work.  Life is hard and everyone has stress.  There are kids, unemployment, bad economy, reality TV, and gas prices, which make the members of OPEC blush.  We need to hate, or more accurately vent.  I tend to take out my frustrations through guest blogging.  Most of my posts have a common tone of snark and usually take an undeserved shot at Justin Beiber or Snooki.

I understand.  I really do, but the truth is, I’m sure they are both nice people.  I bet Mr. Beiber would be pleasant to talk with, over dinner, and I’m sure he would be much nicer to me, than I have been to him in the blogs.

I really don’t hate Beiber or Snooki, or even the University of michigan.  The fact, that I refuse to capitalize the state, is just me having a little fun.  I love Ohio State football, and with their recent on campus troubles, expect that the fans of Maize and Blue will have plenty of ammo to take the wind out of my sails, should I mention the recent lopsided rivalry.  When I was young, I thought I really did hate the Wolverines.  I couldn’t stand it when they beat the Buckeyes.  But then I grew up.  I learned that Bo Shembechler and Woody Hayes were best friends.  They hated to lose to the other, but it was just a game.  Life and friends are something that shouldn’t be tarnished by real hate.

So, I’m tired of all the ‘Will G+ be the DEATH of FB’, and all the giddy giggling hoping it comes to pass.

It won’t be the death of FB, because there are lots of people who like FB, not because it is a great Social Media platform, but because they enjoy using the service.  They aren’t SM gurus or early adopters or zealots.  They are just people, who like to post a picture of their kids, because they love them.  They aren’t selling anything.  The masses at FB have little concern with their Klout score, or have even heard of Klout.  They don’t use Twitter or understand why it is important and they aren’t going to give up FB, which they are comfortable with, because G+ does things slightly better.  The differences are so meaningless to non-social media enthusiasts, that it just won’t matter.

Is it possible that FB’s future earning will be less than they would, had G+ not come along?  Yes.  I would say it is likely, but who really cares.  I don’t.  Mark Zuckerberg, at 27, will still have billions and billions of dollars.  He’ll get by.

I like Twitter and G+ best, but I will use FB too.  I think people should just choose their favorite and stop the preaching and bashing.  If you are frustrated and bitter, then find an outlet and vent.  Please stop filling my stream with your SM hate mongering.  And get back to work.

Driving while distracted it dangerous.  In recent weeks, there have been numerous reports of driving while doing something so offensive, it almost shouldn’t be mentioned.  Of course, I refer to driving and cat juggling.

These cats, often in groups, cruise around in convertibles, juggling.  In one instance, a cat, combined the juggling of cell phones, while sexting.  This can’t be safe.

But I digress.

While responding to an email about a guest post I had written, I told the poster, I would tweet  and…then I paused.  I needed a name for tweeting something in G+.  I could have used post, but I didn’t want to.  So I said Gweet.  He understood and I coined a term.  I can’t be sure if I’m the first, so I decided to do a shot, albeit late blog post tonight, on the Gweet.

The Gweet is a posting on Google Plus.  You may not call it that.  In fact, nobody may call it that, but if people do start to use it, I want some sort of royalties…paid in bacon!

This will of course lead to people issuing Gweetings, which sounds an awful lot like Greetings, and thus, one more reason it is the best word invented in the last 35 minutes.  I rank it up there with words like monkey, cheese, and the name Boutros Boutros Ghali.  I would put it 4^th in that group.

As I wrote the other night, G+ is really taking off.  I read in one gweet that it may hit 10,000,000 users after only 2 weeks.  I believe the person consulted a magic 8 ball, to get the figures, as I have also seen 20 Million bandied about.  It doesn’t matter, because it is a good platform, which improves daily.

I don’t buy into all the hype about it killing off FB or Twitter, unless I can find a funny way to blog about it.  Google did come from nowhere to dominate search, so I am not counting them out, but I really don’t care.  I like it.  I will use it.  And damn it, I came up with gweet first.  Now tell your friend…or don’t…actually, they already think you are weird for bothering to read blogs, so it wouldn’t help.

That’s all for tonight, back to tweeting and gweeting.

The gold rush is on. There is a new wild west and it is the land of Google +.

