Casual Information

By and for space cadet marketers + their admirers. Occasional how-to's and social media mysteries solved. Infrequent showbiz sojourns. Messy spreadsheets. More action on twitter: @casualsheets. Subscribe to the mailing list for hidden value.

[bluechoochoo]

How to get notification every time there's new Maggie Haberman article, with a Twitter bot: @maggiet1m3

Part 1 of a 3 part series.

Part 1: (you are here) How to get notification every time there's new Maggie Haberman article, with a Twitter bot called @maggiet1m3 (aka, #maggietime). 

Part 2: (posting July 21)  How @maggiet1m3, the Maggie Haberman twitter bot, works and how you can build your own bot for any New York Times author WITHOUT ANY CODE 

Part 3: (posting July 22) Why @maggiet1m3, the Maggie Haberman twitter bot, sometimes posts articles NOT by her... or so it seems

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT POLITICS. IT'S ABOUT BOTS AND TWITTER AND RSS FEEDS AND MEDIA APPS. #CASOCERRADO

The basic idea:

Here's a Twitter bot you can use: @maggiet1m3 (aka #maggietime). It tweets every time there's a new Maggie Haberman article in the New York Times, or shared byline, or merely article where she contributed (even without a byline).

If you enable notifications (a native feature of Twitter), this can become a bot to get notifications every time there's a new Maggie Haberman article.

You can stop reading now if you want.

The details:

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman gets scoops not merely about the White House but from within the White House. Now is not the time or place to discuss whether this is good or bad. If you don't like her work, don't worry, so do people on "the other side." She pleases nobody, called both “shill!” (for Trump) and #fakenews (against Trump). 

Our opinions aside, her scoops can drop outta nowhere at 9PM on a weeknight.

For this reason, **more than one person has expressed a desire to Get a Notification Every Time There's a New Maggie Haberman article.**

And that's why I made you a little bot, @maggiet1m3.

It's not that Twitter is the only way in the world to find out about new articles. For example, the Wall Street Journal (where Maggie Haberman does NOT work) lets you enable per-author new article notifications in their app. Maggie Haberman's home, the New York Times, does not have this feature on their app (yet?).

But even if the NYT app did have this feature, many would reach for Twitter anyway. It's lightweight and easier than learning the ropes of a whole new app just for one pub, etc.

You could also follow Maggie Haberman on twitter @maggieNYT. (And many do.) But since there’s so much non-article scoop stuff, It's not the best way to keep on top of *just her new articles dropping.*

Following @maggiet1m3 and enabling notifications is best way to sift the Maggie scoop signal from the Twitter noise.

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, people.

[bluechoochoo]

guest post: Growing Your Facebook Fan Page When You’re a Broke Boi

from your host @bluechoochoo:

@Trillicon and I are in the same spot. Well, she's in way cooler spots. But professionally we share a fun challenge:

We're marketers with day jobs that use one set of tools and tactics, but we also do side projects where using those tools and tactics is not optimal, and this makes makes us have to think like beginners.

Rethinking side-project tools and tactics isn't just about a missing expense account. Even if you have all the money in the world for your indie side project, you don't have the same team. And you don't have the same time. And you probably don't have the luxury of focusing on specific objectives like you do on your day job. Using big corporate tools and approaches can be a bad fit for indie side projects. Like taking a big rig truck two blocks to go to the bodega. Not the right tool for the job. #metaphor

While the people who get the most out of this guest post might not be the experts who sling Facebook Ads all day, I encourage even gurus to check it out. Especially people who are into the algo tracking that goes on the Casual Spreadsheets (your host's side project) Algo Notebook. In her Broke Boi post, Trillicon surfaces a bit about a Facebook algorithm that I had not noticed before.

Follow her on Twitter: @trillicon, and read her post below...

So you’ve been doing your own thing out in these internet streets for a while now. You’re a social media socialite, if you will. Your Instagram is poppin’, all your tweets are fye, you’ve established a nice #aesthetic on Tumblr, and you may also keep it lit on Snapchat, YouTube, or in obscure Subreddits where they treat you like a God. The point I’m illustrating here is that you clearly know how to communicate and reach people online. You’re not Moses, but people follow you anyway.

