Online Presence – Prototyping

Posted byrusshaylockbcmPosted inBCM114

Prototyping has allowed me to go from blogging to a small handful of random readers to me blogging to a strong crowd of interested fans who are able to partake in discussion on the topics I write about. This has been the section of the feedback loop that has provided me with the most clear and concise feedback, be it from users explicitly or from analytics and has forced me to improve the quality of my work as it is under scrutiny and comment from a more vocal user group. 

Reddit has been the life-blood of my Digital Artefact so far, and was a #fist change in my process as I learned how to best use it on the go by testing and prototyping to discover the most effective user involvement strategies. Before I was only on Twitter, but I was forced to break that loop and access a program that would assist me in achieving my social utility of opinion based content by a young cricket journalist.

I have developed Karma through various engagements on r/Cricket and have used it as a primary source of posting, with Twitter now a more secondary and less specific place where I post. It has turned out to be better for monitoring other pages and how they create cricket content.

I went into using this platform with a fair amount of naivety, as I mentioned in my tweets many months ago. I started out simply searching for feedback, but came to discover I would have to be more current and aware of my surroundings to get it with some work. In BCM114 style this was a slight #fefo, but after observing what Reddit could be I wasn’t going to give up on it. 

I started visiting Reddit more, and got my first exposure by posting a visual I’d made, which while it was my content it was news and it didn’t quite follow my social utility, but it did give me confidence to make future posts after seeing how users interact in such a setting. I then decided to stick to my social utility and, instead of being a news source, throw my opinion into the ring. 

When I saw how many people could be reached with a post like this, I felt much more confident and wanted to get my own content out there.

What I’ve found to be most effective following prototyping for a few weeks on Reddit has been starting a discussion with an article linked and ready. This has seen my articles go from at first receiving less than 10 views through Twitter to nearly 50 when first posted, and with Reddit giving them greater staying power once upvoted they continue to climb over time. The event I have focused my content on is just beginning, so these older articles have seen an upturn in viewership even though I wrote them many weeks ago in preparation for the event and having more attention on it. 

I posted this article last month, but thanks to Reddit and the lead-up to the tournament I’ve been focusing on, it has continually provided an opinion based source of content for viewers, while giving them the opportunity to comment.

The best way I have discovered to garner viewership on Reddit has been posting content with a visual and a link all ready to go in late afternoon, when subcontinental, English and Australian viewers are more likely to be online. However, there are many ways to use the platform and I am testing this one at the moment to gauge it’s reliability and usefulness in receiving user feedback and engagement.

This article has received more than 70 views, including 50 on the day it was posted, as well as create a space for opinions to be shared through the comments, which had over 40 users involved. When posting prototypes on Twitter, I would be lucky to receive five views, often with no comments.

Reddit has helped me as I do presume I am wrong and can be doing things better, and direct feedback on my content in terms of fact-checking and best ways of using the platform are ever evolving and enjoyable as they help to stop guess-work and sloppy mistakes, which went unnoticed when I only used Twitter. This came to a head when I posted the below article on Reddit after writing it on my blog with very low readership a couple of weeks before.

I posted this article to Reddit after writing it about a week beforehand. It was outdated and poorly done, and I only posted it as I was trying to get anything and everything on Reddit to gain viewership. This taught me to be to stick to opinion as my sources for this article proved unsatisfactory. The post is now hidden. This may seem small but was crucial in my prototyping to be more strategic and stick to my social utility of opinionated content.

There is still more to be done and I definitely feel as though I am still in a permanent Beta as I am always looking at articles to better suit users and will be looking to improve the overall appearance of content to synthesise it and show it as a body of work as I look forward to the final presentation of my DA. I would like to eventually not rely on Reddit as much and have my site seen as something people find and wish to visit from a wider range of sources, however the opportunity to engage with it and have some tangible success in terms of views has been a great boost for my Digital Artefact so far.

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