Month: April 2015

Followers Do Not Guarantee Success
Image from socialmediagrow.com

Image from socialmediagrow.com

by Melinda Anderson

Lately, I have been getting offers from social media companies for either free followers or bought followers. Now, I am sure that some of these companies are legitimate and are just like DragonTech Writing. We are all trying to get customers and clients to pay bills.  However, followers  either free or bought does not guarantee that I , or anybody else, will have actual clients.

Followers, no matter what social media site you use, is nothing more than a game of statistics. According to the statistics professor I had in college, statistics is quite frankly a bunch of crap. Statistics are numbers that can be manipulated to represent any kind of data you could want. Of course, those numbers could also be used by competitors to represent data they want to high light.

For instance, I have 382 friends on Facebook, 428 followers on Twitter, 6 or more on Google+ and Pinterest, maybe 10 on Linked In, and over 100 on WordPress. At a glance, the numbers look pretty good especially Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress. You’d think, I’d have at least one client or customer purchasing my services and or product. You would be wrong.

The 382 Facebook friends are a mix of family members, friends, friends of friends, and gaming buddies. I use to be addicted to Farmville among other Facebook games. Only one of the Facebook friends has bought my services but it was for cross-stitch not writing. Out of 382 friends, no one has bought my writing services or products.

Out of 428 Twitter followers, none have purchased anything. Although, I have been asked to review a lot of music by various bands. In regards to Google+, Pinterest, and Linked In, I just barely started to actively use those sites so I probably shouldn’t analyze those numbers just yet.

I know that between my two companies, I have over 100 followers on WordPress. WordPress does a good job at crunching numbers and presenting them in an understandable format. However, on a good day, I maybe get 11 views with 6 visits. This means that 5 people will look at one of my blogs but they don’t stay. Again, no clients or customers.

My point is these, I already have free followers that are not clients or customers. Why do I need more? Further, if I am currently not selling products or services, why would I buy followers with no guarantee of success.

The Pioneer Gold Plaque: Just Another Flawed User Manual by Dan Goldstein
Pioneer 10 Plaque

Pioneer 10 Plaque

The Pioneer Gold Plaque: Just Another Flawed User Manual

I was surfing the net looking for something to post or talk about when I found this article by Dan Goldstein published via TechWhirl. It gave me a chuckle so I thought I would pass it on.

Short Instructions Can Be Just As Confusing As Long Instructions by Melinda Anderson

french-bread-pizza

Recently, we decided to have a pizza night but couldn’t afford more than some frozen Red Baron pizzas. I heated up the oven, put the pizzas on a tray, put the pizzas in the oven, and set the timer. This is where the problem started.

According to the directions, the oven needed to heated to 450 degrees with a cook time of 22 minutes; depending on the type of pizza. Needless to say, our pizzas were slightly crunchy. I could not figure out what I had done wrong.

I made myself one pizza for lunch the next day. However, I only cooked it for 15 minutes at 450 degrees and it was still crunchy. I know oven temps vary but this was ridiculous.

That night, my son decided he wanted to have two pizzas for dinner. He never reads the directions and just sort of muddles through on his own. He did preheat the oven to 450 and he watched them like a hawk hatching her eggs.  Meanwhile, I decided to focus on the instructions to figure out what I had done wrong.

Apparently, I had read the wrong instructions. However, the instructions I did read seem to be for the oven not the microwave. Let me demonstrate:

Microwave oven (1100) Then Oven

Preheat oven to 450 F.  Preheat baking sheet on center rack.

This is generally where I stop reading and skip to the time.  Notice the issue. My microwave oven does not have a specific temp control nor does it have a center rack. My microwave has high, medium, and low heat settings and a plate that spins in a circle for even heating.

From the above directions, I had assumed that these directions were for an oven not a microwave. I assumed that somebody had merely confused the headers, microwave for conventional. There was no cross referencing at all.

The directions should have said:

Microwave or Toaster Oven
(For a conventional oven, see the bottom panel)

I did find the conventional oven instructions on the bottom panel of the box. I did have the right cook time but I had been using the wrong temperature setting.

Even, the shortest of instructions need to be edited to avoid confusing customers.

By Melinda Anderson

Updated Examples Page

We have added two projects to the Examples Page.

First, we added an example of a resume created by Melinda Anderson. This project shows her ability to organize information and her creativity.

Second, we added an anthropology paper that was turned into a magazine article also by Melinda Anderson.  This project shows her ability to research, analyze, and write. For the magazine article, she used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate two images to create her cover. The images were obtained on the internet under the Fair Use Act while she was in college. She also used Adobe InDesign to create the layout.

Let us know what you think.