But then there’s Facebook. You just can’t seem to get people to follow—er, like you on Facebook.

Facebook is different because she’s that shorty you used to push up on way back in the day. You know, the one who knows you far too well and doesn’t really have time for your games anymore. And now, Facebook’s time is money—money you don’t have. So how can you, as a broke boi, reach a larger audience and get more #engagement via Likes, Fans, etc.? You hack Facebook—and I’m about to show you how.  (Don’t worry, none of these tactics are considered shady/black hat tricks and definitely will not get you arrested.)

There are two approaches you can take to growth-hacking your Facebook page. And, before I even get started, I have to reiterate that time is money and since you don’t have money, you’re about to spend a lot of time on this.

Facebook Page Growth Hack #1: The DIDDY Method (a.k.a. the “Tell Your Friends, To Get With My Friends, And We Can Be Friends” method)

This strategy involves doing a lot of mixing and mingling on your personal Facebook account but it works. And if you are starting your page at zero but quickly want to get to hero status, this is the method for you.

Visit your competitor’s and/or similar brand pages

Peep the scene: do they have a lot of “fans”? Better yet, do they look like real fans or paid fans? If they look like the former then these are fans who may also be interested in your page.

Visit www.findmyfbid.com and enter in the full URL of your competitor’s/similar brand’s fan pages to get their FB IDs.

Open a new tab and enter the following URL:

www.facebook.com/search/PAGEID/likers/ (you will replace PAGEID with the numeric ID you got from FindMyFBID.com)

You are now looking at all of the people who like said page. Facebook will show you your friends and friends of friends who like the page first. Now you have the option to do the following:

Invite your friends to like your page.

Add friends of friends to your personal friends list, then invite them to like your page once they’ve accepted you. Do not add strangers because that is just creepy. You have a better chance of getting accepted by friends of friends because you are kinda already in their circle.

Send a message to friends and friends of friends and even strangers to introduce yourself and your page. This one is the most tricky. Because of Facebook’s messaging platform and privacy settings, there is a good chance that your message will go unnoticed in the “Other” inbox for days, weeks, years… That’s just hustling backwards. But if you’re really thirsty for the likes, it can’t hurt your campaign. 

Repeat until you’ve gone through all of the fans on a page. Then move on to the next page, and so on, and so forth...

I know what you’re thinking “I’m trying to run a business! Ain’t nobody got time for that!” But when you don’t have money, broke boi, time is all you have.

Facebook Page Growth Hack #2: The LILI Method (a.k.a. the “Like It or Love It” method)

This method involves some money but not much. I know you’re broke so this only costs you $9.00 and, honestly, you probably won’t even need to spend this much. This method focuses on getting your page’s content engagement up while also growing fans. Unless you are selling an international product or access to an internet-only download, this would not be the best method for gaining paying, real-life customers. The focus here is on getting eyes on the page, literally. Boring marketers call this social proof but I’m not boring so this is called stuntin’.

Post something to your fan page. This can be an article from your blog, an image you shared on Facebook, or a video. Whatever it is, it should be cool and interesting. You might not want to waste this tactic on a simple text post.

Boost the post in any (or all) of the following countries: Argentina, Mexico, Egypt, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, South Africa, Morocco, Kenya, Peru, Brazil, Guyana, Aruba or Curacao. I know, I know… you probably have questions about this. I have some answers below but for now just boost the post in one of (or, again, all of) those places.

You’ll notice that Likes will start coming in relatively quickly. But you’re broke so you will also probably notice the amount you’re spending. That’s the beauty of this method. You end up spending almost no money. Just following these three steps got me over 500 engagements on two posts in less than 2 hours. I spent $2.78 on one and $5.41 on the other.

Once you’ve got a solid number of engagements—your social proof—share the post to your personal page. This furthers the organic reach of the boosted post. Your friends will see how wildly popular your #content is and they will join the bandwagon. (If you’re a Warriors fan, you already know how this goes. Shout out to #DubNation!)

End the promotion on your boosted post.

View all of the “likers” and invite them to like your page. 

Repeat all of the above steps anytime you have a really good post.

