Like Vs. Share

I don’t spend NEARLY enough time ranting on this blog as I would like.  Especially lately with all the political nonsense going on in the world, I have tons that I rant about daily.  I intend to start ranting on a youtube channel dedicated to the small town big life view very shortly, probably January.  I have been distracted and VERY busy over at artisticbiker.com making videos and classes to share and sell.  But I find myself dearly missing the political bent.  It was the reason I separated the two blogs in the first place.  Artists TYPICALLY don’t have patience for politics (especially right wing politics) and politicos USUALLY don’t take time to art.  When I do come back over here, I would LOVE to throw the discussion wide open and invite every viewpoint to comment as long as they can do so civilly.  However, that’s where I will need your help.  MOST of my IRL friends share the same political view I have.  Most of my ONLINE friends share the opposing view.  ALL of us have friends in between or with COMPLETELY different points of view.  When I start this channel back up, your help in promoting it will be invaluable.

But it’s not just me.  It’s not just here and at the artistic biker.  It’s everywhere you have a favorite author, blogger, youtuber, or twitterer.  If you have someone who creates content that you enjoy and you want to promote them to others, there are specifics you might not be aware of.  When that favored quilter of yours posts that Cthulu ski cap, it’s cool to retweet or “like” it, but that won’t really help promote them.  Here’s what you can do:

• Youtube: Like vs. Share vs. comment

On YouTube, you are given several ways you can interact with your favorite videographer.  You can message them directly, you can comment on their video, you can give them a thumbs up (or a thumbs down, but I don’t know why you would) and you can share it.  What does all this mean?

Sending the producer a message is the most direct way to contact him.  If the person has made an embarrassing mistake, or you need to share personal experience, etc., this is the best way to do so.  This is always private between you and the video creator unless one of you blabs.  It helps provide feedback, but does little in the way of promotion.

Clicking thumbs up also notifies YouTube of the popularity and if you have sharing enabled, will tell the world you liked it and share the link.  It doesn’t do much toward stimulating others to converse about it, though.

Commenting on the creators channel or on their video also provides feedback, but in a much more public setting. Comments not only stimulate conversation and provide feedback to the producer, they also provide feedback to YouTube about the video’s popularity.  If it was enticing enough for you to comment on, YouTube takes notice.  If enough people do so, YouTube may actually promote it for free.  Also, if in your YouTube user profile you have sharing enabled, your comment and a link to the video go out on twitter, facebook, linkdin, etc.  Commenting alone is a good way to promote your favorites.  Commenting with sharing enabled is the AWSOMENEST way to do so!

Sharing ALWAYS promotes the video.  By clicking the “Share” button, usually just below the video, you will get options of where to automatically share the video and you will be given a shortened link that you can cut and paste into whatever social platform you’re using.  You can then dash around sharing on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (do people still do that?), LinkdIn, Digg, whatever.  Then ALL of your contacts on those other platforms have the chance to see the video you just loved.

• Facebook & G+: like vs. share

On Facebook, you have much the same options.  Message the user directly, like his post, or share his post.  The options work the same way as on YouTube except that clicking “like” just tells that person that you agree with what they’ve done.  If your friends have the side friendfeed running, and they are online at that exact second, they MIGHT see that you liked it.  If they are nosy enough to stalk your wall or profile, they MIGHT see it.

However, if you SHARE it, then all of your friends and contacts that have added you to their stream or “subscribed” will see the post or link that you enjoyed.  Once again, SHARING is the best means to promote the post.

• Twitter Reply vs. RT vs. quote

Twitter is a really cool, stream of consciousness way to chat.  Most of you reading this are probably already friends of mine on twitter.  Twitter’s 140 character limit force you to find ways to say very complex ideas very succinctly.  I love it. It has limitations though.  The biggest limitation is the stream of consciousness itself.  It doesn’t take very many friends to make the posts fly through, never to be seen again.  With lists and hashtags, you can focus that conversation a little better.  Narrowing the field with tag like #artjournals and following a list of Artists allows you to keep track of whatever is interesting you at the time.  But if someone says or posts something you want to promote, you have a different set of options than the other platforms.  On Twitter, you can reply, retweet, or quote.