I have written, at length, on how picky I am about whom I let follow me on Twitter.  I block about 50% of the people who try to follow me, because, they are not serious in wanting to connect with me.  They just want a big follower count.  If I have said it once, I have said it 853 times; huge follow counts just don’t matter.

Follower/Circled Count

So today I woke up and found that my ‘people who’ve added you’ (to circles) was up to 42. Woot!  I love it!  There was a little dance (with a nod to Snoopy) and I felt a great sense of ‘Follower’ pride.  I have 1609 followers on Twitter and don’t celebrate with each additional 100, because I know it isn’t the quantity, but the quality.  So why am I so different on G+?

Because this is the absolute bleeding edge of this new platform and one can feel confident that only the most hardened Social Media nut jobs (read geeks [read me]) are swimming around this new pond.  On Twitter I don’t follow tons of random people, hoping they will follow back, because I would rather pick people carefully, based upon mutual interests.  Right now though, everyone on G+ has one major thing in common, we all love SM.  So I can go over to Gini Dietrich’s list of people she has ‘Circled’ as being a good group to follow.  In fact, I followed all 35 people she has ‘Circled’.  I’m confident that every single person is someone, whose content I will enjoy.

And that is the issue right now.  We are easily 3 years away from G+ reaching the tipping point, heck it has been around a week, so why am I so panicked to get followers?  I don’t know, nor can I explain why I am so happy to have my numbers going up this quickly.  I guess it is just a golden time, where one can amass a ton of new connections, with confidence that almost all of them are worthwhile.

It’s Still Social

Still, once the amassing is done, it will mean zilch if I don’t then try to get to know my new friends.  That is what social media is all about, being social with one another.  It scares me a bit, because this is one additional time commitment.  Twitter is up on one monitor 24/7 and I keep one eye on it whenever I’m at my computer. Will I need to devote an entire monitor to G+?  Maybe.  Perhaps G+ will be the excuse I need to add a 4^th monitor to the computer? (I have given up on ever finding a super model who likes short, balding, nerdiness, so I have turned my affections towards the super computer.)  Honestly, I can’t imagine trying to juggle all that is going on, with less than 3 monitors.

Since I started playing on G+ about 4 hours ago, I have been added to another 52 circles.  It is the classic ‘Follow & Follow’ game, which I hate, and yet here I am adding people until my fingers bleed.  It is likely that in a few months, I’ll be railing on the practice.  So I am stuck with this dilemma, how long do I behave in a hypocritical fashion?

I don’t know, but I do know this…Google + is likely to be a force in SM, and there will never be a time in the future, where it will be so easy to find interesting people who share the same love this stuff.  So I best load up, before the spammers get here.

I just hope Gini circles me as one of the cool kids.

She sat with her lap top on her legs, back up against the wall, her face bathed in a soft light. Her shinny brown hair, gently flowing across her shoulders, went perfectly with the bright orange top which clung to her shapely figure. He thought to himself, Gee wiz…I bet this 22 year old with the perfect body, would love to spend time hanging out with a middle aged, balding, overtly bitter guy. He clicked on her name to read her Twitter bio. She has such a lovely Twitter avatar photo; she must be single, and just dying to meet me, unlike all the real world super hotties, he thought as he moved his Star Trek action figure away from the mouse pad, lest it get knocked over. Shoveling a handful of Cheetos into his mouth, he shrugged, not much info there, but let’s click on her link anyway…then she will like me. He takes a sip from his rum and coke and realizes the link was trouble.

This is how I am viewed by the latest batch of spammers on Twitter. I don’t even like Cheetos.

Okay, I admit that as a rule, guys are simpletons. We are easily induced to click on links with pictures of women who have paid thousands of dollars to order from the ‘Super Size’ menu at their local house of plastic surgery and self-esteem. We make Pavlov’s dogs seem restrained. So I understand the marketing strategy of using pretty 20 somethings to get our attention. In my 20’s and 30’s, I welcomed such ‘high brow’ marketing, now I’m in my 40’s and it just pisses me off. I’m less stupid now.

I hate spammers and bots on twitter, to be sure, but when I see an angelic faces land in my mentions column, and they are trying to suck me into clicking on their link, I wish that she would just die. (Note: When I say she, I mean the slovenly, unwashed 34 year old, male, burger jockey, living in a tiny efficiency, over a tattoo parlor, who actually owns the Twitter account.) There are few things worse than the parasites who try to trick you to click on their link, except maybe this new breed. Yes, the parasites have devolved.

