Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘twitter’

Nov 6

33 Comments

Getting Bloggers The Business

Last Sunday, I wrote this post about a forming a ‘help each other’ blogging collective. If you left a comment on that post as an interested blogger, you are listed below.

Mangetout and Other Stories (Earlybird)
bwinwnbwimusic
Angie Mizzell
Valerie Perry
The Quotidian Hudson (Robert Johnson)
The Good Luck Duck (Roxanne and Annie)
Aquatom1968
Evolution You (Dena Botbyl)
Kate Shrewsday
Surface Nuisance (Brett Myers)
The Ramblings (Tori Nelson)
Elizabeth Yon
Artisans Call (Yaakov Bar Am)
Whip Smart (Jenny Badman)

Because we all have different posting schedules, here’s what I propose. Twice a week, include a round-up of three blog posts from this group. Include links to each post. An example is below, though please format it however you like.

Bloggers You’ll Love

Flame by Aquatom1968 – I’ve never had so much fun being set on fire.
Hummer by Surface Nuisance (Brett Myers) - I found myself humming along.
Festivity by The Ramblings (Tori Nelson) - Tori wants YOU to pick her WEDDING MUSIC. I’m not kidding.

Select recent posts, and rotate the bloggers you feature each time. I am going to put my round-up in italics at the end of each post.

Let’s start with this much and see where we are in one month. I will run a discussion post on Sunday, December 3.

To help ease everyone into it, we will not accept new bloggers in a comment today. I will keep any other interested bloggers for a future update to the list sometime after December 3.

Questions? Other ideas? Want more? Less? Let’s discuss in today’s comments.

 

Nov 4

43 Comments

It’s Best To Admit You’re Wrong Even When You’re Not

Canada has invaded the South in the person of my petite friend Jackie from Montreal. I met her on Twitter in 2008, mercilessly sending tweets to her smiling avatar with the doodled ponytail and friendly cartoon eyes. She would be the person who could give me the inside track on all things Quebec.

She ended up meeting me in person and becoming my friend.

After getting together with her for several years on her side of the border, we decided to show her some diehard Southern hospitality. We offered her the means to flee winter. Right now, she’s bathing in our muggy pea-soup version of autumn.

Over dinner, she asked us what’s your secret to happiness as a couple?

With my remaining shreds of feminine guile, I pretended to have something stuck in my teeth. I did not want to answer first.

Silence.

Still more silence.

Sounds of my tongue squishing non-existent food particles.

Squirming.

And, MTM finally opened his mouth and said It’s best to admit you’re wrong even when you’re not.

!

My charade forgotten, I whirled on him before the lingering vibrations of even when you’re not died on the air and screeched And, just when EXACTLY was THAT?

Before the foot-eating man could answer, I chimed in with let me tell you, Jackie, I admit I’m wrong ALL THE TIME even when I’m not. All. The. Time. My head bobbed up and down, and I possibly jabbed my fork in her direction to underscore my rightness.

When I dropped my fork with a clang on the wooden table top, it shook me a bit. Maybe Dear MTM was onto something. How many times did I really feel the need to be right in our marriage? I looked at him and realized the answer is

NEVER.

I never need to be right. I picked him. He picked me back.

That’s as right as it’s ever going to be.

Oct 30

91 Comments

Giving My Readers the Business

Over the past month or two, I have experimented with the format of my blog. I’ve varied my style of writing and the types of stories I post. Through series entries, I’ve been able to stretch my writing muscles and better exercise my own abilities. Personally, I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve picked up some new readers, and others have opted to look elsewhere for daily doses of bloggity entertainment.

Looking ahead to the new year, I always institute a few sweeping changes, and I’m starting to consider those now. In evaluating my readership and response, here’s what you seem to be telling me by how you interact with my blog:

  1. My readership falls off dramatically on the weekends, and I can only take that as a sign that maybe I don’t need to post new content on those days. I try very hard to give the diehards something creative and engaging every day of the week, but I’m not going to lie. It is demoralizing to write a post like yesterday and have so few people see it. (More on that below in the Facebook section.) While I will always post every day, I am considering changes to my weekend content. Please, oh valued Diehard Readers, give me your thoughts and feedback on that possible change. Will you keep reading if I shake up the weekend content?
  2. I have attempted to change my blog such that a summary of the post is shown on the home page, with more available by clicking on a link to read. If I do things this way, it will impact the way the blog comes by email, as the entire text of the post will not display but will instead require a click to the blog to finish reading. From the number of people who come to my home page and read every day, I would have a better sense of which posts are actually being read, and that gives me a better ability to structure content to respond to what engages readers going forward. I can say from my own experience that I don’t care how the post displays, but you may, Dear Reader. Please give me your feedback – whole post displays on the home page, or an excerpt displays with a link.

