Journal

Do Kids See What We Wish We Could See?

A couple of weeks ago, my three year old daughter Salem was still awake and chattering away in her bedroom, despite being in bed for over an hour.

When I went in to give her a cuddle and ask why she was still awake, she whispered to me, “She’s here.”

“Who’s here?” I asked.

“The girl.”

I pulled away a little and looked at Salem, who was looking intently behind my shoulder. “What girl?”

“The girl in the corner.”

I looked behind me to the corner of Salem’s room, where there was a little bit of shadow, but couldn’t see anything. I looked back at Salem, who smiled at me and said, “She’s gone now.”

To say I was a little freaked out is understating it. It probably didn’t help that I had recently watched The Conjuring, where a family has a not-so-pleasant experience with spirits in their new home.

It’s not the first time that Salem has had “conversations” in her room that we can hear through the monitor. Usually we just put it down to her telling herself stories to fall asleep, but after that recent “the girl” exchange, I’m not so sure.

Seems I’m not alone, either…

The Vision Only Kids Have?

When I shared this story on Facebook, many of my friends left examples of their own kids.

CREEPY! But probably true. Lauren used to wave and laugh at someone in the corner of her room when she was a baby.??She also knew my dead father’s name when she was only 2 years old…also super creepy!
I used to volunteer at a daycare. One of the girls named her boy doll “Mushu” – which is kind of an odd, Asian name, right? So her mom asked her why she named him so, and the girl said “He told me.”
My son also had “a friend” growing up. He talked about him often and one night while checking on him before bed I saw him in the corner of the room watching over him. We even had to have a chair at the dinner table for him.

The overarching connection between each example is that they all refer to children, and not adults.

In addition to those, another friend suggested the reason for this.

Some children are more sensitive than others. Spirits know when people can see them and are drawn to those people.

Which made me wonder if the innocence of young children allow spirits to be seen as physical beings, and we lose that as we grow into adults and see life in a different way?

The Time I Saw a UFO

I think I believe in ghosts, or whatever spirits are, or the friends that my daughter and the kids in the examples above talk to. I’m not 100% sure, but there’s too much to discard completely.

Do all kids simply have imaginary conversations, or are there spirits of kids that died early that roam the earth looking for friends to keep them company?

Do all kids find a storytelling gift early, and it’s only when they go to school and are taught that it’s “bad” to use your imagination that they lose the will to converse with someone that isn’t there?

[clickToTweet tweet=”Are our beliefs and imagination shaped by adults that don’t remember their own childhood?” quote=”Are our beliefs and imagination shaped by adults that don’t remember their own childhood?”]

The reason I’m not sold on the belief that ghosts don’t exist is that many people claim that there’s no such thing as UFO’s – and yet I clearly saw one when I was a teenager in Scotland.

My sister and I were coming home from a movie, and something caught my eye. I looked up, and there was a light traveling at crazy speed, in three different directions in about the same amount of seconds.

The light stopped, hovered, rose, and then dropped. Then it scuttled one way, then another. It took one final swoop, for about five seconds, then shot up into the air beyond the clouds.

I looked at my sister, who was nine at the time, and she said that was the coolest thing she’s ever seen. To this day, I believe we both saw a UFO.

So if I saw something that so many adults say doesn’t exist, doesn’t it stand to reason our kids see things we say don’t exist?

The Things We Wish We Saw

I don’t know.

I do know that I’m extremely jealous of my little girl, if she has a ghost for a friend. How cool would that be? As long as it’s like Casper and not Chucky…

While I don’t recall our son Ewan having the same experience, my wife recalls him also having conversations, but the cats we used to have kept the ghosts at bay (seemingly cats are very good at this kind of thing, as shared by others on that same Facebook thread).

As an adult, it’d be nice to have something whimsical, or imaginary, but that’s also real to believe in.

The world is a cruel, cold place at times. It’d be nice to be able to see old friends no longer here, or loved ones long since passed.

But perhaps the realities of the world have made it too late for us to go back to that.