I mean devolved, not evolved, as they no longer even try to look like real accounts. They have zero followers, are following zero, and their Twitter stream is only @YourNameHere http://j.mp/xx7ray/, which was the shortened version of http://SellYourIdentityToDrugLordsinKKyrgyzstan.org or a link to the latest Bieber video, either way, you lose.

I don’t know how many people it takes to get an account pulled down? I do know this, each time I see one of these dregs of society, using photos of beautiful women, likely without the photographer or models permission, I ‘block and report’ spam. Then I tweet something snarky to the burger jockey, and include #blockopotamus in the tweet. My followers know that it means they should ‘block and report spam’ too. When I get a RT saying <Done, it makes my day and I feel a little less bitter. Sometimes I have a blueberry pop-tart to celebrate. Nom nom nom.

If you agree that we need to make Twitter a place which is hostile to these parasite, then let’s start with @mccuskerddscl7, she has no bio, zero followers, is following zero people and has tweeted 177 times, each with a link to something I would never consider clicking on. It is my hope that if enough of you block ‘her/him/it’, eventually there will be a comment below saying, “Brian, I too was filled with #howlermonkeyangst, when I read this post, so I sent your friend the #blockopotamus to get them, but they were already gone.”

If we, as a social media community, can band together, we can wipe this blight from the internet, much like the “Pop-Up” box has become a nearly extinct beast. Make Twitter safe for the people with something real to say. (Of course, I mean the slightly mad blahgers, who want to take over the world, by carpet bombing snark at every chance.) Now I am off to find a picture of a hottie for my own Twitter account.

The world of social media and publishing is a vastly expanding universe.  It is complex and beautiful.  This is just one of the planets.  I call it planet Twitter.  I have rendered an image here.  (not to scale)

Planet Twitter

I write ever day.  Of late, I have been focusing on my novels, which are an integral part of my evil plan for world domination.  Canada, I’m coming for you first.  Tonight I am taking off from the novels, to go on a rant, or more accurately, to try to encourage a friend on Twitter, to go after a job she would like.

Her name is (unimportant), but she is wonderful.  She is a talented writer, has a great sense of humor and is an avid user of Twitter.  I want her to accept the task of applying.  She doesn’t seem convinced.

 Tonight I was chatting with a friend from Canada on Gchat, while watching my twitter stream.  I learned that Canada doesn’t have Diet Mt. Dew, because of some sort of draconian anti caffeine law.  This is when I moved them to the top of my world domination list.  I need to right that horrible wrong.  While sipping a Diet Dew (should always be capitalized), I caught part of a conversation between two friends of mine on twitter.  The basic gist is that Ms. Writer is being encouraged to apply for a Senior Editor position, by Mr. Fuzzypants (The names have been fictionalized to protect the innocent and to make me laugh).  The conversation went something like this.

“You should apply, you’d be great”

“I have never held a junior position, how can I apply for a senior position?”

“You have all the qualification.”

“I don’t think I am good enough.”

“Poppycock” said Mr. Fuzzypants, suddenly developing a British accent.

Our heroine is exceptionally talented.  I read her blog and she is a fine writer.  What’s more, she gets Twitter.  That may sound like a small thing, but it isn’t.  The state of the publishing industry is in a sorry mess, partly because a bunch of old people, who don’t get the changes in how information is consumed, run these companies.  They wouldn’t know a hash tag if it #bittheminthebutt.  They wouldn’t get that joke either.  I love fake hash taggery.  I digress.  Things are changing quickly, Twitter is the go to source when disaster strikes.  If you don’t believe it, look at how it was used for both the New Zealand and Japan quakes.  Twitter mobilizes entire populations to change their countries.  Good-bye Mr. Mubarak, nice of you to stop in and oppress us, and don’t try stealing any of the flat wear on your way out the door.  He loves butter knives.

The point is this, it is important.  I would wager that some of the applicants will have twitter accounts, though they won’t see the point.  Few will have a solid following and comprehend its power and place in publishing.  So why not go for it?

