TLS on Facebook and Twitter

I see there are already threads for Facebook and Twitter, but they were made when TLS first started using those services. I want to talk about both of them, and the state they are in now.

First, Facebook. Our page has 795 likes, which is pretty impressive, I think. 795 people will see whatever we decide to share on our page there. Except that we don't seem to share much at all. In the last year, we've shared just three links on there, of which only two have been for TLS content. That means there have been dozens of great posts on the front page which have completely been ignored. Why?

Twitter, on the other hand, has seen even less activity. In the last year, we have made exactly zero tweets on the @TheLifestream account, despite having 235 followers. Again, why?

We should be using both platforms to publicise TLS, especially as we've had quite a lot of community events lately, which it would have been perfect for. There's the race, two community playthroughs, commentaries, "let's play" videos (though those seem to have died down again), the character battle, the soundtrack vote, and more. The race alone showed how events like that can attract new members, so I'd say we've missed a huge opportunity to get the most out of them, publicity-wise.

If any more evidence was needed: I run my own blog and I get about 50% of my traffic from Twitter and Facebook. But it's not just about posting links and getting traffic, it's about engaging with people. We should be having conversations on those two services with people, getting our name even more well-known than it already is, finding new resources, creating new partnerships, and more.

It's not too late, of course. We could and should start using those social networks. Shademp has set out his vision for the site and Fangu is doing a lot of work towards achieving it. Whenever the next version of The Lifestream is launched, let's make it social.

I know I haven't been here very long, but I think I've already shown that I'm willing to put time and effort in for this site, having organised many of the events I listed above. So I am happy to volunteer to run our social media pages, if there is nobody better qualified to do so!

When it comes to facebook, I think more of the frontpage authors should be admins on the facebook page so they can report their stories there.

When I was writing my Final Dungeon series on the front page I Was posting each entry on my personal page and I remember wishing I was an admin so I could post it there, and I should have posted about that then and it slipped my mind. So I think any frontpage author that wants it, at least, should be given admin privileges.

AS for Twitter, I honestly am rather confused by the whole thing and have never done anything with it. So if you want to do it, have at it I remember the password is some Mako-deriding phrase...I'll try and track that down for you

oh yeah, i meant to ask if anyone would like admin access to the FB page. I think Tenny has the twitter page. We need people who have time and motivation to keep them going

Also, theres something odd about the facebook thing. 700 or so new likes appeared a few weeks ago, mostly female. I thought it was odd, so i looked into it. Im pretty sure those arent real people. Seems like some sort of bot thing

Yeah, I made the twitter page awhile back and we just never got around to keep it updated on a regular basis.

Flint, if you're interested in keeping the Twitter page updated, let me know and I'll send you the acc info.

I think it would help if we include a 'publish on facebook / twitter' plugin to WP, which posts something onto FB / Twitter whenever an article is published. The authors would have to include a summary on there, though. But yeah, they should be reminded to update FB/Twitter too.

With that amount of likes / followers, it's sure to bring in moar visitors, . We don't actually 'publish' much outside of our safe little corner of the internets.

And it's threads like this that make me wish I was actually involved into the site / felt motivated to do more with it, .

Michael Scott said:

Flint, if you're interested in keeping the Twitter page updated, let me know and I'll send you the acc info.

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Thanks. I think I'd like to wait to see if there are any further suggestions/objections before starting work, but I'll definitely contact you soon about that.

Cthulhu said:

I think it would help if we include a 'publish on facebook / twitter' plugin to WP, which posts something onto FB / Twitter whenever an article is published. The authors would have to include a summary on there, though. But yeah, they should be reminded to update FB/Twitter too.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. And it works both ways: we could include a small widget of most recent Tweets, for example, on the new site design. So long as we're using it for more than just "here are our latest articles", that is, otherwise it'd just be duplicating what we already have on the front page.

Yes; in fact, we could use twitter / FB to post about stuff that isn't really relevant to our frontpage, i.e. promote other sites / people, threads, posts, etc.

I've been running my own page recently, "Shademp's FF7 Page" and at present I have 49 followers. I use it both to let people know about new FF7 discoveries as well as trying to promote people for projects.
I went ahead now and liked the TLS facebook both with my personal account and as my "page".

While I will continue using my own page and doing "my own thing", some of what I post will deserve to be on the TLS fb page as well. Though for this to happen, the TLS page would need a more well-defined spectrum of what type of items to post about.

Flintlock is turning out to be the social entrepreneur here, so if he does not feel too busy already then I think he should be the official manager of the TLS facebook page.

Should the facebook page only be about content generated by TLS? At present this is the category that all news items (except for the "Please vote for Christina McBride" item) are about. Should it be about the FFVII franchise and fandom in general? What do you guys think?

*EDIT: I see that while writing this message Yop posted that the fb page should expand to posting about content outside of TLS.*

I do not have a Twitter account and I know that if I made one, I wouldn't be using it. At least not at this time. This also means I can't involve myself in discussions about Twitter.

I feel the pain of those who must share things on the bazillion social networks out there, but I think it is worth it.

Thoughts on Front page style here? I still think the top banner of "happening NAO" is still a good idea. The article preview system doesn't need to be 100% wide. I'm thinking 15% wide boxed for both Twitter and FB output, depending on what excisting plugins for WP looks like. I've already fiddled with the Twitter plugin, hell I even wrote an article (in Norwegian) on how to change its design.

If you don't want to have a separate widget, I think it would be fine to include stuff like "The Lifestream on Twitter: hey guys what's up" in the happening nao thing.

With "boxes" I meant widgets, by the way. Widgets doesn't have to show up for every single page (not "Page" here) of a site, so it can be a Widget that just shows up on the Front page as a content box.

The "happening now" can be set to show the last Tweet if nothing else is happening at the moment.

*cough*Googleplus*cough*

Seriously, I think that should be included too I'm always finding really interesting stuff via Googleplus and TLS has loads of interesting stuffs

I like Google Plus, and I have an account, but the main thing that stops me from using it regularly is that I don't know many other people who use it. There'd be no harm at all in setting up an account for TLS there as well, so long as someone (me? I'm happy with the title of "social entrepreneur" ) is willing to update it regularly.