Gotta Catch Some Mandatory Fun

Growing up as an Army Brat, I experienced many situations in which we were required to participate in mandatory fun. When I read the assignment for this blog post, it brought those days to mind. As an Army Brat, mandatory fun usually consisted of attending Organization Day, which was a giant picnic/barbecue with lots of silly games and competitions. As an NCO, Dad was effectively required to bring his family along to participate in the fun. If our commanding officer, er, I mean instructor has ordered me to have fun over break than I am up for the task.

I generally work during Fall Break, which leaves no good window for travel and little time for shenanigans. Mostly Fall Break is about catching up on sleep. However, driven by the need to write about something fun, I decided to torment my husband over break to give me something more than sleeping in to write about.

My preferred means of tormenting him is to drag him on photo walks out in some sort of natural surroundings. We’re both shutterbugs. Unfortunately, I’m working through a plantar fasciitis flare up at the moment and that means long (or even medium length) hikes are pretty much out. Getting too far away from places where I can make sad eyes at my husband and ask him to go get the car if necessary is not the best idea in the middle of a flare up. From past experience I know I will get through it faster if I can get in lots of short bursts of walking with rest in between. Just walking bores me, especially when I’m stuck either walking slow or being in enough pain to end the walk too soon. I find it really hard to be motivated to walk when I know it will make my foot hurt.

Enter the “Pokéwalk”. Pokémon Go is a phone/tablet game that came out last summer. It was incredibly popular for a little while. The popularity seems to have died off fairly quickly, but my husband and I got into the game late.  The Pokémon slogan is “Gotta catch ‘em all!” and we haven’t even come close yet.

Pokémon Go makes for a nice distraction while walking and also gives us a reason besides my cranky foot to keep it slow and pause often. We have to pause to collect resources from Poké Stops and to catch Pokémon along the way. I also get to torment my husband by dragging him along and making him play too, which makes it win/win. Okay, okay, he does enjoy the game somewhat and definitely enjoys humoring me so it’s not really tormenting him to make him go on a Pokéwalk.

Over the week of Fall Break, in order to acquire sufficient mandatory fun for blogging purposes, my husband and I went on several Pokéwalks. It may sound low key or possibly even boring, but we enjoy it. The leaves are turning lovely colors. It’s cooler, but not cold yet - perfect walking weather.

Academic Blog - Critical Response to TED Talk “The Tribes We Lead” by Seth Godin

I get the feeling that this is supposed to be a highly inspirational TED Talk, but for me, it falls flat. However, I could just be in a bad mood as I’m writing this. Part of the problem is that the organization is lacking. Godin goes from point to point without much connection between many of them. Another part of the problem is that Godin seems to think that people in general try to change things. My experience, or perhaps my cynicism, tells me the opposite. People are generally more inclined to fight change than embrace it. People who seek and work for change are rare.

In the SPCA example that he uses to support his apparent argument that people seek change, the details of the story more strongly support the counter argument that people fight change. Godin tells us how Nathan Winograd and his boss at the SPCA had to fight to get a change in how stray animals were handled in San Francisco. People from other SPCAs and humane shelters were willing to fly to San Francisco to fight against this change. People in general resist change. Change happens when a person or small group are willing to go all out fighting for it.

The San Francisco SPCA was only able to focus on making San Francisco a no-kill city after giving up their existing animal control responsibilities. If you look at this timeline at Best Friends, you’ll see that it took Rich Avanzino (Winograd’s boss) 10 years and surrendering animal control responsibility the Department of Animal Care and Control that had to be formed due to Avanzino ending the SPCA’s contract with the city (with 5 years notice), to make San Francisco a no-kill city. It actually took five years beyond when San Francisco SPCA handed animal control over to the Department of Animal Care and Control for them to establish an adoption pact with the city run service to make San Francisco a no-kill city.

Their efforts and dedication are admirable, but I think they make an excellent example of how fiercely people resist change. This is clearly not the point he’s trying to make.

Watching again for the third or fourth time, I think that he might have made a stronger argument if he somehow made it clear that he told the SPCA story at the beginning to demonstrate how much harder it was to connect with people and encourage them to embrace change prior to the explosion of social media. Then again, he didn’t mention how long it took for Winograd and Avanzino to bring about the change they fought for. Godin probably intended that first example as support for his arguments about connection and tribes.

I do agree with the argument that tribes and the human drive to connect are the way to change the world, although I didn’t feel that Godin supported it very strongly with his talk. Godin seems to alternate between providing examples of connection and providing examples of leaders. He doesn’t link the examples together very well in the structure of his talk, and this makes his call to action at the end weaker than it could have been.

Musing on Hashtag Popularity

The current module in #engl211 has us delving into the murky world of social media marketing.

What makes one hashtag trend and another fade into oblivion?

Nobody really knows. There are lots of people out there writing essays on the subject. People who want to sell you on  their social media marketing expertise will make lists of ways to get more eyeballs on your content and write them up in neat little bite sized articles. But they don’t really know. They’re making educated guesses. Sometimes their advice works, sometimes it drives people away.  

Our assignment right now is to go on Twitter and promote a hashtag of our own design. The group I’m in decided to go with #BorderlandPics. It is a brand new hashtag so we can shape it any way we want without interference from or piggybacking on preexisting tweets. On my Twitter account I introduced it with this new pinned tweet:

Our idea was inspired by another hashtag - #WolWednesday. This is a hashtag that was started by author Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) back in March 2015. This hashtag, which is all about sharing pictures of owls, is still going. Apparently lots of people like owls. Er, I’m sorry, I mean wols.