Okay, so about those questions. Why those countries? The easy answer is that engagement in those countries quite literally cost you pennies. The more complex answer is that you can get hyperlocal in most of those countries and target US Military bases, technically, if you wanted to keep your audience US focused. You have options.

Small caveat with the LILI method: it seems to work best on Saturdays and Sundays. I wish I could tell you why that was but I’m not even going to pretend to know. It’s possible people are less active on Facebook during the weekends so, there’s that.

Anyway, those two hacks are great ways to grow on Facebook when you’re broke. Once your pockets get a little fatter, you should definitely switch your style up so you can reach the customers that actually make you money. In the beginning, though, everything is about appearances and these hacks are the best way to look like you’re really popping, even if you’re not.

[casualsheets-blog]

LinkedIn’s hard limits (not rate limits)

Every social platform has both hard limits (you can do [activity] a maximum of [number] of times) and rate limits (you can do [activity] a bunch, just not all at once, slow down, buddy).

Casual Spreadsheets is usually more focused on a social platform’s mysterious algorithms (and rate limits), not their boring old “hard limits.” This focus is partly because algorithms and rate limits are less documented secret black boxes, so it’s more useful and fun to talk about them. Feels kinda like gossip. Hard limits can be easier to track down in official documentation, so researching them for you all feels less helpful.

But sometimes even hard limits aren’t public. Or they are, but they’re not organized in an easy-to-read way. So here we are.

Some LinkedIn HARD LIMITS, neatly written. Let’s go!

Maximum 1st-degree connections: 30,000 (source: LinkedIn, June 2016)

Maximum number of groups you can be a member of: 100: (source: LinkedIn, June 2017)

Maximum number of groups you can be have pending memberships in: 10 (getting into rate limit territory, people) (source: LinkedIn, June 2017)

Maximum number of (@) mentions you can put in a group conversations: 20 (source: LinkedIn, June 2017)

Maximum number of groups you can manage: 30 (source: LinkedIn, June 2017)

Maximum number of members a group can have: 20,000 (source: LinkedIn, June 2017)

Maximum number people you can follow: 5000 (Not connections (those are mutual) just follow (one-way connections). Also, this is unconfirmed from an unofficial blog post from 2014)) 

Dunzo.

subscribe to the free Casual Spreadsheets mailing list (it’s called Casual Spreadsheets Sufferers) #lowexpectations

tolerate Casual Spreadsheets on Twitter: @casualsheets​

[bluechoochoo]

A lot of my followers are fellow douchebag marketers. Thought I’d cross-post this from my side-project tumblr @casualsheets. (If you’re into that sort thing, subscribe to the free mailing list above.) If you’re not, run away. This shit is boring.

[casualsheets-blog]

Casual Spreadsheets has a free newsletter for ambivalent marketers. After you’ve watched a few hours of YouTube, you should subscribe.

[bluechoochoo]

Casual Spreadsheets is my side project dedicated to helping you win dumb arguments with suits in meetings about social media. Subscribe to the free mailing list. It will occasionally try to get you to buy the paid version. But even if you never pay for anything, there’ll be lots of free goodies you can use when somebody brags about their Facebook views and you have to defend why you rolled your eyes.

AND YES TUMBLR IS FEATURED IN THE SPREADSHEETS.

[bluechoochoo]

Layoffs & Tumblr the Centipede

A hazy day for Tumblr. A shoe dropped. After a year of dancing around, the Yahoo (Tumblr owner)/Verizon deal closed. There were immediate layoffs across their new Frankenstein org, “Oath.” Some of these layoffs hit inside Tumblr, and that’s bad. In addition to the real life talented human beings impacted by these layoffs, the move is a warning and reminder- Tumblr is no longer in the protective purgatory of pre-Verizon Yahoo. (Before anybody reactively claps back with a list of annoying things about Yahoo: please do not 1) confuse me recognizing the cover Yahoo gave Tumblr with blind adoration 2) forget Tumblr’s pre-Yahoo reality.)

Any acquisition is full of question marks. But Tumblr’s place in Verizon’s future is especially mysterious coz there’s been few indicators of what Verizon thinks Tumblr is. 