I have gotten jobs, which I wasn’t qualified for, but then excelled, at them.  I have also started my own company and had it fail miserably, leaving the aforementioned job where I made 75K per year, to do so.  So I say apply and try your best.  You will either get the job or you won’t.  Either way, it will probably change your life for the better.

Had I not failed so miserably with my company, I wouldn’t have ended up in Iowa, taking up woodworking.  This led to my blog.  Now I have written 2.5 novels, and have a gentleman who wants to publish it.  What are my writing credentials?  Well let me see.  Before Jan 2, 2010, I hated writing, and got mostly C’s in any course which required it (when I say C’s…I mean C- and Ds.)  I didn’t learn the parts of a sentence until I got a minor in French.  I am still awful at French, but I know the difference between an verb and a noun.  None of this stopped me from trying something.  Now I love writing and have completely gotten over my white hot piercing hatred of Mrs. Thompson, for those stupid sentence diagramming exercises in 8^th grade.  My life is better.

So why not apply?

You might get the job.  It might change your life.  It might lead to bigger and better things.

 You might make tons of money and decide to build houses in Africa, though Habitat for Humanity, and help countless people.

You might have fun.

If you don’t get the job, you might learn that it wasn’t as painful as you though.  You might try for a better job.  You might become a world leader who fights the good fight against the Evil woodworking blogger who tried to take over the world.  If you don’t do it for you, then do it for the Canadians.

Ok, now back to my plotting.  (Takes drink of Diet Dew)

For the last 30 days, there has been daily secret meditation.  Traveling the universe in my mind, searching for wisdom, has added a modicum of enlightenment.   The stacked waterfalls on the forest planet Vanteria, as the daylight faded, filled me with hope and inspiration.

I watched, from the Celeroni plateau on Alderonsa, a herd of over 2 million Hoggeraths, running through the grasslands.  It appeared they could continue on forever, trampling to dust everything in their path.  Then in a moment they stopped in unison, raised their heads, looked around, and were done running.  Spreading out, they grazed and tended to their young.

This spiritual journey made me hungry for continued understanding of the vast universe of social media…and cheeseburgers.  Meditation is hard work.  Did I solve the mysteries of the universe or a Rubik’s Cube?  Not so much, but that isn’t surprising as my meditation skills are comparable to my acting abilities.

[Editor’s Note:  In College at Iowa State University, Brian was in one play, ‘A Woman’s Place’, about Lucy Stone, the first woman to attend college, and a leader in the early days of Woman’s rights.   He played her brother and when the practice begun, he had 5 pages of lines.  Because of his special acting talent, it was trimmed to 3 lines by opening night.  He was not nominated for a Tony.]

When I awoke this day, I knew that it was time to move forward.  I decided to visit my Digg account and perhaps add it to my tools for promoting my Extremely Average Blog.

The first thing I noticed is that I joined on February 27^th 2007.  My handle is Ecocandle, which was my name when I made my living as Ecocandle Riel, in the virtual world of Second Life.  It appears that I joined, played with it for about twenty seconds, and did nothing else.  This is hardly a fair test.

The second thing I noticed, when I clicked on the ‘Friends’ Activity’, was the message, ‘Your friends haven’t done anything!’  This made me chuckle.  I have lazy Digg friends.  Perhaps I need some new Digg friends?

Digg is similar to StumbleUpon, in that one is able to find links to content which might otherwise go unnoticed.  I read an article about Stephen Strasburg, the pitcher from the Nationals, who recently injured his pitching arm.  I Dugg it.

When Digg, Delicious, SU, and all the other bookmarking sites arrived on the scene, Twitter had also just hatched.  Twitter has caught on, much more so than the others, but I believe that bookmarking sites still have a place in our social media lives.  I am convinced that the traffic, which is brought to my blog each day, has resulted in some new readers.  Perhaps Digg will do the same?

The next step is to investigate buttons, and to add one to my posts, so other people can ‘Digg’ them too.  After that it will be important to track my results with my favorite tool of external validation, Google Analytics.  And lastly, I will report my results to you, the reader of my daily nonsensical ramblings.   Now I must get back to my meditations (read:  watching preseason NFL football, followed by the Reds vs. Giants on Monday Night Baseball.)

