Blogging Can Get Weird

 Last week I posted a blog about the Artemis Moon missions. When I put the link to that blog on social media, I headlined with a really cool Artemis logo:

Just cute as heck, right? The cat is the character Artemis, from the Sailor Moon anime and manga. My youngest daughter and I were heavily invested in that show when she was little.

Well, the artwork just took off. That was great: People seeing the illustration would read my blog, and some of them might be interested enough to check out the links to our books, and next thing you know our sales will shoot up to the five figures--maybe even the medium five figures!

The day after the blog came out it had 21 views, but then I started putting up the link on social media. (Except for Substack, which is kind of a thing of its own.) Facebook, for those of you who don't know, has been rumored to suppress links that lead elsewhere, but there's a workaround: Put the photo on the post, but the link to the blog in the comments.

Look at me, look at me! Pay no attention to the bird.

It worked, too, because I tried it twice on FB: With the link in the post, I got 5 likes and 2 reposts. But with the link hidden in the first comment, I got 90 likes and 16 reposts! I couldn't wait to see that reflected in my blog views.

A few days later I double checked: 25 blog views views. According to my fingers, posting my blog link all over the internet increased interest by ... four.

What happened? Well, what happened is the artwork was just too cute. Everybody thought so. They even sent it to their friends. What they didn't do was click on the link and read the blog. (Yes, I did say in the blog where the link would be found.) This is clearly my fault, although of course I tried to find someone else to blame.

Look, cute dog and cool clouds in the same pic! And a fridge. And power lines. Click the link!

(My next blog, a photo post, got 165 clicks.)

There's a lesson to be drawn from this, and I'm working on what that is. Maybe it's that you shouldn't be too cute. Maybe it's that people don't read blogs anymore. I did get 174 clicks on a blog last month, though, not including the 40 or more I typically get on Substack, and other places it appears. Looking back on that sentence, maybe the lesson I should learn is that I'm spreading myself too thin, but never mind.

  So from now on I'll put really good images inside the blog, and something bland and boring to headline social media. I'll also try to remember the old writer's adage that there are three good ways to get attention online, but nobody knows what they are.
 

Maybe I could blog a photo of me blogging a photo of me.

 

 (Seriously, the three things are: Call somebody names, get arrested, or post nude pics.)

 

 

 

Find fun, frivolity, and of course books, here:

 

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 

Remember: A blog is like a book: You read it. No, this isn’t going into my Best Of epilogue tags.

Epic link fail

Okay, so, I'm on several social media sites, and I've been cross-posting by copying my original blog on Blogger, then pasting that onto places such as LiveJournal and others. I've just found out that when I do that, all the links to our books, the newsletter, our website, everything, changed into links that went right back to the blog.

For who knows how long. Which means either no one has been clicking on the links, or no one thought to tell me they were wrong. Either possibility makes me sad.

I might not have time or energy to see how far back this goes, but rest assured I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Meanwhile links on Blogger work fine, such as on this one about the Michigan magazine's profile of me:

https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/2022/09/michigan-features-me-well-michigan.html

But when I pasted that link onto, say, LiveJournal, all the links go back to the Blogger post, instead of where they say they go. I might be able to copy from LJ TO Blogger, instead of the other way around.

It's going to take some time and Tylenol to figure it all out, but rest assured, I'm going to be more careful in the future. Also, these are the CORRECT links to our website, Barnes and Noble author's page, and Amazon author's page:

http://markrhunter.com/

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

And to the newsletters are all here:

https://us10.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=02054e9863d409b2281390e3b&id=f39dd965f0

Still time to comment and get a copy of Coming Attractions

You have a few more days to comment on my post at Annette Snyder's blog, 50 Authors From 50 States, and get a chance to win a free copy of Coming Attractions:

https://annettesnyder.blogspot.com/


Okay, so I already have my own copy of Coming Attractions ... but I had to pay for it. Just leave a comment over there (I'd rather you read the article first), and you could get one for free.

And if you do win it please leave a review: Whenever an author gets a review he has good dreams--nothing like the one I had last night, with the flooded basement and the giant spiders. Ick.

This Program Has Been Prerecorded

According to my math, in order to win National Novel Writing Month a person must write 1,6666666 words per day. Obviously, anyone who's the least bit superstitious has to remove the two 666's. Not to mention, I have yet to learn how to type one 666666th of a word.

The point is, that's a lot of writing. But I also wanted to keep up with my blog, so I cheated: I wrote several blogs ahead of time, to be posted during November. I know what you're thinking: "But Mark, isn't that cheating?"