It reminds me of the scene in the Christmas movie, The Polar Express. The main character, a little boy who refound his belief in Santa Claus after an adventure to the North Pole, is given one of the bells from Santa’s sleigh.

On Christmas Day, only the boy and his little sister can hear the chime when they shake the bell. His parents can’t. As the voiceover of the boy-now-an-adult shares, even his sister lost the ability to hear the bell as she got older.

Not him, though – because he’d seen with his own eyes, and he believed.

Perhaps we’ve lost the ability to see beyond our eyes, and believe that which we no longer do. If so, that’s a shame.

Then again, we could always?let our kids show us the way again…

So What Happens When You Remove Your Social Sharing Buttons?

A month ago, I published a post about an experiment I was going to run – what happens when you remove social share buttons from your blog?

The gist of the experiment was simple: having run a bunch of tests through Google Analytics, it was clear that – as the direction of content here shifted – social was becoming less important a driver of traffic for me.

Don’t get me wrong – that’s not the same as saying social media has no value. Far from it. However, there’s a difference between being valuable and being a referral source.

Additionally, social share buttons – depending on how they’re coded – can actually hinder the experience of the visitor, especially if they’re on mobile browsers.

There was also the question of whether having share buttons took away attention from more important CTAs, or calls to action.

For example, would a sharer then not comment, or subscribe, if they’ve already taken the action of sharing a post?

To find out, I decided I’d remove sharing buttons for a month, and see what happens – and this was the result.

Removing Shares and the Percentage Impact on Traffic

In my post from last month, I shared what the breakdown was of the traffic here. From that post:

As you can see from the image above, social traffic counted for just under 10% of all traffic to this blog, with search by and far the leader.

Given that social networks can up and leave at any time, or make changes to the way they benefit bloggers and content providers, this wasn’t such a big issue for me.

Note: As my friend Jim Connolly advised, some “dark sharing” of posts on social media may not be reported as social traffic, and skew the numbers.

@DannyBrown Hi mate. Been doing some research this afternoon. Seems Google analytics still “thinks” traffic from Twitter / FB is “direct.
— Jim Connolly (@JimConnolly) December 12, 2015

While you can work in some campaign tricks in Google Analytic to overcome some of this, it’s a fair point by Jim.

So, for the results of the experiment, I’ll be comparing like-for-like on social traffic only, as defined by Google.

With that in mind, here’s the current breakdown of the 30 days of traffic since removing the share buttons.

Organic search – 58.1%
Direct – 24.5%
Social – 7.8%
Referral – 8.3%
Other and email – 1%

As you can see from the previous chart, organic search remained pretty consistent at around 58%. Other and email also remained consistent.

What was interesting is the rise in percentage of direct traffic along with the decline in social traffic. Especially if, as Jim mentions in his tweet, much of that increased direct traffic is from social media.

The thinking behind that is simple: if there are no share buttons on a post, it’ll either be ignored, or the URL will be copy pasted and shared directly to a network.

[bctt tweet=”Does removing social sharing buttons hinder or benefit a blog? #socialshares” username=”CraftBeersblog”]

If we think along the lines of social sharing buttons (and their ease of sharing) accounting for the social traffic in the chart, it makes sense that this section would see a decline.

However, if the increase in direct traffic is a result of manual sharing, that offers support to the argument by Sam Solomon that if people really love your content, they’ll share it.

Now, admittedly, this is as much anecdotal as it is empirical, given the way Google Analytics isn’t the greatest when it comes to slicing and dicing some of the data behind the data.

But it’s an interesting result, nonetheless, and gives a pretty good argument for anyone wondering how effective social sharing buttons are.

Removing Shares and the Actual Impact on Traffic

If the previous part of this post showed that removing sharing buttons doesn’t necessarily mean a lot percentage-wise, when it comes to actual traffic the story is a little different.

While direct is up and social is down from a percentage perspective, both have actually suffered from an actual traffic point of view, as you can see below (click image to expand).

As you can see, there are a lot of red arrows. Given, it’s not a full 30 days since the experiment, so I’ll update this post accordingly to include this one’s stats.