Until we are compensated for our writing, the best payoff we can get as bloggers is people reading our posts and endorsing them by sharing them with others. Several bloggers have expressed an interest in mutual promotion of each other’s blog posts. Given the recent changes to Facebook, I am happy to try to start that discussion with those who are interested. I will share the following about my own experiences in recent weeks. No matter how many times or ways I promote my blog in a day, I get about the same number of impressions on Facebook, and it is about a third of what it was before the changes. Because a lot of my blog traffic came from my ability to post titillating teasers that caused people to click when they saw them, readership of my blog has suffered. I am not alone. I have talked with several other bloggers who have experienced the same thing.

If you are interested in participating in the mutual promotion of one other’s blog posts throughout our individual networks, please indicate that in a comment today. Once I can gauge who may want to participate, we can message one other privately and construct how to best construct it to benefit everyone. I am happy to promote anyone in my blog roll – particularly writers who are trying to gain a larger readership – to my social network (about 5,000 people across all platforms) in return for reciprocal sharing of my posts. We all benefit by helping each other.

And maybe, just maybe, we can beat the latest round of Facebook changes.

Oct 25

44 Comments

Day Break

This is the second post in this week’s series, Grounded: Stories From the American Southwest. If this is your first visit to Grounded, click here to start the series. Lou Mello and Carnell, the subjects of today’s post, will be grateful. As always, thank you for reading my little blog.

Pink tinges the eastern horizon, and Lou ‘The Buckeye’ Mello knows he’s got to hurry. Daylight won’t be on his side when he tries to rob the train. He can’t help himself, though. With an energetic spew of tobacco juice, he stares at the morphing line of sky one last time.

He’s still cold, and he wonders about his horse. The desert, she’s tricky. Cooking him to the insides of his chaps at high noon. Causing his as-yet-to-be tobacco-stained teeth to clatter inside his skull under the open sky of camp. With a ‘ya-hooooooo,’ he runs around in circles, kicking up dust everywhere. Partly to warm up. Mostly because that’s just the way he is. The Buckeye is feared because he NEVER sleeps, especially not when he is yards from a busy rail line, already vibrating faintly with the rhythm of the approaching train.

Michael ‘The Conductor’ Carnell is asleep in the wheelhouse. He knows what it takes to make time in the trek across the red desert. This much coal to that much muscle, measured out just so. He’s run this line so many times that it paints the insides of his eyelids when he dreams.

Not that he wants to miss the ride. Trains are his life. He breathes them through his cracked nostrils and exhales them into the charcoal air. Riding trains for pay? He never thought a job could be more enticing. That he gets paid to indulge in his lust for machinery every single day is one of those exquisite turns of life.

Up ahead, he sees a cloud of dust kicking out of the brush. Could be an animal, he thinks, or could be men. He wants to plow through this barren nothingness, arrive on the other shore as quickly as he can.

Hoofbeats. Carnell hears them reverberate in his chest, in spite of the whistling engine. He whirls on his shovelers, but they are gone. No one has been feeding the mechanical beast. Sweat mingles with the smoke on his upper lip as he realizes the train has stopped.

“Come out, Carnell, and fight like a man!” a voice shouts from somewhere outside.

He knows that voice. There’s no mistaking that midwestern patois, native to Ohio. It can only belong to one person, the scourge of his soul. The disrupter of his vagabond life on the train.

Lou Mello.

The Buckeye fires a warning shot into the engine room, a discharge that buzzes past Carnell’s left ear. He swears he feels what’s left of his hair moving in the gale. With a sigh, he puts a heavy foot on the top step of the engine and trudges down into open air, a heat that consumes him before he reaches the firm footing of the ground.

“I knew you’d find me again, Buckeye,” Carnell snarls through clenched teeth.