Even at its most popular Tumblr is not just underestimated, but under-observed. This is exhausting for us advocates. Not only do we have to plead that Tumblr is good and special, we have to explain what this weirdo creature is in the first place.

Now in a bit of a lull (Tumblr’s growth has stalled, but is not tanking), Tumblr is similarly neglected by people who pay attention to its peers. On the one hand, when things are bad, this is nice: who wants a pile-on or a bunch of bad punditry about “What went wrong?” The quality of attention Tumblr gets from industry media is not great. (Its temporary association with a Marissa Mayer era Yahoo doesn’t help. Both Yahoo and Marissa Mayer are magnets for a type of gossipy analysis that values messy intrigue and pot shots over deeper research. Example? Years of examining Marissa Mayer’s social graces while pre-Mayer Yahoo! technical debt festered into post-Mayer Yahoo! Mail security crisis.) So while I don’t miss the drive-by Tumblr shots, “Tumblr is all porn, LOL!” (Never gets old, dude.) I do wonder if Tumblr and its admirers could benefit from the sustained attention of more reporters who truly understand it. Tumblr tends to get covered breathlessly by cool-hunting advertising/marketing press (whose understanding of Tumblr is minimal and therefore vulnerable to becoming PR stenography of whatever Tumblr ad exec happens to be in power at the moment) and heartlessly by public market tech reporters who compare everything to Facebook scale, and wave away Tumblr’s immense cultural influence (which punches way above its weight).

Of course, being “understood” matters less when your value is above reproach. And Tumblr’s is definitely not. But this post is neither intervention, nor love letter. This post is just a marker of a moment in Tumblr’s history. I’m a Tumblr user, not a journalist. But I just don’t trust there’ll be much documentation of this as an inflection point for Tumblr. Lots of reporters will write about “layoffs at Oath.” And there may even be some Tumblr-specific pile-on. But for those of us straining to see what the future holds for this platform we dig, remembering this date will be helpful. Whether you’re tracking bad stuff like account suspensions, DMCA take-downs, or good stuff like ad revenue and account growth, we should mark this date on a chart.

John McCain loves saying variations of, “This is a centipede. I guarantee you there will be more shoes to drop.” There are both foreboding and hopeful interpretations of this. It also can be an incredibly useless thing to say! Saying there are more shoes to drop is a way of not committing to thinking anything about the future.

Who knows what Verizon will do with Tumblr? Not me. But I backed up my Tumblr today.

[bluechoochoo]

How to scrape, I mean EXPLORE, accounts that Like a Facebook Profile Page

What accounts are Liking a Profile Page? This is harder to find out on Facebook than it is on Twitter and Instagram. Twitter and Instagram let you tap/click Followers, and browse them as a list. Twitter accounts even have a regular public “followers” url you can browse: https://twitter.com/BabadookMovie/followers.

If you're asking, "Why would you want to browse accounts who Like a Facebook Page?" this post is not for you. You’re delightful. I was once brand new like you. Never lose this part of yourself. But some of us have seen some things. And those things lead us know why you want to browse the Likers of a Facebook Profile Page.

There are basically two steps to get a list of Likers of a Facebook Profile Page:

Find the NUMERIC ID of the Facebook Profile Page you're trying to scrape (I mean explore)

Plug that Numeric ID into this URL: https://www.facebook.com/search/NumericPageID/likers/

Also: You gotta be logged in to Facebook.

That's it. Let's unpack those steps.

We can't use the cosmetic name of a Profile Page to explore it. Every Facebook Profile Page has a numeric ID. There are multiple ways to get this ID, but in this post I'll direct you to Find My Facebook ID. Guess what it does.

All you have to do is plug in URL of the Facebook Profile Page page. In this example, we'll use the Babadook Movie Page.

Then you’ll get the numeric ID

Next just plug that into https://www.facebook.com/search/NumericPageID/likers/.

YOU’RE DONE.

I don't want to complicate your life by explaining that intriguing URL. That's a Facebook Graph Search URL. If you wanna know more... whew!

And if you want more where this came from, get on the Casual Spreadsheets FREE mailing list.

[bluechoochoo]

Bug: Unable to add Mailchimp RSS feed to Digg Reader

Mailchimp newsletters can support RSS feeds (I think by default). The feed looks legit in the browser, but I’m unable to add it to my RSS reader (Digg Reader).