Regardless, it’s clear that removing buttons does impact real traffic – which, to be fair, I was kind of expecting.

After all, if you remove the ease of use to share, there’s more likelihood something won’t be shared, as Mitch Mitchell stated over on Twitter when I first started the experiment.

https://twitter.com/Mitch_M/status/675107840835624960

Note: I’d recommend clicking through to the bigger discussion around that tweet, some great thoughts and discussion points.

It wasn’t just Mitch that wasn’t a fan of the removal of sharing buttons.

I received a few emails from subscribers, as well as messages/comments on Facebook, that suggested removal of share buttons would stop some folks from sharing my posts.

Going by the stats from Google Analytics, it’d appear that they were right. Mostly.

One thing that should be mentioned is during the experiment, I closed my Google+ account. Given this used to be my #3 social referrer of traffic, some of the lost traffic can be accredited to that.

As a final comparison in share numbers, I used ShareTally to count the overall social shares in the 30 days prior to the experiment, and the 30 days without share buttons.

This is where things got a little bit interesting.

With share buttons: 392
Without share buttons: 511

This ties back to the increase in percentage of sharing manually on social. As you can see, the posts got over 100 extra shares by not having buttons.

And yet… the actual traffic from these extra shares didn’t equate to the percentage benefits.

So, What Does It All Mean?

While there can be a few reasons for this, my own belief is this – with the sharing solution I use here, I can customize the way each post is shared.

This means I can create customized tweets, encourage readers to “tweet this” with the same customized tweet, optimize images for Facebook and Pinterest, and much more.

In essence, I can make the CTA for each blog post much stronger for each of the main social networks.

As someone who crafts copy for a living, I can be a bit more creative with how the post is described, which – in turn – when shared could attract more attention.

It’s not a given that this is the case, but it’s one of the reasons I believe has impacted traffic. After all, the share numbers are still there, just not the clickthrough.

So, how the post is positioned on social can mean a difference.

Keep in mind that it was the holiday period as well, and people may not have had as much interest in reading blogs.

All that aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the positive outcomes of the experiment.

Higher percentage of manual sharing;
Increase in email subscribers between the two periods;
Increase in on-post engagement;
Increase in off-post engagement.

Given that my core goal for this blog is conversations and email “conversions” (to plan ahead for less social networks), the experiment can be classed a success.

[bctt tweet=”Who knew that removing sharing buttons can increase email subscribers and blog engagement?” username=”CraftBeersBlog”]

From more standard metrics – site traffic and social traffic – the experiment was a “failure”. And that’s okay.

The whole point of blogging is to experiment to see what works for you, and what enhances the user experience and what inhibits it.

For me, as a blogger, social sharing buttons [mostly] inhibit it (or so it would appear), given that my own goals looked to be getting met.

For the reader, social sharing buttons [mostly] enhance the experience – easier sharing, easier CTA, immediate optimization for sharing with their networks.

While I may yet remove sharing buttons altogether in the coming 12 months (I’m curious how the networks will play out in 2016), for now I’ll re-enable them again.

However, they’ll be pretty unobtrusive – sidebar floating as opposed to top and bottom of content for desktop readers, and removed altogether for mobile readers.

If the Social Warfare team is reading this post, it’d be great to have the option of what sharing solutions are active based on visitor. Perhaps a future addition?

In the meantime, I hope you’ve found this post useful for your own goals regarding social sharing options on your site – what are your thoughts regarding the future of social sharing?

Our Wonderful, Imperfect Selves

December 31st. A day that marks the end of the old year and the preamble to the new one just beyond the midnight bells.

A time when, traditionally, we make vows and resolutions to be “new” us in the next 12 months. You know the drill:

lose weight,
stop smoking/drinking,
eat less junk food,
work out more.

All good goals. All good things to try and do, regardless of the time of year.

But to say “this will be the new me” says the old, or existing, you is no longer relevant and out-of-date.

And that’s bullshit.

