Thursday, June 06, 2013

Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 21: a new media experiment

This evening's update on my work to build Luminaria Productions into a billion-dollar enterprise:

1. I promoted last night's BBDE post via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and G+.

2. I also promoted last night's Homewood Nation story about TechShop coming to Homewood Library, via Facebook and Twitter.

I did all of that by noon or so, on the belief that people might be more likely to browse social media then during lunch. I also used my new spreadsheet to keep track of what I had posted where.

According to Google, "ReVisions" had 3 pageviews today, after 77 on Monday, 59 on Tuesday, and 42 on Wednesay.

According to Clicky, Homewood Nation had 59 visitors today, with an average time per visit of 1 min, 31 secs. That would include people who visited to read about Shimira Williams...

3. I wrote a story about Shimira Williams creating and registering a new hashtag for people to share and find information about local youth activities - #youth 412.

The last gave me special pleasure, and I consider it especially important, because it was, as I said to Shimira, "a new media experiment."

We were chatting on Facebook, and at 2:45, I got the idea of doing a story about the hashtag. I asked if I could interview her, right there on Facebook, she agreed (with the caveat that she was multitasking), and we were off.

The chat itself served as notes, and I began writing while we spoke. At the end of our convo, she sent me a pic of herself to use.

At 4:35, I posted the first link to the completed article on Facebook, quickly following with posts on Twitter and G+.

It's not great journalism. But I'm certain that it is the fastest story I have ever done. And I think it is also serviceable, as opposed to being downright bad. It accomplishes the not-grand purpose of sharing a little bit of information that some people might find useful.

And it even has two - not one, but two - pictures.

I am downright proud of having reported, written and published a serviceable story in less than two hours. The better I get at producing serviceable stuff faster - the better.

This post marks the beginning of me tracking visitors/pageviews on a daily basis. First results don't look good for my use of LinkedIn to promote my content. Is the very title, "Building a billion dollar enterprise" off-putting for that audience? How can I make this more interesting and useful?

Thoughts for another day.

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