Whether you are following your twitter feed through your phone, at twitter.com or through some client like tweetdeck, clicking “reply” works pretty much the same way.  @Bob says, “Good morning, Twitterverse!”  You click “Reply” and type, “Good morning, Bob”, and you get:

@Bob Good morning, Bob

The only people that can see this, however, are the people on twitter that are following you AND following Bob. This will stimulate the conversation between you, Bob, and your mutual friends, but it does little to tell your OTHER friends about what Bob said.

As an aside, when using your phone for this, make sure it starts your message with “@User” where in this case “User” is Bob.  Otherwise, not only will Bob NOT be notified of your reply, EVERYONE will see it.

If you want to promote Bob’s greeting, you could Retweet (RT) it.  Clicking RT will create a nifty little post that says:

RT @Bob: Good Morning, Twitterverse!

That’s a better way to promote Bob’s post.  As long as you’re friends are following your RTs then they will see Bob’s witty remark.  A lot of the Twitter Clients, though, have the RTs turned off by default.  Sadly, this means they will never see Bob’s post OR your enthusiasm about it.

The good new is that there are two ways to fix that! One is to simply put a “.” in front of the “RT” like this:

.RT @Bot: Good morning, Twitterverse!

That fools the programs by not letting them see the RT first and therefore not shutting it off.  You could also comment in front of the RT, or quote it like this:

LOL! Morning Bob! RT @Bob: Good morning, Twitterverse!

Check out what Bob said! RT @Bob:  Good morning, Twitterverse!

• Sharing means caring:

In all of these examples the two things that go the absolute furthest in promoting your favored poster child are Sharing AND Commenting.  By clicking Share, you guarantee that friends of yours on other platforms will have the opportunity to see the content that you just enjoyed.  By Commenting or Quoting, you engage your friends and encourage them to interact with you AND your content producer.

Click SHARE if you liked this!  :)

 

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Finishing Things

A buddy of mine sent this to me.  I thought it worth sharing.

This definitely worked for me today, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives.  Some doctor on TV this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started.  So I looked around my house to see things I’d started and hadn’t finished so I have managed to finish off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, a pockage of Prungles, tha mainder of bot Prozic and Valiuminun scriptins, the res of the chesescke an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now. Plaese sned dhis orn to dem yu fee ar in ned ov iennr pisss. An telum,u blody luvum!! Xx

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My Boat

I’ve been joking for several years now about my oversimplified way of classifying people.  My wife often refers to me as Mr. Black&White living in my black & white world.  She says I sort EVERYTHING into one thing or the other. It’s all either THIS or it’s THAT.  Well that’s just not true.

Proof that I sometimes see shades of gray is in the My Boat scenario.

Imagine for a moment that the whole wide world is flooding. Imagine that in this imaginary flooded world, I have the only boat.  With that thought in mind, this is how I usually classify people.  Category I people are definitely getting in my boat.  Whatever it takes, if I have to throw valuable supplies overboard, I will ensure these people in Category I make it on board.  This is usually reserved for family, but more on that later.

Category II people are the ones that I will allow on board if there’s room.  I’m not going to make room or sacrifice my chair for them. But as long as there’s space available, Category II people can get on my boat.  This is by far the largest of the categories.  It would be safest to assume that if I haven’t specifically told you that you are any other category, then this is most likely your home.

Category III people I’m completely apathetic to.  These people will have to be creative in the ways they sneak on board, but if I find them stowed away, I won’t throw them off.  This is the smallest of the categories if you only count the people I know personally.  In reality, well, in the reality of our imagined scene anyway, this category includes all of the rest of the human population that I don’t know so… OK, it’s really pretty big too.

Category IV are the people that I will actively beat off of the boat with an oar.  These are the people that if my chest were a cannon I would fire my heart upon them (all respect to Melville).  These people are not so much hated, because hate is a very bad word and only hurts the hater, as they are disliked with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.  This is a very small group indeed.  Trust me, these people know who they are.

There is one other way to get aboard, however, regardless of the category that you fall into.  There are two sub-categories of Food (F) and Not-Food (N).  The people in Category I, for instance, are USUALLY there because I want to ensure their survival.  Those people would be classified as 1-N.  However, some people may be Category I just because I think they might make a tasty treat if we run out of beef jerky.  Their classification then is 1-F.

That makes six classifications of people with the full range of categories as 1-N, 1-F, 2-N, 2-F, 3-F and 4.  That’s WAY more than just boring old Black & White.

P.S. -I wouldn’t bring anyone from category IV on board as food because I wouldn’t want to risk the chance that we all survive the flood.  There’s no hope for them.

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