Christmas freebie on my Ko-Fi page

[The Spin Doctor]

Some of you may know that after the Visordown sell-off debacle, particularly after the argument over copyright, I have been putting most of my original writing on Facebook.

The problem with FB is not what a lot of people think - that you have to be a FB member to read them. In fact, anyone can read, but only FB members can respond. The real problem is the active 'timeline' nature of FB which means anything posted more than a few hours earlier vanishes from sight.

I have posts dating back to 2013 on FB, but although the old posts are still there - unlike on VD, where they simply deleted the forums without warning a few months ago - they are almost impossible to find.

Fortunately I also archived them on my PC. So over the last few months, I've been putting the TIPS on TUESDAY and SKILLS on SATURDAY series up on my www.ko-fi.com/survivalskills site as 'supporter' content. I've already put up 2014 and 2015 in full (that's 100 posts each year) and I've put around 80 of 2016's posts up too. I've indexed them on a yearly basis, so they're easier to track down.

Thirty days access to this vast resource costs £3 - the cost of a coffee - for 30 days. Here's the link to a freebie sample posted originally in June 2016 but for the first time on Ko-Fi yesterday!

===FREE TO READ=== June 11 How we use ‘visual cues’
Human beings use vision to understand our environment and to receive communications from other people, so as we ride, ‘visual cues’ can act as both a reminder - something we’ve learned from prior experience - or as a signal. Visual cues help us establish the framework in which we operate our bikes.

How does this work? Well, to take a simple example, think about someone out their arm towards us, fingers upward and palm facing us. What do we know about? It means “stop doing what ever it is you're doing”. We stop and pay attention to them. It's a universal visual cue that nearly always brings about an almost instant result.

So visual cues are, to use a technical term, ‘pre-attentive’; when we see the visual cue, we know what response is ...

https://ko-fi.com/post/FREE-TO-READ-Jun ... -O5O0305JS

[Rockburner]

Wouldn't it be somewhat easier to have a blog page were the content is owned by yourself naturally?

[weeksy]

Wouldn't it be somewhat easier to have a blog page were the content is owned by yourself naturally?

I'd be amazed if my hosting package doesn't have something in it for Blog stuff etc, i can certainly look into hosting a Blog for Spin if that's a road he wanted to go down using this site as host. It would be FoC of course.

[The Spin Doctor]

Wouldn't it be somewhat easier to have a blog page were the content is owned by yourself naturally?

Not quite sure what your point is?

The thing about a blog is you have to know it's there and you have to go check for new content or subscribe to notifications or an RSS feed, and even then you have to follow them. I still have a Wordpress blog but even on a good day it never got more than a couple of hundred hits on a post.

FB for all its faults promotes content for the writer. It just pops up on your timeline. I have over 6k followers on my page and I have managed to have over 10k hits on a particularly popular post - average for one of the 'skills' posts is usually 1000+.

The Ko-Fi page allows me to 'reprint' historical content and index it.

[weeksy]

Wouldn't it be somewhat easier to have a blog page were the content is owned by yourself naturally?

Not quite sure what your point is?

The thing about a blog is you have to know it's there and you have to go check for new content or subscribe to notifications or an RSS feed, and even then you have to follow them. I still have a Wordpress blog but even on a good day it never got more than a couple of hundred hits on a post.

FB for all its faults promotes content for the writer. It just pops up on your timeline. I have over 6k followers on my page and I have managed to have over 10k hits on a particularly popular post - average for one of the 'skills' posts is usually 1000+.

The Ko-Fi page allows me to 'reprint' historical content and index it.

His point was... It sounded like you were not happy with your blogging options, we were trying to help

[The Spin Doctor]

His point was... It sounded like you were not happy with your blogging options, we were trying to help

I'm more than happy to think about cross-posting stuff here in the New Year, if you think that would be of benefit.

Although the back catalogue is pay (not very much at all) to view, I fully intend to keep posting new content gratis

[Horse]

FWIW (not much) the most visited page on my old blog was a random one about Zil limousines ... umpteen more visits than anything else!

[Rockburner]

Wouldn't it be somewhat easier to have a blog page were the content is owned by yourself naturally?

Not quite sure what your point is?

The thing about a blog is you have to know it's there and you have to go check for new content or subscribe to notifications or an RSS feed, and even then you have to follow them. I still have a Wordpress blog but even on a good day it never got more than a couple of hundred hits on a post.

FB for all its faults promotes content for the writer. It just pops up on your timeline. I have over 6k followers on my page and I have managed to have over 10k hits on a particularly popular post - average for one of the 'skills' posts is usually 1000+.

The Ko-Fi page allows me to 'reprint' historical content and index it.

My actual point was: Original content goes onto your blog, and then gets cross-posted to FB, twitter, snapchat, tik-tok, Baidu whatever - but, because it's on your blog first, you can index and point to it there when it's no longer of interest to the masses (ie after about 12 hours). People genuinely interested in content will save the blog (it's in their interest to do so), and randoms will see your posts on social media and be led to the blog if they're interested for 'in depth' content.