What is Twitter Anyway

Psst…have you heard…Twitter is all the rage!…it is the newest way to network…you should check it out.  All the cool kids are doing it…

That jumbled mess is 140 characters in length.   Twitter is one of the many social media platforms that are changing the landscape of the internet.  One is able to ‘micro blog’ in 140 character blasts.  That is all you get little buckaroo.  You may think it is a complete waste of time, you may be right.  Of course, you may be sadly mistaken.

Oh don’t get me wrong, mocking those who obsess over social media platforms like Twitter is good sport.  It is almost as much fun, as it once was, to tease those who used that silly thing called the internet, or who sent letters electronically with that weird email stuff.  I for one believe the internet is a fad.  I mean really? Why anyone would use electronic mail, when it is so easy just to drop a letter in the old mail box, is beyond me.  And the US Post Office is so incredibly efficient.  It will never catch on.

Why Use Twitter To Build Business

Penny Jar by Brian Meeks

Now it is a brave new world; a savvy business person will consider their potential market to be much larger than the old neighborhood.  The market is truly global.  As an example, just earlier today, I was on Twitter when I received a tweet about a new blog post which had been just posted.  I read the post and found out about a great site for buying thin bits of exotic lumber.  I love woodworking!  Delswoodcraft is in Denver Colorado, and I am in a tiny house in Martelle Iowa.  I would not have found them, were it not for Twitter.  I will be buying lots of stuff from their site, because their prices are exceptional.

It is possible that the light bulb may have just gone off?  Though it is also possible that it hasn’t, maybe you don’t sell lumber.  Maybe you don’t sell anything.  Twitter isn’t just about networking for business.  People share hobbies and interests and generally like to hang out.  So sometimes it is just about meeting someone new.

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that you are the tiniest bit interested in trying Twitter now.  Nobody needs to know, I won’t tell.  You have even gotten brave enough to jot down a possible twitter name.  Once you get set up, you will need to find some people to follow and some to follow you.  Again, it is about building a network, for business or fun.

Building a Twitter Follower Network

There are definitely some best and worst practices.  It takes time and energy to build a network of reasonable size.  Of course, the larger your network is, the more you are able to benefit.  There are lots of people out there who have amassed large numbers of followers, but many of those followers are junk.  They are people who are not listening to the ‘Master Twitter Guru’.

You want to build relationships.  You want people to follow you who are engaging, will carry on conversations, and will help you build a strong network.

1. Do ReTweet: You will see RT often.  This stands for Re Tweet.  It simply means that someone has tweeted something which another person has Re Tweeted.  If you have a new product out and you tweet a link to a wonderful picture of it, it would be delightful if a few people would RT it and spread the word even further.  So it is also a good idea, if you see something you like, to RT it for your new friends.  This is a big Do!
2. Don’t put in your Bio “Follow Me and I will Follow Back”: This is how one builds thousands of junk followers, who don’t care about you, your product, your hobby, your life.  They won’t talk with you, or build a relationship.  They will fill your twitter stream with garbage and make you want to bang your head against a goat.
3. Do, on occasion, ask for your Twitter friends help: If not done too frequently, it is quite acceptable to send a DM (Direct Message) to a twitter friend, and asking them if they would mind checking out your new blog post and tweeting it.  In moderation this is fine.
4. Don’t Follow every single person who follows you: There are many people out there who have bots that follow people if a key word is used.  If you tweet “I just had a great round of golf, shot 3 strokes better than last time.”  You will likely get several golf people who follow you.  Look at their page and see if they have lots of Followers but are only ‘Listed’ a few times, they might be a spammer. (As a general rule, I won’t follow anyone who has a number of listed below 5% of their followers.)
5. Don’t beg for RT’s: Some people, usually one’s who were not loved by their parents and were spat on by the homecoming queen, will always start a tweet with “Please RT:  My new blog post, Top 10 Reasons I Cry Myself to Sleep” Truth be told, If I saw the begging in their stream, I wouldn’t have followed them in the first place.  I would have likely just blocked them straight away.  If they had really followers, their friends would RT anyway and there wouldn’t be any reason to beg.

So there are some ideas for getting started on Twitter.  It takes a lot of work, but one can build up a great network.  As a bonus, here is one more tip, don’t follow anyone who has anything about MLM in their Bio, for they will hound you like a Hare Krishna at the airport.  That should get you going.  Happy Tweeting.

