Engaged

 

    In this exciting episode, we'll be looking at one thing I'm really great at getting, post reach, vs. the more important thing that I'm absolutely terrible at getting, post engagement.

    Post reach is how many people actually see your post in their news feeds. This one I've had no problem with in the past. You just plug in as many hashtags as you can. By doing this, you land yourself in the feed of people who follow say #cutecats for instance. 

William S. Burroughs likes cute cats, and so do I.

    Post engagement, the more important part of the equation, is far more magical and difficult to achieve in a meaningful way. Post engagement is actually compelling people to interact with your post. This is done by some strange and mystical technique I have yet to discover. However, I will detail some of my recent attempts.

 If you go down your list of followers and like at least one post that they make, they will usually give you a reciprocity like. I.E. they will feel obligated to like your content in return. Likes are the pennies of internet currency however, and essentially meaningless. This is likely because they denote the bare minimum of interaction. Count how many times I worked the word like into that paragraph.

Getting comments is more difficult, as it requires people to set aside their valuable scrolling time and commit thought to text format. It's slightly less difficult if you are female and among the living, as any and all selfies you post will absolutely get a comment. 

People from all walks of life  LOVE to commentate on women's appearances! That's what women are there for, right? Facebook doesn't actually read what the comments say they measure engagement (how many comments come rolling in). 

It doesn't matter if the comments say "What a fine blouse you're sporting" or "Show me your tits!" What's tallied is the engagement with other people. This is also an incredibly surface measurement.

To exemplify this, if I post a picture of myself when I was a chubby, gothed out, 19 year old;

 I'm going to get a lot of comments screaming;

 "YAAAAAS Queen! We love a thicc bish!"

Even though my queenly physique came from becoming a dedicated booze hound and binge eater. I started that up to cope with being surrounded by "friends" who offended my every moral and sensibility. Friends who used me as the punchline of every joke. Friends who, I had convinced myself, someone as lowly as me must deserve. This is a running theme in my life, I always aim low. 

Self confidence? Hadn't met her yet. That doesn't register in the picture though.

"THIS is what a REAL woman looks like!" Someone will inevitably comment.  

I'm clearly wearing a wig, horns, and prosthetic ears. The realness is staggering! I'm also wearing make up, but that makeup's on point!

Then there's the fact that there was a direct correlation between the extremity of my get ups and my weight. The more bizarre and ostentatious my attire, the more I was trying to hide myself from public scrutiny.

This outfit was actually quite demure compared to some of the get ups I wore, but it was still a costume. I'm hardly the poster child for REAL women, whatever those are.

There's the ever popular comment "You are so brave and courageous for truly accepting yourself as you are! I'm so proud of you!"

The truth is, in this picture I had just lost about 30lbs. I was really excited about this costume because I had bought the dress (which was really a nightie) from Fredericks of Hollywood, in a size M/L, not L or even XL.

Truthfully, I was really dissapointed when the picture was developed (we still had to do that back in the day). I had thought I was quite a lot slimmer than I actually was. I cried for hours. I still feel that sadness when I look at it now. I totally thought I looked like this;

You guys remember Linda Evangelista? If not, Google her, shes cute.

 

What we have here isn't really accepting oneself and showing it off. This is a prime example of thinking you looked like a supermodel and feeling great about it. Then, weeks later, discovering that you actually look like an R. Crumb sketch brought to life and feeling embarrassed. 

And no, not because there's anything wrong with being either a large woman or a R. Crumb, but because that wasn't what I was going for.

R. Crumb's style, if you don't understand my very dated reference.

So why would I bother bringing up this tangent and ruining my day with old pictures? To illustrate a point about comments and engagement. 

The comments people leave on a post are actually more to advertise the ideas and beliefs they want associate with themselves, rather than a true interaction with the material. People want to be seen being accepting, forward thinking and open minded.

Those people who commented are probably going to walk around with a big, self congratulatory grin all day thanks to me. They might message me to let me know that they just LOVE Lizzo (which is somehow relevant I guess.) What they're NOT going to do is follow the links back to my page, listen to my audio drama or buy my merch.

