The effectiveness of blogs anymore is being questioned a lot. I know many bloggers who've just given up on it and moved on to other forms of social media to connect with their readers. I understand that, as I've been feeling a bit of blog fatigue myself as I try to decide on blog post topics.
This week, someone mentioned something called ThunderClap as a marketing tool. There's a great article here by Derek Murphy about how to use it. Wikipedia defines it as:
"crowdspeaking" platform that lets individuals and companies rally people together to spread a message. The site uses an "all-or-nothing" model similar to crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, in that if the campaign does not meet its desired number of supporters in the given time frame, the organizer receives none of the donations.
On Thunderclap, backers donate tweets and social media posts rather than money.Sounds like it could be a great tool. Have any of you used it? If so, were you happy with the results?
Second Meandering ...
I'm not looking forward to going in to work today. In my day job, the county (which handles voter registration) was supposed to get all the names of registered voters to the company that sent our all-vote-by-mail ballots. It appears he forgot to include the names of the people on our permanent absentee list--the people who've always received ballots by mail. All last week my office was inundated with phone calls from these people wondering why everyone else in their homes have received their ballots but not them.
The last of the ballots should have been delivered this weekend. Should have been. I've already heard from one woman who's militantly against all vote by mail and she hasn't received her ballot yet. Ugh.
That was a dumb mistake. Sorry you have to deal with all those irate people.
ReplyDeleteI did a Thunderclap for my last book and it was a big success.
I hope it wasn't too complicated to use. If it's done like Kickstarter, I wonder how you decide on the number of people as your goal.
DeleteI never heard of Thunderclap, but it sounds like a great marketing tool. It can get tiresome blogging all the time. Summer is slow on blogs and I think it's a good time to take breaks to refresh. Blogs still do serve as a way to develop deeper relationships than something like Twitter and Facebook. At least I think so.
ReplyDeleteI do like that feature of blogs, Natalie, and it's one reason that I still do it.
DeleteBlah to the work crap. I've heard of thunderclap but never used it, may have to give it a go one of these times.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of suggesting ThunderClap for the anthology's release. I'll have to report on how it works.
DeleteI've heard of thunderclap and know a several of people who have used it. I'm not sure what success they've had, but Alex is one of the ones I know about...
ReplyDeleteSorry about the mix up at work, what a drag.
I'm wondering how you figure out how many people should sign up.
DeleteI've never heard of thunderclap. It sounds like an interesting idea. Hope the voter registration for absentee balloters gets worked out.
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't been as crazy as I feared. I haven't heard anything from the militant lady. Hopefully that means she got her ballot.
Deletesomebody recently asked me to support them over Thunderclap and methinks I refused because that app or whatever it is asked for my Twitter account details and wanted to post things in my name... no way, Hose....
ReplyDeleteThunderclap sounds like another thing I'm not interested in. I hope to get to thumb my nose at it someday!
ReplyDeleteI've worked at jobs before where I had to deal with cranky people over the phone. So now, when I have to call into a business when I'm not happy about something, I really make the effort to be polite because I know how it's like to be on the other side!
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you have to have a certain amount of money to get people involved in either Kickstarter or Thunderclap (never heard of this, by the way). I'm not very intrepid with the money end of things.
ReplyDeleteAs for the voter thing, those can be fraught with massive problems. I work elections as a judge and at one point we had a huge loophole people were exploiting. I blew the whistle and the guy in charge shouted me down--said that never happened here in our fine city. But I had proof. For some reason they didn't have me work the elections for a couple of years. Seems kind of dicey.
I'll have to look into Thunderclap. Never heard of it or used it. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteUgh. Some days are just. Hope the rest of the week would look better for you.
ReplyDeleteOh, I am bogged down by blog fatigue right now. In fact, I don't think I've missed two consecutive weeks like this without being on official hiatus in the past four years. *facepalm*
ReplyDeleteI heard about Thunderclap a while back, but I haven't had anything buzz worthy to bother with. It seems like it's growing in popularity, though! :)
Actually, I think it's a matter of why you blog. Because really, no single social media platform directly helps us to sell books.
ReplyDeleteI blog because I enjoy it, but now I've scaled back to three days a week because I'm trying to make time for other platforms, writing etc. :-)
I've cut back on my blogging in order to do some long-postponed writing of books. I blog to keep a more personal connection with people who read and write. With things like Thunderclap, it's all about promo and sales--not very connecting at all. I've used it, and it was interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell, the effectiveness of everything from twitter to FB often gets questioned. Essentially, so long as you get some fun out of it, then it's worthwhile:)
ReplyDelete