Two months ago I wrote this blog piece for JB at BMoxieBmore.  It was well received and I quite liked it too.  I have been thinking about sharing it with everyone for some time.  Today is the day.  I hope you enjoy it.

James Henry Winston, III always wore finely tailored suits, lived alone in a flat in London, and drove a vintage Jaguar.  He liked history.  He didn’t like change.   The sound of the metal lock clicking as he entered the flat always brought a level of comfort to James, as he liked security.

Once, a few years back, the cleaning lady who came every Monday and Thursday had left the door unlocked.  Though nothing had been disturbed, he had felt uneasy ever since.  And Mrs. Poleridge had been dismissed.

The locked door though comforting was offset by the feeling of horror which overcame him when he saw the tiny overcoat hanging on the 4th hook in the hall.  It was on this hook he had expected to hang his umbrella.  For a moment he was more concerned with breaking his routine and with being forced to use the hook next to it than he was with regarding the probability that someone was in the flat.

After fidgeting and finally choosing the hook to the immediate left, he removed his own coat and hung it on the proper hook.  During this moment, the realization that there might be a very tiny person in his abode struck him.  He took two steps from the hall into the study, and there, among all the Victorian finery and sitting behind his desk, was a Lemur Monkey, in a very nice suit, smoking a pipe and reading the London Times Business section.

“Bollocks,” he said, “not again!”

*******

Would it kill someone to use their brain to a write blog post?  You probably thought you were going to find a list of ‘Seven Things I Hate about Lists.’  Well, tough!  No list for you.  The amount of bilge being pumped around the world of social media is massive.  This is my rant about it.

I blame all of the people who have devoted years of really hard work, and thus, become overnight successes.  Currently I believe it takes around three years to become an overnight success.  I don’t know what the metric equivalent is, but I would guess it is around 1095 days.

Were the last two sentences of the preceding paragraph funny?  No . . . unless you are a math nerd.  The point is — we hear numbers thrown around all the time.   “It’s a numbers game.”  And yes it is true, to an extent.  If someone has a blog, which they intend to monetize with ads, then 500,000 page views is better than 250,000 page views as it will generate more at the end of the day.

The problem is — most people don’t understand that meaningless numbers are, well, for lack of a better word or nearby thesaurus, meaningless.  Having 50,000 people follow you on Twitter, because you launched a campaign of “follow me and I will follow you”, doesn’t mean you have 50,000 people listening to you.  It means you have 50,000 people who don’t get it either.  When the day comes that you want to get those people to read your blog, you will be more likely to find a lemur at your desk than you will a solid reader base.

Social Media is about connecting.  Meeting people, exchanging ideas, and helping one another achieve dreams . . . yada, yada, yada.  Even if it were true that sort of schlock won’t get you anywhere.  Platitudes and clichés don’t work either. This is why I hate lists.  They are only slightly better than the follow me/follow you nonsense.

*******

I knew a woman who started a weblog, or blog as it is now called.   She was stunning to look at.  One might say she could be a model, often men in bars would say that.  She had long legs, looked great in a pin stripe suit, and had stunning jet black hair.  I am sure that more than a few people followed her because of her picture.

She read somewhere that people are naturally curious and like order.  She knew that her brother and his friends were always creating all sorts of silly lists:  best albums of all time, top teams of all time, and on and on and on.  She decided that she would use this new thing called Twitter and tease people with a list she had just written.

She tweeted the ‘Top 10 Reasons: Plaid Is the New Black’, and people ate it up like she was passing around a tray of assorted snack items.  She started to do one list per week, then two, and finally she wasn’t writing meaningful stuff any longer, she was just listing anything that came to mind.

The money which her site was generating was staggering.  She was on the cutting edge of list technology.  She became so wealthy that when she finally needed a break, she decided to seek out a little bit of adventure.  She was killed while on Safari by a herd of roaming wildebeests.

*******

The point of this story is twofold.  First of all, this story is not real, as is the case with most of the stories of success you will read. Secondly, didn’t you think this was much more interesting than reading a list of ‘Top 14 Root Vegetables?”  Put some effort into your blog.  Try to educate in a way that is not totally self serving.  Tell a tale of someone else maybe you admire.  Don’t just bang out a 3-minute list.