If you look at my Instagram (Go ahead, do it) you'll see I used to post a lot of selfies.

A more recent pic of myself post hike.

 

 They're super easy content, as on most occasions I have a face. Given that, I can just turn the camera on myself, snap a pic and post. VOILA! INSTANT ENGAGEMENT!

Unfortunately, this engagement doesn't communicate anything about my business. It leaves people with the impression that my page is a personal one, where I'm looking to date and make friends (eww). What I was advertising with selfie upon delicious selfie was my own damn self. I mean, you figure it's in the name right, selfie, but nope, that didn't register with me.

What I've been trying to do is post art relevant to my audio drama Creeping Wave Radio. My hope is to eventually pitch it as an animated series, so I need to solidify characters models and a storyline in people's minds. Unfortunately, I don't have the set up to render animations right now. 

What I do have is my phone, editing software and photoshop. I've been experimenting with creating short travel diaries for Tik Tok, which play into the plotline of Creeping Wave Radio's new season. 

I start them with an illustrated postcard in the style I'm looking to use for my animated series. Then I post a 60 second video detailing the sights I've seen while on the run from interdimensional overlords (a plot point for the new season).

It works in with my regular life, as my husband and I are always hiking and on the go.

Here's one...its pretty adorable.

 It actually takes me quite a while to convert the footage from my phone to the computer, where I have better editing software. Then I have to go through hours of footage plus draw a relevant picture. It's way more work than just slapping a selfie up on the web. A lot of the time, I just can't be bothered, so my posts are infrequent. 

That and it hardly yields a worthy response from people. My last travel diary got:

• 1 share and 2 likes on Facebook!
• 29 views on my main Instagram (less in reposts on my satellite pages) 
• 15 likes on Tik Tok
  

 and it took all day to edit because my computer kept crashing!

I get way more traction when I post a selfie that reveals a bra strap (oopsie). Then engagement is through the roof! Now, let's be honest, I'm like a low 6 at best, a solid 6 in the right lighting. People online are just athirst for masterbatory fodder.

Hell, I even get offers from lingerie sites, promising to make me a brand ambassador. That is if I buy their severely marked up undies at a 15% discount and post pics of myself online. Seems legit, right?

Its the great conundrum. Do I chose lots of engagement with no site traffic or minimal engagement with maybe a paltry bit of site traffic? The goal, so far as I understand it, is to actually get sales and convert casual visitors into customers and subscribers to my show (or customer conversion as the hep cats call it). 

Traversing The Void

There's also the fact that I've been courting demographics that have no interest in my show whatsoever. People I added because I needed to pad my numbers. Most sponsors don't want to play with an audio drama/podcast that has fewer than 10k followers on socials and less than 5k downloads a month.

My work has a lot of cross over into various sub genres. I've mentioned before how I chum the waters at new age, conspiracy theorist, video game, comic and goth type conventions (i.e nerd stuff). 

The truth is I'm so disconnected from these groups that I actually conduct research months before an event, so I'll have talking points. I schedule my spray tans around them, to make sure I have a basement pallor.  

Oh, except for at certain conspiratorial conferences, where being too pale gets you a lecture about vitamin D, and how people are taught to avoid the sun so they will never fully actualize their natural healing potential. But anyway...

I know all this makes me sound like a very deceptive person, and guilty,  but it actually began quite innocently. 

The Quest For Engagement 

After years of sobriety, I had started drinking heavily after college, which is quite the opposite of the norm I'm told. The stress of trying to find a job eventually broke me, and I went to my tried and true coping mechanism. Booze.

The jobs I landed in film production, marketing and advertising were extremely demanding, and I started drinking even more heavily. In a few years I'd gained about 66 lbs, and found that people in these very competitive, cut-throat fields had a hard time taking me seriously.

 Just so you know, I'm not saying that's the way it should be, I'm just relaying my experience. 

Anyway, I was once again the punchline to every joke!