You might wonder how sharing owl pictures could possibly be marketing. My Twitter experience is largely in the publishing world. I follow authors, publishers, and the like. From what I’ve observed, if an author goes on Twitter and just tweets about his or her books, that drives potential readers away. I know I unfollow an author after two many straight up promotional tweets and I am not alone in that. Therefore, authors on Twitter generally only do straightforward promotion during specific times. If an author normally tweets like a human being making connections, tweeting excitedly about a book release is quite acceptable. Whether he did it deliberately or is just Sam Sykes being Sam Sykes, the #WolWednesday promotes Sam Sykes author brand by drawing people to his Twitter account in a fun way. This is an indirect form of marketing.

We don’t actually have a product to promote, so the indirect marketing of a picture sharing hashtag seemed like a fun way to go. If anything, we are promoting where we live.

So far, my group has shared a few pictures and we’ve gotten one post to our hashtag from someone not in our group. We’ve only be going for a few days now, so I won’t speculate on reasons why we’re not getting more eyeballs. Of the tweets I’ve shared, this has been my most popular:

I know exactly why it has gotten all that attention. One of the re-tweets was @poisonedpen and that put it in front of a lot of people. Poisoned Pen Bookstore has almost seven thousand followers on Twitter. Given time we can get more tweets in front of more people. Eventually some might join in.

One final thought - after Tuesday’s election, I’m starting to wish I had suggested my other idea for a hashtag - #WarmFuzzyTwitter. The idea behind that one would have been to spread kind and supportive words throughout Twitter and encourage others to do the same. A hashtag like that could be helpful to a lot of people any time, but right now especially. Small joys keep us going in dark times. I thought it was too silly to share, but now it doesn't feel quite so silly.

The Assignment I Didn't Want to Do

I started the Twitter assignment like any reasonable adult would. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. There may even have been some pouting. Poor @tonydero had to listen to a ton of whining about this horrible, awful, evil assignment.

I decided to make a new account so I wouldn't break my real Twitter. All the way through set up to the point of adding a cover photo, and Twitter decides I’m a #robot. Locked me out and insisted that I provide a phone number to get back in. Twitter does not need my frakking phone number. Grrrr... Cue more wailing and gnashing of teeth. I melted down. October has not been an awesome month and my resilience for minor setbacks was down to nil. But the meltdown ended, as meltdowns do, and I decided to just do this thing on my real Twitter. #pout.

Process

First step - send @KurtDepnerENGL a screenshot showing my starting follower count.

Cropped version of what I sent @KurtDepnerENGL

Second step - pin a tweet so that anyone who’s already following me will know what the heck is going on.

Mildly cranky Pinned Tweet

Third step - mentally review the materials provided and decide how to go about this craziness. There are lots of legitimate and ethical ways to get followers.

Since I used my real Twitter account I only wanted to do things that fit well with who I am. I made three basic changes to my Twitter behavior.

1. Tweet or Retweet a few times every single day.
2. Use #hashtags more often.
3. Follow back new followers ASAP.

The first and second changes were no big deal. Although I tend to be more of a #lurker than a tweeter most days, participating actively is a simple change. Using #hashtags is not something I ever thought about much, but again - an easy change. Neither of these behaviors go against who I am at all. The third behavior is a bit more of a stretch, as I prefer to limit how many people I follow. However, this was a matter of doing something outside my comfort zone rather than going against my character. Stepping outside your comfort zone is good.

I kept my strategy simple with the thought that I’d most likely have to try different changes after the first couple of days. It turned out that these three steps produced a steadily increasing follower count over the course of the assignment.

Tweeting or Retweeting Daily

This part was easy. Tweeting or retweeting on a daily basis was as simple as changing my passive #lurking on Twitter into a more active endeavor. As a side effect, I think it may have actually reduced the total time I spent on Twitter. Tweeting or retweeting a few things gave me a sense of closure that made it easier to move on to other tasks. When I’m just reading Twitter it is far too easy to scroll down just a bit more, then a bit more, then a bit more. #JustOneMoreTurn

#hashtags

Although I had rarely thought about them in the past, this assignment taught me that #hashtags are awesome. They help you connect with your tribe. Use #hashtags so that people who share your interests see your tweets. I’ll likely continue to use #hashtags more often in the future.

Some #hashtags I used:

Jaxon photobombed, but he's part Catahoula so it's OK 

#engl211

#bookworm & #bookwyrm)
#BannedBooksWeek

#bannedbooks
#librarylife

#saturdaylibrarian

#libraryclerk 
#wolwednesday
#homework
#amwriting
#NationalCatDay
#haiku

There were times that I could have come up with #hashtags and failed to do so. It is not an automatic habit for me. Here’s one example:

What #hashtags would you have used?

Following Back

In my experience on Twitter, there are tons of people that are only interested in following you if you follow them back. I didn’t want to deal with the usual dance of people following then unfollowing me because I didn’t follow back quickly enough during this module. I made a point of following any account that didn’t raise red flags for me within 24 hours.

I did follow some accounts that I typically wouldn’t have. I’m now following more accounts than I want to be following. Over the next several days, I will likely unfollow several accounts that are too #promotiony for my taste. This means my follower count will certainly drop some. I’m totally happy with that. Among those accounts that I typically wouldn’t have followed are some that seem to be awesome. So I’ve been missing out with my practice of waiting to follow back. I will likely be more diligent about deciding whether or not I want to follow people back in the future.

Top Tweets

3 of my top 5 tweets @-ed someone. Twitter is all about connecting.

Final Thoughts

Part of the assignment is to share our follower count at the end. Here's mine:

I was beyond reluctant about this assignment in the beginning and had so much fun with it by the end. Using #hashtags helped me connect with the kind of people that I’m on Twitter to connect with. Although I’m not big on collecting followers, I found it valuable to step outside my comfort zone and learned that I can connect with more people on Twitter and still be me.

All in all, this assignment that I didn’t want to do is now my favorite of the semester.