I'm not a specialist in social media, but a lot of your FB posts are "tl:dr" - you get people commenting just on the first paragraph or two, so the content effort is wasted there. Hence me suggesting that you put the long content on the blog page for safe-keeping/ownership/recognition etc, and lead people to it by use of snappy social media posts. FB is NOT a great content consumption interface, in a blog you can post images inline with the copy so they're next to their relevant text etc etc.

[Horse]

My actual point was: Original content goes onto your blog, and then gets cross-posted to FB, twitter, snapchat, tik-tok, Baidu whatever - but, because it's on your blog first, you can index and point to it there when it's no longer of interest to the masses (ie after about 12 hours).

I'm not a specialist in social media, but a lot of your FB posts are "tl:dr" - you get people commenting just on the first paragraph or two, so the content effort is wasted there. Hence me suggesting that you put the long content on the blog page for safe-keeping/ownership/recognition etc, and lead people to it by use of snappy social media posts. FB is NOT a great content consumption interface, in a blog you can post images inline with the copy so they're next to their relevant text etc etc.

There's two sides to that. One is the 'own the Internet' philosophy - be visible in as many places as possible, repurposing content.

But the other is that (presumably) only some aspects can be automated, for example a long blog/Fb post might not work on Twitter and certainly wouldn't on Instagram. And, with that, is that this is primarily promotional material (at first use, later it becomes a potential revenue stream, plus there's a mixed point that put it in the public domain means that it can be 'used' by others - but gives that "I was here first" aspect), so it's a time and cost overhead.

But, please please please don't even hint that Spin should post videos on Tik-tok of him bustin some moves. Neither our eyes or his back will withstand it!

[Rockburner]

My actual point was: Original content goes onto your blog, and then gets cross-posted to FB, twitter, snapchat, tik-tok, Baidu whatever - but, because it's on your blog first, you can index and point to it there when it's no longer of interest to the masses (ie after about 12 hours).

I'm not a specialist in social media, but a lot of your FB posts are "tl:dr" - you get people commenting just on the first paragraph or two, so the content effort is wasted there. Hence me suggesting that you put the long content on the blog page for safe-keeping/ownership/recognition etc, and lead people to it by use of snappy social media posts. FB is NOT a great content consumption interface, in a blog you can post images inline with the copy so they're next to their relevant text etc etc.

There's two sides to that. One is the 'own the Internet' philosophy - be visible in as many places as possible, repurposing content.

Which is what I suggest.

But the other is that (presumably) only some aspects can be automated, for example a long blog/Fb post might not work on Twitter and certainly wouldn't on Instagram. And, with that, is that this is primarily promotional material (at first use, later it becomes a potential revenue stream, plus there's a mixed point that put it in the public domain means that it can be 'used' by others - but gives that "I was here first" aspect), so it's a time and cost overhead.

Yes - there's a time/cost to add which is the adding of the links to the social media, but any decent blogging platform will a) already have that taken care of with a plug in of some sort *, and b) the whole point is that you don't put ALL the media on FB/twitter etc - just the enticing snippets, which can be pulled from the title and summary of the blog post automatically (see a)).

But, please please please don't even hint that Spin should post videos on Tik-tok of him bustin some moves. Neither our eyes or his back will withstand it!

well - yes - you've got a good point there.... (I don't recommend it for you either - especially not in your state!)


* as said - I'm no expert, but there's plenty out there who can advise from their bedrooms! (It's a genuine market sector now obviously).

[Horse]

Indeed, neck op has ruined my imminent Bollywood career launch.


Now, advice from the bedroom? Well hellooo ...

[The Spin Doctor]

Right... I'll try to answer all that constructively, as it's all constructive advice.

My actual point was: Original content goes onto your blog, and then gets cross-posted to FB, twitter, snapchat, tik-tok, Baidu whatever - but, because it's on your blog first, you can index and point to it there when it's no longer of interest to the masses (ie after about 12 hours). People genuinely interested in content will save the blog (it's in their interest to do so), and randoms will see your posts on social media and be led to the blog if they're interested for 'in depth' content.

The answer to that - pure and simple - is what I have found by experience is working reasonably well.

I first started writing tips back in the mid-90s on Compuserve - at the time, it was one of only a few ways on to the internet, so I had a big(ish) audience. That effectively folded in the late 90s when ISPs began to appear.

For a period through the 90s and into the 2000s, I had a blog (before they were called blogs) on my own website, and I got a lot of hits on that because a) there weren't many alternatives and b) I offered genuine help to people who wrote in with a problem.

Then forums took over, and I invested a lot of effort in the Survival Skills section on VD (and we know what happened to that).