Yes. Yes, it is.

But as long as I don't add them to my NaNoWriMo numbers, it isn't really cheating. It's just making you wait for my writing. I'm not Socrates ... nobody's going to rend their garments if you don't get my wisdom in a timely manner. I didn't even have to tell you I'm doing this: It's not current events. The only curiosity would be if I broke both my hands in a horrible refrigerator accident, and two days later wrote about how fast I'm typing.

In fact, there was a time when nobody heard anyone's blogs at all. They were called diaries.

Anyway, something else happened that's going to keep me so busy over the next several weeks that the chances making my word count are almost zero, even if I didn't post on social media at all. So believe me when I say you won't be hearing much out of me the rest of this month. (Although I can boast that I'm over 8,000 words as of November 4th.) What that something else is I'll tell you all about later, but it's not bad news--just untimely.

Blog update

Emily's isolated the problem and figured out a solution for my blog posts that lost formatting. We're going back and fixing the invididual posts, but in the meantime if you see one we may have missed or haven't gotten to yet and want it fixed ASAP, leave a comment on the post and we'll get to that one first.

Here's a silly photo of the dog for your troubles.

Indiana’s up with a book giveaway at 50 Authors for 50 States

http://annettesnyder.blogspot.com/2016/04/mark-hunter-shares-summer-of-indiana.html

I’m guesting over at 50 Authors for 50 States this month, with a lighthearted look at Indiana monuments, parks, and history. Comment on the post to get entered for a shot at a free copy of our next book, Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving at All.

Just a Cog In the Blog

Joleene Naylor gave me this Blogger's Recognition Award, which is for recognition of bloggers, which I am one. This came as something of a surprise to me, as I never thought of myself as a blogger even though my blog is hosted by Blogger.

Joleene’s a great writer and a great person, even though there’s a spider on the front of her blog: https://ramblingsfromthedarkness.wordpress.com/

As you all know unless you’ve blocked me for going on about it, I have a new book coming out this month, so I’m late getting this out. But when someone takes the time to think about you … well, you’ve got to respond. The idea is to give a brief story on how your own blog got started, along with advice for new bloggers, and to provide a link to the giver’s blog, which—see above. Also, the original post comes from here: http://eveofnight.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/lets-celebrate-whos-up-for-award.html?m=1

My blog story is indeed a story, which started not with a blog but a column. “Column” is a newspaper term, describing what today we’d call a blog. I started out with a humor column that was carried in some local newspapers, but didn’t appear online. (Yeah, it was that long ago.) So, to get it online, I got a LiveJournal account, which I still have. (Yeah, it was that long ago.)

So the idea was to get my weekly column on the web, which I suppose is where Joleene’s spider came from. But at about the same time I started writing fanfiction, and that ended up there, too. (Look for me under the name Ozma914, although I haven’t had time to write fanfic lately.)

Later I figured out how to post photos. Before you knew it I had a blog, which still goes under the name of my humor column: “Slightly Off the Mark”. 

And what advice do I have for bloggers? It’s so cute that someone might think I know what I’m doing.

One of the things I hear often is that you should have a narrow focus, so you can build an audience, or readership, or duchy, or whatever the term is. If you’re a writer writing to writers, do a writing blog. If you’re writing for readers, also do a writing blog, but showcase instead of talk about. Or talk only about Super Soldier Sailor Moon, or politics (yuck!), or the emerald ash borer.

Good advice. I don’t do this.

My advice is that whatever you’re really interested in, that’s what you write about. If you have eclectic interests, then write eclectically, and maybe message me to explain what “eclectic” means. Just as my books are of different genres, so is my blog: I write about writing, astronomy, politics (yuck!), humor, pets, family, firefighting, and whatever causes me pain, such as all that stuff.

If you don’t like blogging, people will know. So in the end, my only good advice is to have fun and, if you want to have a lot of followers, don’t be dull.

As for my nominees, usually in cases like this I simply open it to everyone; especially since in this case most of the bloggers I follow most regularly have already been nominated, and it’s important to be regular. (I’m looking at you, Roger and Donna! I mean about already being nominated, not about being regular.)  So I’m only passing this on to a few, but it’s the chosen few:

Kelly Hashway: http://kellyhashway.blogspot.com/

Lena Winfrey Seder: http://pearldropsonthepage.blogspot.com/

Rosanne Dingli: http://rosannedingli.blogspot.com/

William Kendall: http://williamkendallbooks.blogspot.com/

Shelly Arkon:     http://secondhandshoesnovel.blogspot.com/