A few pounds more, and I had to go pick up my plus size clothes from my parents house. I had a fine collection of 90's and early 2000's Hot Topic couture. It's got a charm all its own, but its hardly business attire. 

As I was not pulling in as many jobs as I once was, my opportunities to buy new clothing were few and far between. 

My mom tried to help me supplement my wardrobe, picking up pieces for me here and there. Unfortunately, my mom and I gain weight very differently. For her, dressing for a fuller figure involves a lot of billowy clothing and empire waist dresses to cover her tummy.

 For someone like me, who develops a cartoonishly, exaggerated hourglass figure, anything remotely billowy or high waisted gets me the old classic,

"What's your due date?"

Things had come full circle, and I was back where I was at 19 years old, floundering. I realized I was going to have to start currying favor with a very different type of clientele now, and thus began my flirtations with fringe culture and geekery.

Now if my life were a delightful comedic romp, I'd have discovered that conspiracy theorists and geeks were all warm hearted people, just looking for acceptance and someone to give them a chance. I'd have learned the valuable lesson that deep down, we weren't so very different after all.

Instead, I discovered people, no matter their sub genre, have very distinct qualifications for who can gain admission into their inner sanctum. Like every other denomination, geek culture has it's rules, it's cliques, and I was completely oblivious to all of them.

Still, this seemed to be the group it was safest to market to. Like Jane Goodall with her chimpanzees, or Dian Fossey with her gorillas, I decided to assimilate with their culture. 

Regrettably, if I had applied the same effort and seriousness towards people engaged in the literary world, audio drama, animation or even screen writing, I'd been in a very different place right now.

The people in these fields would no doubt have critiques, but valid ones. Critiques that could actually help me going forward. They'd tell me I needed to make changes, or buy new equipment or even (gasp) rewrite or reedit my work to meet expected industry standards. 

Like George McFly of Back To The Future fame, "I just don't think I could take that kind of rejection." Not about something I actually cared about. Certainly not about something I'd poured my heart and soul into.

I get critiques now. Nothing that has ever proved helpful. Comments from art school drop outs who want to feel important for 5 minutes, or conspiracy theorists looking to shatter my perceptions of reality. Nothing they say ever holds real value. It seems these interactions serve more to emotionally exhaust me than anything else. Hey, it's engagement though!

In fact, the social media friends I do have, I refer to as "The Crab Bucket". Most of the time, they seem to be actively pulling me down.

If you're unfamiliar with the reference, a bucket of crabs, will inevitably meet a nasty fate in the boiling pot. However, when one crab tries to crawl out, and save itself, the others will actively pull them down. All of them must share the same misfortune.

I've gotten myself mixed up in a number of collaborations and art shows where I had to smile and politely ignore the fact that I was being cheated or lied to... because "we're friends!" This phrase is somehow always punctuated with a big, fake hug and a metaphorical stab in the back.

So long as it happens in the comment section though, it's engagement!

It makes it really hard to put in the work and create a solid post when you know the majority of your audience either doesn't care or is looking for a chance to pull you down. 

What's worse is if I unfriend them, they're free to go on the rampage and openly launch a web based attack. Its like the old adage says,  keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. 

I'm desperate to make connections with people who actually care about what I do. Unfortunately, the smell of desperation only attracts more of the same monsters I'm already in the company of.

I'm at a point in my life now where I've committed myself to healing the damage I put my body through. I've quit drinking, recommit myself to health and fitness and am mentally healing the damage inflicted by years trying to live as someone I'm not. My body has recovered much faster than my career will.

I figure if I've endured the crab bucket this long, I've certainly toughened up enough to where I can face pitching my show to actual networks. I can listen to the expertise of people who actually have a solid, working knowledge of series creation and animated productions without getting overwhelmed. The trick is learning how to get these people to engage with me.  

I'm actually looking forward to it.

P.S.

I liked all the pages listed so far, and either sent a message, liked a picture or commented on each page. I'm sorry to Gina's Voice Over and Salt And Ritual, because i think I scared them by sending messages. I actually am looking for voice over artists (Gina) and do actually want to debulk my quads from hiking so much (salt and ritual).

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