Monday, January 30, 2012

Short notes on things I've noticed lately...

Nick and I recorded an episode of Limited Release late Saturday night. Nick uploaded it overnight so there it was Sunday morning when I turned on my iTunes. We had thought about changing release days to Friday and I want to try that before deciding, but releasing on Saturday sure has been amazing! I noticed this morning that there have been almost as many downloads of that episode as there have been all month of the last episode we released. It seems lots of people sit down and open iTunes on Sunday. We haven't even written a blog post, or announced that the episode is available yet.

What I've learned from this... paying attention to numbers and checking regularly can give you interesting information and change the way you've been doing things.


Pinterest is the next new exciting social network. Seems everyone is pinning things obsessively. I have my own Pinterest account which I use sporadically. However, the amount of engagement is high, very high. I'm constantly surprised by how often I pin things and they get re-pinned or liked, by complete strangers, people I am not connected with whatsoever.
Pinners seem to be really, really willing to share when they like the content. This could really work in people's favour if they can figure out how to make their message interesting and fun. I love that every pin on Pinterest comes with a link back to the site it was pinned from. It makes it so easy to share because as a Pinner I'm not worried that I won't credit the creator. It's so easy!

Of course, when I talk about engagement on Pinterest and the amount of liking and re-pinning of my posts, I admit that nothing more comes of this right now. Most of the re-pinners don't subsequently follow my boards, and I don't follow many of theirs either. So they aren't really engaging. Except for a nice feeling that people like me, I don't get much else from each individual pinner who shares my stuff. Yet.

What I've learned from this... Just because it's new and looks like a lot of other things out there don't discount it until you've tried it. Also, don't jump to conclusions, a re-pin, a re-tweet, a +1, a like don't really count for much unless it leads to conversation.



And one more thing... I'm going to start a new blogging project called How To Keep (or Lose) Your Man With Food. I
found this great pamphlet in a collection of old cookbooks that offers many man-pleasing recipes. I'm going to make each one for my man, and any other who is willing to eat the food and
rate it (I may have opened a door I will never be able to close there). I need to come up with a bit of a rating system, a rate of frequency and a platform to do this on.

Any ideas are very welcome.