I get an error from Digg Reader: “No results found” 

I’ve contacted @digg reader support, and will update this when I hear back. Always possible I’m overlooking something.

[bluechoochoo]

[bluechoochoo]

Storify + Medium bug: Trouble adding Medium URLs to a Storify Story

Not to freak you out, but... When you try to add a Medium URL (via URL tab) to a Storify​ Story, you get a strange error:  “Cannot read property 'video' of undefined”

You can reproduce this on almost any Medium URL (from a “publication” post or an individual account’s post). I specify almost any Medium URL because I have some fuzzy memory of a Medium URL working recently.

It’s also worth noting that I got same error with a non-Medium URL.

Example URLs that trigger Storify error:

Non-Medium URL:

https://dataskeptic.com/blog/episodes/2017/reinventing-sponsored-search-auctions

Medium URLs:

https://news.distrokid.com/ludacris-distrokid-and-the-future-of-music-marketing-62a303e7e1bd

https://medium.com/@shl/sell-directly-on-medium-ecf9eabf9434

https://backchannel.com/inside-facebooks-ai-machine-7a869b922ea7

https://medium.com/literati-magazine/q-a-new-medium-membership-paywall-3df18aac0c50

(This post mostly for the benefit of support ticket I opened up with Storify. But might as well make these notes public so other people running into this issue don’t have that, “Is it just me or...” anxiousness. Finding out you’re not alone with bug you’re encountering? Priceless.)

[bluechoochoo]

[FIXED] Tumblr bug: Unable to post Soundcloud tracks to Tumblr as native audio post

[update April 4, 2017: Issue now fixed. Can’t find public Tumblr verification, but both Soundcloud support forum participants and my own test show Soundcloud posts now work.]

[update March 31, 2017: This issue is still happening. Soundcloud posted update to their community forum repeating issue is on Tumblr’s side, and there’s still no eta for the fix. :/]

When you try to post a Soundcloud URL as a native audio Tumblr post, you might get the following error from Tumblr:

"Gah! We had a problem contacting SoundCloud. Please wait one moment and try again."

This is a bug on Tumblr’s side, not Soundcloud’s.

If you Google this error, you might find an old post suggesting that this is due to the owner of the track configuring permissions to disallow certain types of external sharing. While this is a thing that results in same error message, the current reason for the error is that there a bug on the Tumblr side.

TUMBLR @support KNOWS ABOUT THE ERROR according to this @soundcloud community forum post. (Goes without saying that Soundcloud also knows about the error, according to that same thread, which has official Soundcloud people int it.)

As of March 22, 2017, this has been going on for 12 days.

Because I’ve seen some Soundcloud native audio posts in the Tumblr wild in the past few days, We gotta assume this bug doesn’t affect every single Soundcloud:Tumblr interface. But here are workflows that I’ve tried to use that failed:

Tumblr web audio post (via pasted Soundcloud URL)

Soundcloud web share interface -> Tumblr 

tumblr ios (soundcloud track via tumblr audio search) (silent failure) 

Some people in the Soundcloud community forum also report getting a different error message:

“sorry only soundcloud track and set urls are supported at this time”

Anyway, just wanted to document this, especially the Soundcloud forum posts (which update), coz Tumblr isn’t so great at system status things.

The reason I looked into this is coz I wanted to share something from Soundcloud on Tumblr. This was that track. (Metronomy - The Look (King Krule Remix)).  How could you now be curious at this point? Go listen.

[david]

why are there so many pornbots and are you working to get rid of them or is that not one of your priorities

We are absolutely working on this right now. It is a very high priority, and will come in two parts: (1) more controls around what you see (and don’t) in your dashboard and (2) major improvements to our heuristics and detection of pornbot follow spam – some of the most frustrating spam we’ve been dealing with this year.

[bluechoochoo]

Here @david talks about pesky “follow spam,” which is tricky to throttle coz by many measures it doesn’t look like spam.

