Apache Lake I: A Trip Report

[jbeegoode]

Apache Lake I: A Trip Report is on the website:
http://thefreerangenaturist.org/2015/10/16/apache-lake-i-a-trip-report/
A short postscript story with about 20 photos will follow on Monday, if nothing gets in the way.
Jbee

[nuduke]

Jbee (and DF),

I have been reading your latest blogs and rereading some of the older ones.  You have accumulated a large corpus of material in a very short time and it's wonderful.  For me the pictures speak 1000 words each and I have rather taken to skim reading the narrative BUT I pulled myself up short as I realised how ungenerous it was not to fully appreciate the enormous amount of writing you have been doing.  Yours must now be one of the pre-eminent naturist blogs rivalling even this supraexcellent site of our lovely hosts. Well done and keep it up - I just don't know where you find the time to write and go out on all your lovely trips!

Your avid reader

John

[nudewalker]

I remember doing the drive to Roosevelt Lake in a rented Lincoln Town Car. After all the years driving in snow here I wished that we had four wheel drive. It was  a white knuckle experience to say the least! Anyway, am I correct in thinking that this is the same road from Phoenix? Just too lazy to try and find the map used back then which is buried in archives of travels from long ago. Keep posting those kinds of adventures and it will help the less fortunate of us that have to face winters wrath.

[jbeegoode]

Nuduke and all, I'm looking for your help:
 It accumulated over several years. There will be over one hundred trip reports eventually. Some need more rewrite than others. My writing has improved so I am finding myself enjoying reliving, reviving memories, and details that I wouldn't have done before. The website demands a higher standard of product by its context, so things that I wrote for, as DF refers "the boys," has to be cleaned up, but I'm enjoying it, when not rushed. I'm able to insert more pics into the text in a more fluid manner, to add to the expression of the experience, but I'm finding more time consumed to do this, but it is fun looking through the old photo albums.

So, my plan to spend a couple of hours each week simply republishing old trip reports, with a new adventure once or twice a month, occasionally gets bloated to several hours. Nah, I lie, not occasionally, often, because it is fun.

I'm looking to turn on a larger audience and looking for ways to attract readers. The purpose is to promote free range naturism and expand the possibilities of people's lives through entertainment, primarily. Last week, laid up, I contacted every organized non-landed naturist group in the country via email, hoping their interest would enrich their newsletters. There were thirty or forty and the same amount of new readers at the site the next two days. Now, perhaps they will tell their readers and friends. The written response told me that they appreciated that I'm not soliciting for commercial interest, but just as an act of service, a gift.

I've been submitting articles to TNS asking them to mention the website, if published. I'm targeting articles that appeal to specific group's interest on the net. The carnuding article drew several hundred in a couple of days, and I have a list of their interests.

I'm soliciting you all for ideas as to how to attract readers and get talk going. I'm new to this. Any and all, please. I especially would like Europe to know about it. Got leads, ideas experience, who to contact? PM's are good, too.

The more return from readership, the more I am inspired and enjoy.
Thank-you,
Jbee

[nuduke]

Before I add anything to this, jbee, let me say that, at best, I am the one eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, the baroom lawyer, a little learning is a dangerous thing and empty vessels make the most sound!  All that is to say that whilst I have a tiny bit of credential, I'm just regurgitating general advice from others.  I haven't followed best practice with my own business website and don't really collect any activity on that so I'm no one to talk really.  [Mind you, I don't need a lot of hits on my site - it's there as a sort of elaborate business card that I can refer people to that want to know what I can do and where I've been!].

My tiny credentials (no puns please, Ian!) are that I have managed website developments and am just finishing off one project and am heading for the end of another.  The developers in those projects all preach SEO and basically it revolves around a few key factors such as frequent change activity on the site (no problem for you there - regular posting counts), encouraging links into your site and creating links out.

One way to create readers for your blog is to engage in activity on other blogs and get into the conversation, making sure that your blog link is a feature (as you do with us).  Don't be pushy, just engage with the community.  Refer to your blogs and people will have a look. Get your link on newsfeeds, social media of all sorts.  Similarly, put other blog links into yours.

You also need good metadata.  If the invisible side of each page carries appropriate tag and search engine info that helps too.

It's also who you know - get people to recommend your blog.  Mind you, this is a tricky area.  Getting more people to read your blog opens up the probability that people who don't want to see it might see it and cause a fuss.  You have to be prepared to 'go public' I guess.  Clever webby people can probably already trace you from your blog site.  There's bound to be advice on the wordpress help pages and forums.

My best 'getting noticed' experience, I guess, was with Twitter.  A few years ago (2009/10) when Twitter was rather newer, I went to a presentation by a successful businessman who gave the following advice on how to get followed on Twitter - Answer:  follow others.
I went home sceptical and started following other local business people with similar lines of business.  I followed a few tens of them, adding them slowly over a period of weeks and continuing to add over a few months.  After a few weeks (say about 6-9) I had about 300 followers!  Ludicrous.  Mind you I'm down to about 180 now as I have stopped tweeting as the river of time-wasting nonsense that flows out of twitter beggars belief.  I'm still not sure what it does for people or their businesses or social life.  Twitter is not a pensioner thing - life's too short!

Anyway, the lesson learned is that if you dive into a lake of shared consciousness so to speak, that's how you spread your word abroad.  The other lesson is that it takes time and is quite tedious to do.

So basically what you've been doing, Jbee, is all to the good.  The other thing that the social media gurus preach is that it happens slowly.  It's a chain reaction.  If there are enough particles released then one produces two and two produce 4 but if there are too few particles then the reaction dies out.  So keep planting those seeds if you want to reap a bumper crop.

Final thoughts: Your sweat friends may be influential in spreading the word.  I've always had a lot of success by giving presentations to conferences (not on naturism, obviously!).  Nothing does your reputation so much good as standing on the podium and hopefully making a decent job of getting your point over.  People just naturally conclude you are an expert and seek you out (how wrong they can be, in my case!!)

Hope that is useful.  There are no magic wands.  Fame on the web is no different than fame in a society.  You have to create it by what you do (philanthropically helping people with your expertise is often a wonderful advert), what you say, who you meet, who you listen to and who you know.

Profoundly,

John

[jbeegoode]

Thank-you very much Nuduke.
Jbee