If you are reading this paragraph, it is likely that you prefer something a bit more substantial than a quick list of drivel.  So let me ask the resilient few who have made it this far, are you more likely to return to a blog that you discover because it has a list of ‘Top 10 Scantily Clad Super Models’,  or to a blog that you are able to count on to provide interesting content?

If you are like me, you would chose the models, so perhaps that was a bad example.  But I think this exercise still was better than that root vegetable list.

Feel free to comment, or if you prefer, you may list either the top 3 things you found utterly disagreeable about this blog post or 5 reasons middle aged balding men who wear silly hats are likely to die alone with a bevy of cats.

Catarina asked that I share my ‘Secrets’ for success with SU.  I am not sure that I have any secrets, but I do have a methodology.

1)  I have read that there is benefit to being involved in SU, meaning, to use the service to both ‘stumble upon’ other people’s stuff and to ‘add’ stuff to the mix.  I try to play with SU daily.  It doesn’t take terribly long, I just use the ‘Stumble’ button and check out what is new.  It is fun.

2)  I then like to check and see if any of the people, who subscribe to me, have put up anything new.

-If they have, then I go read it.  If it is good, I will use the share button to generate a Stumble Upon shortened link and tweet it to my followers.  The advantage of tweeting the SU link, is that it increases the number of  SU hits, which may help it get sent randomly to more people.

3)  Next I go to my favorite blogs, people who may or may not use Stumble Upon and I add their content to the mix.  I did this today for a friend’s blog.  She doesn’t use SU, or care much about traffic.  I don’t tell her that I have been sending her stuff to SU, I just do it.  Today, it resulted in 25 hits.  She is a funny writer and if people read her stuff, they will laugh, which will perhaps get them curious about what other stuff I have added to SU.  They just might subscribe to me then.

4)  I blog every day, but I don’t always post my pieces to SU.  I would say I do it about 5 times per week.  There are certain posts, which are more factual than entertaining.  If I don’t have two or three good laugh lines in the post, I don’t submit it.  I want to make sure my list of favorites on SU is filled with posts which will appeal to a broad audience, even though I write a niche blog.

5)  I haven’t really developed a formal SU Cabal with my blog friends, but they do it much the same way.  This means that there may be 2 – 6 people who give my posts thumbs up, which helps it get sent out to people I don’t know.  One of my friends had a great post he had put up a few days ago, which I had missed.  It was at 59 hits on SU.  I gave it a review and a thumbs up.  In the last few hours it has gone to 119, which is slightly more than a 100% increase.  (It should be noted, that most posts stop getting traffic after a few hours of being submitted, unless someone else gives it a thumbs up.  This is what happened with my post, “Undeniable Forehead of Adrian More”.

An interesting question.

Neal has asked an interesting question, “Does traffic from SU count as hits on one’s site?”  We did some tests and I found an old post of his, from April 10.  I gave it a thumbs up, then tweeted it to around 350 people.  As of the writing of this, there have been 23 people who have clicked on the link and been to his site.  This doesn’t answer the question though.  When talking to Neal, he didn’t see a matching number of visitors.

I have several theories for why this might be.  Before I get into my theories, let me give an example.  I posted to SU “The Undeniable Forehead of Adrian Moore” on May 4.  It sat for 3 weeks with only 3 hits on SU.  Then someone found it and gave it a thumbs up, then another, now it is up to 6 or 7, it has been viewed (from SU numbers) 715 times.  On my Google Analytics, I have 655 hits for that time period, which is a difference of 60, so it appears that sometimes the views don’t register on GA.

Here are my theories.

1)  There might be a minimum amount of time before a view registers.  If it were, for instance, 2 seconds, then that could explain why 50 people weren’t counted.

2)  I don’t know for sure if Neal has his GA code on the post I selected, as it was actually a guest post.  I may have chosen a post which wouldn’t record a hit regardless.  (Note:  He has now informed me that this is not the problem, but I left it in, because it is a good reminder to always check your code.)

If my theories are correct then I think the system works really well, because I don’t want to have people included, who see the site and immediately choose to leave.  They weren’t there long enough to matter.

I continue to work to understand StumbleUpon and if I make any new discoveries, I will be sure to share.