I wonder if they’ve looked at some of the ways Twitter throttles follow spam with rate limits. They don’t suspend the accounts (which in terms of content, are not technically forbidden on either network), but they do some clever things to make them more “quiet.” Not shadow-banned. But their behavior results in a lot fewer notifications in terms of both email and app/web activity feeds. This makes follow-spam less “worth it” for its practitioners.

[casualsheets-blog]

Can you make money on Tumblr or not? Let’s check in on Tumblr’s partner program.

Something Casual Spreadsheets tracks is how social platforms help you make money natively. When it comes to Tumblr, there hasn’t been much to track.

TUMBLR FAMOUS, NOT TUMBLR RICH

While Tumblr has lots of creative users indirectly compensated for their work, (by getting discovered via their Tumblr, then getting opportunities elsewhere) getting paid directly for work put on Tumblr is a different story. There are rogue/underground ways to profit off your tumblr. But if you wanna be legit, options are limited.

BUT: TUMBLR’S PARTNER PROGRAM

In July 2016 Tumblr announced a new ad system with ads appearing automatically on external-facing blogs (with opt-out option). They also announced revenue sharing with users, taking some of the sting out of the blunt experience the new ads created. Even if the product wasn’t as well-executed as YouTube’s revenue sharing system, the model was the similar. Theoretically user incentives and Tumblr incentives were a little more aligned. Putting work into your Tumblr could be good for Tumblr and good for you. 

BUT WHERE’S THE REVENUE SHARING

While the ads have been served for seven months, it’s not clear users are getting a cut.

Tumblr’s support documentation suggests the revenue sharing part of the program isn’t up yet.

Tumblr’s @support blog post from last year suggest they wanted this in production before the end of 2016.

All we can say right now is we plan to launch a partner program sometime in 2016.

But as of March 2017, Tumblr hasn’t moved much beyond the “announced” phase of revenue sharing.

So that’s where we’re at. There was an announcement, and half of a big product change, and a big communication gap. Will update this post when/if I hear from Tumblr.

I’ll lay off the weird history and evolution of Tumblr ads, but here’s some further reading:

Article about the various ad networks Tumblr inventory has appeared in

the Casual Spreadsheets Abandoning Tumblr spreadsheet about major Tumblrs that have left/abandoned Tumblr

The Casual Spreadsheets Native Social Monetization spreadsheet. This tracks all the *native* ways social platforms help you make money.

Follow @casualsheets​ on Twitter if you’re patient

Get a paid subscription to Casual Spreadsheets, if you’re nasty and/or want exclusive spreadsheets. #glamour

[bluechoochoo]

In other words, whatever happened to the partner program and revenue sharing?

[bluechoochoo]

complete show

[bluechoochoo]

[bluechoochoo]

If you’re somebody who plans and thinks in “storyboards,” you’ll be really into the way Snap Inc visualized how Snapchat Stories (and the ads inside them) work in the Snapchat App.

They included the diagram above in their S-1 filing. 

If you’re interested, the S-1 includes a bunch of other great diagrams and schematics in there, and I extracted and labeled all of them them in a Casual Spreadsheets post.

[bluechoochoo]

Tag referrers on Tumblr (like Medium)

Did you know Medium tells you how people get to your post from tag feeds? It would be so nice if Tumblr did that, too. Tag monitoring is pretty dang big on Tumblr... but silent.

(And it goes without saying Tumblr has no stats dashboard for your blog at all, beyond a “top post” item.)

1) Would love for Tumblr to have blog stats (like Medium)

2) Would especially love for Tumblr to let us see how tags drive people to our blog (like Medium).

Reminder: many big blogs have Tumblr for Medium because of its handy features, like this. :(

[bluechoochoo]

lil launch: new free version of casual spreadsheets

Your favorite place to creep social media and showbiz data (my side project Casual Spreadsheets) has a new site.

What’s the big deal? Well, before it was a mess of disconnected spreadsheets. Now it’s still a mess. But of connected spreadsheets. You can browse/discover all the other spreadsheets from wherever you are.

For example, want to see what big Tumblrs have switched to Medium? Check out the Abandoning Tumblr spreadsheet.

If you dig the tool, consider subscribing to the paid version, which gets you direct access to the Google Drive where all the sheets are, better permissions for copying and downloading, and bonus SECRET SHEETS.