“No time for chatting, Carnell. I’m here to kill you dead, dead, dead. You know I won’t stop until I succeed.” The Buckeye rains tobacco juice on everything within range and keeps his pistol trained onto Carnell’s head.

Carnell scratches his head. He’s got to think fast to survive this sticky situation. “Hey. Lou. What do you say we do a shoot-out? Ten paces. Turn around. And powpowpowpowpow.”

The Buckeye smiles a tobacco-stuffed, lopsided grin. “I thought you’d never ask me to kill you.”

They assume their places, back to back. At the signal, they walk ten paces, turn around, and fire at the same time…………..

Sep 27

29 Comments

She Likes to Play Golf……Anne Howe!

Anne Howe likes to play golf. Imagine that today she finds herself in a coveted slot on Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course. Let’s hope our spying on her game doesn’t cause her to be too many strokes over par………….

If I could just be in Charleston instead of Michigan, I could play here all the time. Okay, well, maybe sometimes. Okay, a couple of times a year. I practically had to sell one of my daughters to get in this place. I wish someone were here with me. No one will believe I am TEN STROKES under par.

ANNE!

What? Don’t bother me right now. I’m in the middle of the game of my life on the course to end all courses. You’re messing up my mojo.

ANNE HOWE!!!

Why do you keep talking to me? Wait………WHO is talking to me? God, I knew I shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine……….

ANNE…..

All right already! You’ve got my attention, screaming my name from some unseen place. You can come out now.

NO, I CAN’T. YOU MUST COME IN.

Come in? Uh-uh. I’m sinking putts I only dreamed about before. I even got a hole in one.

THAT’S WHY YOU MUST COME IN.

What??? A hole in one means I must come in? Is that what you’re saying? They don’t let people play through in this place when they get a hole in one?

YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME. YOU MUST COME IN. TO THE HOLE.

I really shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine………

ANNE, DO YOU THINK PEOPLE COME HERE TO HIT A BALL?

Um, yeah. That’s what everyone seems to be doing.

NONSENSE. THOSE ARE THE UN-INITIATED. THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE WARPED HOLES.

That sounds like a perversion…..Warped Holes……..will you please leave me alone and let me finish my game?

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE WARPED HOLES ARE THE REASON PEOPLE REALLY PLAY GOLF. COURSES LIKE THIS ONE REPRESENT CRACKS IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM. PEOPLE PAY BIG BUCKS TO JUMP DOWN HOLES AND END UP WHEREVER THEY PREFER SPENDING THE DAY – THE PLAYBOY MANSION, PERHAPS, OR A PRIVATE SCOTCH TASTING IN SCOTLAND, OR IN UNDETECTABLE ADULTEROUS LIAISONS. JUMPING IN THE HOLE CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE.

But, I don’t want to go anywhere else. Charleston is where I want to be. I spend as much time here as I possibly can.

I KNOW, ANNE. THAT’S WHY YOUR FIRST TASTE OF WARPED HOLES WILL SHOW YOU A PART OF CHARLESTON ONLY LOCALS FIND.

Really? You mean, I can be a Warp Holer right here? In Charleston?

YES!!!!!!!!!! JUST WAVE YOUR TOE OVER THE HOLE………..

Zip-zap-bloop-glurg-blonk-gork-slurp-boinketyboinketyboink.

I wonder how I can help package this concept to sell it. Think of the impact on the golf industry if more people knew they could experience hyperspace just by playing more golf! Hello? Are you still there?

SILENCE.

Okay, here goes. I’m going to plod up these steps and push open this heavy door and – ohmigod, I’m in a graveyard!? Why did you send me to a graveyard?

MORE SILENCE.

Magnolia Cemetery. And I’m alone. With, like, 595 graves. Is this going to turn into some sort of young adult paranormal fantasy love story next?? Am I going to fight with a zombie? Or be captured by vampires who can’t get along with werewolves?

STILL MORE SILENCE.

It’s quiet here. Peaceful actually. Hmmmmmm……..all right. I’m going exploring.

Read more about Anne Howe at her awesome blog on shopper marketing here, and follow her on Twitter @ShopperAnnie. For the number of posts written by the Cootchie Mama, she guessed 595. Tune in tomorrow for another whacked tribute to a runner-up. Winner to be announced later this week.

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 18,851 other followers

%d bloggers like this: