sharing bricks

I used to go to a lot of mailing lists and forums and tell them about my new video or article or whatever.  I would even go to places to talk about a really good permies.com thread.  I always thought of this as good community stewardship.

I have been persuaded by people to start a podcast and the trade was that others would do what I did with this aspect of community stewardship.  I would then take this time and make podcasts. 

I think of this as "instead of telling people to stop being bad, build a better world one brick at a time."  I will focus on making bricks, but you all will carry the bricks out there. 

So I am taking this leap of faith.  I have seen a few people make an excellent effort.  But I think it is still falling short of what I used to do.  I hope that by starting this thread, you all will get things rolling better and I will stop worry about this sort of thing and, instead, focus on making podcasts, videos and articles.

I will continue to post to facebook.  Both my fan page and my personal wall.  Hopefully, you all will see my stuff there and share it on your walls.  I will continue to post to twitter.  I hope you all will follow me and retweet.

I will continue to post stuff to permies and put stuff at the top of permies.

I will get a new blog set up and post to that (I guess people do an RSS thing for that?) 

I am now cutting back from other forums and mailing lists.  I would try to be more of a community member than just post stuff out there.  And that is where a lot of my time went.  If I posted something and people asked me a question, I would answer.  And I would try to find a few other things to participate in too. 

There are a few things that I could never figure out that maybe others here understand and can get my stuff out there.  WiserEarth is one. 

I keep telling myself that I'm going to put more of my stuff out at appropedia.  Once in a while I would put a video or article or thread out there. 

I am not a podcast consumer, so this is a very new space for me.  And it takes a fair bit of time.  Just getting it set up right is taking a lot of time.  And I am worried that I am making a mistake - that I will trade 200 podcast listeners for 40,000 viewers of my other stuff - which I do understand.  A poor choice.

I'm gonna keep a little faith in you all that this will work out great in a week or two. 

So far the numbers are way down. 

Okay, the new video is up.  Normally I would spend the next four hours posting it to about 20 different places and visiting with folks there.  Instead I am going to focus on podcast folks.

Frankly, I think today's video is kinda lame.  But I would think that by the end of the day I would see over a thousand views.  Getting to a thousand in the first 24 hours made me think that I was doing a good job.  And if it hit about 1500 in the first 24 hours, youtube would move it up onto the most viewed stage where it would get a lot more views.

The easiest place to get a thousand views would be reddit. 

So I am attempting to turn off my anxiety about the thousand views and focusing on podcast stuff.

(this is the part where people reassure me that they are spreading the word about the new video which then makes me think that I have made a good choice)

Normally, I can get 1000 to 5000 extra views on a new video.  I seem to average about 1500. 

I left the canning video up for several days.  Outside of my efforts, it looks like others fetched about 100 extra views.

So I lost about 1400 views by not doing my regular promotion.

In related news, the time that I dropped for promoting a video, was used to put up a podcast.  For that I received about 300 downloads. 

So I traded 1400 video views for about 300 podcast downloads.

It would seem that my time would be better spent promoting my videos than in making podcasts.

I feel I have a very important mission and I need to focus on where my time is best spent.

On the other hand, if a new video were to receive a lot of attention - possibly more attention than if I were doing the promotions stuff myself, then it would be wise to continue this path.

I'm willing to continue this experiment, but I do require some feedback that folks are willing to get on this and make it work.

paul wheaton wrote:
Normally, I can get 1000 to 5000 extra views on a new video.   I seem to average about 1500. 

I left the canning video up for several days.  Outside of my efforts, it looks like others fetched about 100 extra views.

So I lost about 1400 views by not doing my regular promotion.

In related news, the time that I dropped for promoting a video, was used to put up a podcast.  For that I received about 300 downloads. 

So I traded 1400 video views for about 300 podcast downloads.

It would seem that my time would be better spent promoting my videos than in making podcasts.

I feel I have a very important mission and I need to focus on where my time is best spent.

On the other hand, if a new video were to receive a lot of attention - possibly more attention than if I were doing the promotions stuff myself, then it would be wise to continue this path.

I'm willing to continue this experiment, but I do require some feedback that folks are willing to get on this and make it work.

IMO The conclusion should be that regardless of what type of content you're producing, it is more likely to fall flat without the promotion.  I personally prefer videos, but both podcast and video have their own uses. 

Also, email subscription on a blog post with video or podcast can be a huge factor as well, once we get a signup up and running.  The blog can also automatically update your Twitter and Facebook Page that there is a new post, which takes away a few minutes each time.  Then you can focus on Reddit or whatever is working best.

Installing some 'like' buttons for either the Paul Wheaton Facebook Page or a Rich Soil or Permies Facebook Page would might be another thought.  Facebookers get a surprising amount of content from their feed, and that's an underutilized promotional method for Permies, RichSoil, and your youtube videos.

Not sure if this exactly applies, but the trend stats on FB, mobile and tablet use are fascinating.

Throw that slide rule away! Use Facebook, iPhone, iPad, Groupon tools!

Good article, Jocelyn.

Here's a quick anecdote to illustrate the power of Facebook.  By day, I work with a vacation cabin rental company here in Washington.  We stay pretty booked up, especially on weekends, but occasionally we'll have an open weekend at the last minute.  Today was one of those days - we had an opening this weekend on Fri/Sat night.

Our Facebook page currently has 195 fans.  We posted a last minute discount of roughly 20% off a weekend stay, and it was snatched up within 40 minutes of posting.  This is par for the course.  The last 5 times we have posted a last minute special on Facebook (during the middle of a weekday, mind you), 4 of the times it's been snatched up within 2 hours, and the 5th time it was snatched up the next day.