I can't quite recall when I set up the Wordpress blog, but it never quite took off, even though at one time it had hundreds of pages on there but by 2012 or thereabouts it was clear hits were declining. By 2014, I was mostly using it to direct people to FB.

I grabbed the www.facebook.com/survivalskills name as soon as the platform appeared and began using it by cross-posting with the WP blog with sporadic posts in 2012, regular posts in 2013, but by 2014 I was using it as my main outlet.

I've also got Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn accounts.

Ko-Fi is effectively my new 'blog' but the platform allows for very simple monetisation at a fraction of the price of a Wordpress blog. Right now I'm filling it with 'old' posts (almost all of them re-written and improved) and I'm not about to deny the supporter / subscriber set up is the reason for moving stuff over there, but I kind of feel that I've put 25 years into writing for free and I'm due the odd cuppa back

I'm not a specialist in social media, but a lot of your FB posts are "tl:dr" - you get people commenting just on the first paragraph or two, so the content effort is wasted there. Hence me suggesting that you put the long content on the blog page for safe-keeping/ownership/recognition etc, and lead people to it by use of snappy social media posts.

I know where you're coming from but have you ever considered what happens when I write a short 'snappy' post?

Some smarthorse oops arse comes along and says "yes, that's all very well but what if... and what then...?" So I end up having to do even more hard work to get the explanation over via disjointed replies in the comments. I try to find a balance. I've found it easier to write a short and self-supporting topic where the explanation is detailed enough to have crossed the i's and dotted all the t's. Trust me, I tried shorter posts after people said "too long". Oddly enough, I very rarely get a "couldn't be bothered to read that" comment on the page.

And then again I have also found that the click through ratio from a 'snappy' FB post to another medium is very low indeed. When I've tried that, I get maybe 1000 hits on a FB post and a few dozen click throughs. People just can't be arsed.

FB is NOT a great content consumption interface, in a blog you can post images inline with the copy so they're next to their relevant text etc etc.

I agree. But the potential audience is huge, I've spent 7 years building up a significant following, and I believe I get far more benefit by a bit of subtle cross-posting on FB timelines, groups and pages than I would by cross-promoting my blog from FB.

However... I think that since the COVID-19 crisis kicked off, people are using FB rather less than they were - maybe it's the overload of coronavirus stories... or fewer people wasting time at work

[Horse]

Some smarthorse oops arse comes along and says "yes, that's all very well but what if...

Don't do that very often

And I know well the difficulties in trying to be succinct but cover the main points (or, sometimes, explicitly exclude them).

When I was made redundant (2008) I had intended to make the move into full time (or as close to) training, so set up a web site, youtube, periscope, blogspot, etc. However, that was all web 1.0, before Fb had become such a business tool. It's very different now.

Certainly I didn't have the sense / foresight to keep local copies of content add to Vd / TRC and elsewhere. However, stuff does age. Photos with vehicles have a lifespan of just a few years. Ideas evolve, my thoughts on some subjects are not what they were a decade ago (on some, just months ago!).

[The Spin Doctor]

Some smarthorse oops arse comes along and says "yes, that's all very well but what if...

Don't do that very often

I know... but resistance turned out to be futile

And I know well the difficulties in trying to be succinct but cover the main points (or, sometimes, explicitly exclude them).

It's a funny thing how it's often the same people that tell you "it's too longwinded / complicated" who will then pick up in a detail for an argument

When I was made redundant (2008) I had intended to make the move into full time (or as close to) training, so set up a web site, youtube, periscope, blogspot, etc. However, that was all web 1.0, before Fb had become such a business tool. It's very different now.

It's constantly evolving. Strategies that worked at one point are hopeless now. I sold my old CD-ROMs in reasonable numbers at one point - sometimes two or three a week... then sales slowly dropped off as people stopped using PCs and started migrating to phones. When I finally pulled the ad, I hadn't sold one for a year.

Certainly I didn't have the sense / foresight to keep local copies of content add to Vd / TRC and elsewhere. However, stuff does age. Photos with vehicles have a lifespan of just a few years. Ideas evolve, my thoughts on some subjects are not what they were a decade ago (on some, just months ago!).

It didn't occur to me in the early days of VD, but I did often cross-post my original stuff to my own blog so I did have copies of new work. But all the carefully-reasoned responses on other peoples' threads went when the forum was deleted. I had downloaded some last winter, but I think my postcount was 20k or something. Far too many to trawl through.

[slowsider]

FWIW (not much) the most visited page on my old blog was a random one about Zil limousines ... umpteen more visits than anything else!

All those searches for z line prolly ended up there

[Horse]

FWIW (not much) the most visited page on my old blog was a random one about Zil limousines ... umpteen more visits than anything else!

All those searches for z line prolly ended up there

Except Hot Air, who couldn't spell 'Z'

Actually, that was the post with most views.
Last time I checked the stats (over 10 years ago), the specific Games page had received over 1k visits. Which is nice.