Having Fun with Self-Promotion Fun on the Social Media

Friday, February 28, 2014
     (Sunny, windy, and very cold)

Having Fun with Self-Promotion

on the Social Media

This happens to be my 700th post on this blog, 

with a total page view count of 145730 at 1250 P.M. EST (Canada).

On February 16, of this month, I added a post about Facebook.  I joined the "social media" of Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook in order to broadcast my blog. So far, it's what I call a "slog". It's going to take work and lots of ideas to get people to visit my blog. Linkedin is more serious,. That's a company and website where you might be looking for work in your field.  You write up tour CV (Curriculum Vitae) or work and background experience. For a wider promotion to reach moire people, you need to pay and depending upon who and how many people you'd like to try and "Link" with, the more you have to pay. I use the no-pay level, so I', not having many people see me.

  Eac of the 3 sites that I've mentioned work differently, and it's interesting and fun to write something on each . However, for today, I'm just going to present the photos (all of my own) that I have added to the three website. I've been photo-editing them both to have some fun, and to grab people's attention. I've go that already on Facebook. but I don't know how that translates into new viewer to my blog. O've joined several Facebook clubs such as old toys, cast iron toys, truck groups and so forth, and I get to post on their sites.,and vice-versa.

That's my own watermark that I've been adding to my own photos. I used to simply have my photos on Picasa and Flickr, and on my blog. Then I started noticing people and companies promoting that big auction sit using my photos for a profit! I had to send a few letters asking them "politely" to remove those photos. Now,whenever I use my own photo, or someone else's each photo had a watermark and a copyright notice. However, even that does;t always deter "borrowers".

Those brighter spots are called "highlights" in photographic terms. I'll usually use small mirrors ore highly-reflective small pieces of  silver cardboard to produce them when taking photographs. However, you can do almost the same with photo-editing software.

When I first started this blog, I'd buy toys on ebay, then resell them. At that time, ebay allowed you one free photo, and 6 others were about $ 1.45. I decided to simply combine 4 photos into a larger one and add that to each listing. It was getting quite expensive to keep  paying for more photos.

 In 2013,  ebay decided to let everyone have 12 free photos,and have the images enlarge for free. I would like to "dream" that my images changed everything on  ebay, but that would be totally dreaming "big time". But I can dream, can't I?

By the way ( as I shamelessness promote by Facebook pages):

I have 3 pages on Facebook:

stacey.bindman

Please click here to redirect to my Facebook page

Oldantiquetoys

Please click here to visit another of my Facebook pages

Oldantiquetoys

Please click here to visit my third Facebook page

I think that the differences between the 2 Facebook pages titles "oldantiquetoys" is that one of them is commercial, and one of them is personal. Anyway, I keep busy for about  20 minutes a week adding  photos and some dialogue. It's like a blog, but I only add 1 photo or 2, and some short dialogue. While taking about short dialogue, Twitter is a "blast". You can add only 144 characters, so people add a lot of abbreviations and drop the vowels. I think I'm rewriting the Twitter language, and I also think people might be having trouble figuring out what I'm saying! You can only say so much with 144 characters!

Thanks for dropping by,
and as always, 
have a great part of the day or night.
Stacey
Please feel free to write to me anytime at:
toysearcher@gmail.com

Sooner or Later-Facebook

Monday, February 17, 2014
        (Very Cold and Partly Cloudy)

Sooner or Later-Facebook

   I recently have joined many of the social media/pro business/publicity websites. The reason that I've joined is to try and attract a larger and wider audience to my blog. Google does not do very much for promoting blogs. I've sent them feedback saying that I thought (in my "humble opinion"), that  I had an exceptional old and antique toy blog on their Blogger site, but they don't reply or seem to care.  Of course, since I'm on Blogger (A Google Company),  and write almost every day, I do get A1 listing when their search engine is employed. Of course a person has to use the antique toy blog or something close to that for my blog to appear.

   Currently, Google is promoting and pressuring people to join their Google+ company. I think they realize what a "treasure" and goldmine Facebook is. I was reluctant to join Facebook because I didn't want the "whole world" to know about me. However there are controls and constraints to regulate who and what people see. What's great about Facebook is that is is relatively easy to use, has a huge number of members, and had many features that Google currently has as separate companies.I can see why Google is pushing Google+ on any Google company member. Google could reach a larger audience, and have less companies to manage and pay for to run.

    I do appreciate being on Blogger, but I've had some issues with them, one of them specifically being what is called "Referrer Spam", but that's worth mentioning when my prime topic for today is Facebook.

I know people who are not computer savvy (experienced), but websites like Blogger and Facebook are easy to learn and experience. And it will keep your brain active and alert for a small part of each day. Furthermore, there is plenty of help and even forums where you can ask questions to an audience of your peers.

Please click here to see my Facebook page

Facebook pages  are quite large, so I left them in their original screen-capture dimensions, but halved them to 144 dpi (dots per inch). May I strongly suggest that you view the pages in Blogger slide view mode. In that way, the writing and photos will be clearer.

You can see how clean and very presentable my Facebook page is. I have 2 other Facebook pages, and this one and another one, I want to maintain a stinger control over. As you will see later in the week, I opened up my Facebook page with my name, and I'm bing bombard with other people's toy images. This is fine, but my own get lost on the page, and some people send 10toy photos a day.

The good side of this is that I've got much more exposure, and joined some antique toy groups to also paste up my photos on their site.

The above screen-capture is my latest addition to my Facebook "Oldantiquetoys" page.

If you look in the lower left corner, you can see the words  Like, Comment, and Share".

Guests or viewers can  just click Like, write a comment. I can't remember what Share is.

This is how the photo appears in the slide view mode. There is a dark background that enhances the photos, and the type (writing) and photo are well proportioned,and neatly arranged on the page.

This is one of my photos without any commentary.

And this is a photo with a little bit of commentary.

And yet one more photo.

By the way, that's a 1940's-1950's Wyandotte convertible pressed steel wind-up toy.

It's missing the windshield, and sadly, no one seems to make them (yet!) on the Net.

My Blogger Stats

These are my stats which vary from day -to-day, month to month, and season to season. In the summer people have more time to spend outdoors,so visiting a blog is less important.

Please use the slide view mode to see this page much more clearly.

The top number of 200 are my stats from 7:00 P.M. the previous day until 12:00 today. Blogger 24 hour period is from &:00 P.m. - 7:00 P.M.

The third number of 8,208 is my stat for the month. I will reach 100,000+ this year, but because of referrer spam, and individuals looking at may pages, compared to some people viewing just 1 page, I have absolutely no idea exactly how many "unique" people visit my website.

This is a screen capture of my audience from around the world for the day up to 12:00 P.M. noon

The information is sorted by browsers and by computer operating systems.

To the left is a world map, and below that are the major top 10 countries. Last week, I saw someone from Mauritius.

This is a screen capture of my audience from around the world for the week. I would like to have a more universal audience, but I would assume that being an English blog, many people don;t want to need to translate what I write. I am very proud however at having worked hard to have people fem all over the world visit my blog.

If you like blogs or keeping in touch with your friends and relatives (Facebook), the Internet certainly is a fantastic place to be and to be on.

Thanks for dropping by,

and have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey

Please feel free to write me anytime at

toysearcher@gmail.com