There's hundreds of millions of people glancing at Facebook on a smoke break, or when their boss steps out for a minute, or when they get home and are sitting around watching TV.  They're looking for cool crap to read on the internet, and for 'green'-minded folks, the content on RichSoil and Permies and Youtube/Paulwheaton12 is gold; they just need more ways to find it.  Twitter will help a little, it sounds like Reddit was getting some good traffic, but at the end of the day, none of those have the membership and connectivity that Facebook offers.  For the foreseeable future, this is where the action is at.

I slipped on the ice and broke my slide rule last month, it really sucks!

Paul I feel your anxiety and really want to let you know that I'm more of a podcast guy. For a variety of reasons its a much easier way for myself to get info and participate.  i don't "surf' around much anymore because of the "consuming" nature it has been in the past.  I do enjoy the easy of the "on the go" nature of listening and joined here to try and boost the members numbers ...as well as checking out the info you and others share. thank you...all of you.  I was glad when Jack spirko first mentioned permies.com ...... and saw/heard the changes taking place within him.  Elated I was when I heard you were going to be interviewed on podcast # 598 of thesurvivalpodcast  .  I joined your facebook page and THAT is a new medium of networking for me ; it may take some time to adjust....... but adjust I WILL , because I think your words hold weight. Not many people I know have "jumped" on the podcasting craze.  I'm a bit of a recluce these days , after chosing to not engage in the "madness" going on in society.  I find myself wanting to learn the practices you and many others like you out to the community in many way.  Been talking with neighbors I don't know and telling them how much I enjoy veiwing their gardens, talking about plant exchanges in our neighborhood association (which I first came to detest), and they are receptive ! YOU MAN helped me to break outta my shell....one I created, and have burned discs of your appearances on "TSP" and have passed a few around. I don't want to take up anymore of your valuable time with my ramblings and uttering , but ....Thank You Brotha !
    I andeeply grateful.

"paul on facebook" wrote:"It sounds like folks are not interested in helping me to come up with the time to make the podcasts - they just want more free stuff.

My passion with this is to get it into as many brains as possible. 1400 for 300 is a n...et loss of 1100.

If I have help getting the word out, I have time to make more content. If I don't have help getting the word out, I don't have time to make more content.

It is looking a lot like I need to drop the podcasts and get my ass back to work on sharing the videos since it isn't getting done. The new video hasn't even been submitted once to reddit."

imo to get into many brains you need to have passion for the message & the medium you are using to deliver it.  i have worked in radio & love good radio & good podcasts.  if you don't know or care much for the medium then why bother?  (i'm not saying this is the case just that if you are only looking @ ###s you are not going to hit them.  that is how commercials & crappy Tv are made not good art, entertainment, essays, podcasts etc).  if you want to do a great podcast it is a lot of work same as doing good video.

you can't compare podcast DLs a couple podcasts in when you aren't even on itunes yet.  imagine you have this forum and did a podcast and are just getting into doing videos.  you don't have a youtube account yet, but you have uploaded a few videos on a new blog you just setup.  i bet you'd have a lot more ears on your podcast than eyes on your videos in that scenario!

vine,

I think the real people to thank are kane and jocelyn.  They are doing work that gets this all done - and moves it all forward. 

I thought i was going to try and get a new podcast out every other day or so - that was when I thought I had a couple hundred people each putting in a minute or two for each new brick to help out.  But now I get the impression there might be six people helping with bricks.    So now I'm thinking that two a month will be the most I can do and it will come at a cost of fewer videos.

I guess it was my over active imagination that made me think there were hundreds of people willing to leap in and take over my chores in letting people know about this stuff.  I backed off from that angle and watched as permies and richsoil traffic took a dive. 

I need to get the permies.com forum software updated.  I have footage for another dozen excellent videos that I need to get up.  I have five more podcasts in the hopper that need to have their tag stuff massaged before being uploaded.  I have a presentation to give in missoula tomorrow night.  I have ... about 20 other things in the hopper that only I can do. 

I feel powerfully compelled to change the world.  I have 6000 people a day looking at permies, 3000 people a day looking at richsoil, 5000 people a day looking at my videos, and about 100 people a day looking at my podcasts.  When I took time away from promoting everything else to make the podcast, I reached 1100 fewer people. 

If 200 people stood up and put a minute or two into conveying this stuff - then it would clearly be a waste of my time to put time into that.  And my time would clearly be better spent making more content.

Well, it didn't hurt to ask I suppose.

Yesterday I posted links to
 
http://www.richsoil.com/

http://paulwheaton12.wordpress.com/

https://permies.com/permaculture-forums#1

on messageboards I visit.

I can't make people click those links, unfortunately. 

Ludi wrote:
Yesterday I posted links to
   
http://www.richsoil.com/

http://paulwheaton12.wordpress.com/

https://permies.com/permaculture-forums#1

on messageboards I visit.

I can't make people click those links, unfortunately. 

Making the links is awesome!  If 200 people did that, then traffic would probably jump and I would then think "I don't need to worry about promotion - I should just focus on production!"

I just posted this out at facebook:

It takes time to get the podcasts up. It takes time to get the videos up. It takes time to promote them. I'll do it all as fast as I can, mostly because I cannot stop doing it. But since I am going back to doing the promotion, it will all be much slower. I suspect there will be two videos per week and two podcasts per month

If 200 people took on the promotion stuff at one or two minutes per day, I think there would be three podcasts per week and three videos per week.

I'm headed home. I might get caught up on stuff in a week or so.

At this moment, I feel like I need to stop production and focus on promotion for a few days - an aspect that I have neglected. 

But if enough people follow your lead, maybe there will be enough of a spike in traffic that I can let promotion go and focus on production.

I've been sharing wherever I can Paul, but Reddit seems really slow to accept new posters.  I'll keep at it though...