Category Archives: Communication

Experiment: Facebook Sponsored Post Boost

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I decided to try an experiment with this past Wednesday’s blog post: on my WBK Facebook page I paid $5 to “boost” the link and see if that gave any benefits, specifically:

  1. Did it increase the number of people viewing my blog post?
  2. Did it increase the number of people who subscribed to my blog or its RSS feed newsletter?
  3. Did it increase the number of fans of my Facebook page?

My baseline averages on various blog statistics are:

  • 17-22 page views on the actual blog site on days I post a new entry (Not counting the  48 hour period when Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman retweeted the post about her musician kerfuffle).
  • 3 subscribers to the blog, 8 subscribers to the Mailchimp weekly RSS feed
  • 77 fans of my Facebook page
  • Between 6-15 “reach” (in how many people’s newsfeed it appeared) per Facebook post. Best recent “reach” was a non-blog link posted on April 6 about “Like farming”, which had reach=515, 62 clicks,  and 31 “talking about this”.

36 hours after I posted the Facebook link and enabled $5 worth of “sponsored” posts, here are the results:

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Use Evernote To Record Meetings, Lessons, Etc.

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Recently I was pleased to discover that the built-in recording feature of the Evernote note-taking application works very well for recording long meetings without using up tons of space on your smartphone or PC:

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Aereo – Local Broadcast TV Over The Internet Coming To Eastern MA

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After free over-the-air broadcast television stations changed to digital several years ago you could buy an inexpensive converter for your old TV or just get a newer set with it built in. If your viewing location has decent reception your results are much better than old analog broadcasts – but if you are in a zone with mediocre reception (as is our house, since we are on the wrong side of a hill from the broadcast towers) it’s much worse. So you must go with some paid cable or satellite service to see stations that would otherwise be free.

Aereo wants to be your personal TV antenna with great reception.

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Tips During A Disaster

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All of us in or near Boston are still shaken by the horrible bombing at the Marathon this week. It’s unfortunately true that you cannot predict when participating in a normal public activity will suddenly turn into an emergency – though short of being in a location of overt civil or political unrest the actual chances of it happening to you are far less than the incessant media coverage makes you think.

But if you do find yourself caught up in a dangerous public emergency, here are some things to keep in mind:

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