We get suckered into believing we need to be “a new us” in order to be the us we’re meant to be.

Like having a smaller waist, or a bigger bicep, will suddenly make the things that are “wrong” with us go away.

And it’s still bullshit.

Because, in truth, why should they go away in the first place?

Our flaws. Our faults. Our broken promises. Our failures.

Every one of them is who we are. Every one of them is what we use to do better.

To be better.

To live better.

If we don?t have our flaws, we don?t have measuring sticks on how far we?ve come.

And, unless we want to stagnate breathing the same air forever, we need to know where we?ve been to see how far we still need to go.

So, forget the ?new me? mantra. Go with something that?s real.

Something that?s you.

By all means, improve you. Grow you. Revisit you. Remould you.

But don?t lose the quintessential you by chasing something that?s neither shiny or new when the light of the new sun breaks in 2016.

It?s a sales push by marketers and retailers and corporations who tell you, ?The old you sucks, and you suck for accepting it.?

But they don?t know the first thing about you. Fuck ?em, and all their lies.

You?re just fine the way you are. You just need to work on realizing that.

Here?s to you and your wonderful, imperfect self in 2016.

Slainte.

A version of this post originally appeared here.

The Best Decision I Made About This Blog

As the end of 2015 waves its face in front of us, it’s usually the sign for times of reminiscence, both in our personal lives as well as professional.

The same can be applied to pretty much everything we do, with blogging being one of them.

If I were to look back on where this blog has taken turns since starting it back in September 2008, there have been a lot of directional changes in that time.

There’s one, though, that stands out for me as the best decision I made about this blog’s direction – when I stopped writing primarily about social media and marketing.

Talking About People is Marketing, is Social

For the first five years or so of this blog’s life, the topics were mostly based around marketing, social media, content, and the various tools and technology that joined them all together.

This was all well and good, and helped build the blog a pretty decent following among readers looking for these kind of topics.

But there’s only so much you can say – or want to say – about marketing, or social media, or content, that isn’t being repeated ad infinitum elsewhere.

When you begin to not look forward to publishing another post, because your heart isn’t really in it, you know it’s time to either change things up, or quit.

Since I enjoy writing so much, the decision was made for me – quitting wasn’t an option, but changing direction was.

So, out went the business-specific posts, and in came the more personal ones that looked at life in the bigger picture.

Topics ranged from misogyny to ignorance;??life lessons to hopes; messed up priorities to racism; and more.

As a result, I lost many subscribers – and that’s okay, because as I mentioned in a post detailing the move, the new direction wouldn’t have been for them anyway.

However, in their place remained (and came) those looking for more personal conversations, and topics.

The level of comments, and the depth behind these comments, showed me I was right to make the move to the type of blogging that was important to me.

An interesting side effect was an increase in readers of the Millennial age group.

Given that so many social media wonks advise you to “write for the Millennials!”, I can’t help but smile at the irony of writing for myself, and attracting a new audience made up of ones that we’re meant to be targeting.

Plus ca change.

What Comes Next

For you, the readers who have stayed with me on the personal journey, I sincerely thank you. I’m glad you choose this little part of the web to hang out on, and I’ll try not to disappoint.

This blog will continue to travel down that path, and have some guest writers who I feel are a good fit for that direction.

I’m going to be experimenting in post formats next year, with some ideas I want to try with regards visual presentation – so that should be fun.

I also look forward to growing the Pure Blogging site, as more readers discover that in 2016. We have a great team of writers there now, with more to follow in 2016, so check it out.

It’s been a fun 7+ years so far – here’s to what comes next.

Cheers!

A Holiday Message from Pure Blogging

As 2015 draws to a close, I thought it’d be nice to look back at where Pure Blogging has come since launching back in August this year.

Additionally, as everyone starts to wind down for the next few days in readiness for 2016, I wanted to share some words from the Pure Blogging Team, both in personal hopes and Pure Blogging ones.

I’ve broken the questions down into three areas:

Your hopes for the direction of content in 2016;
Your goals with Pure Blogging in 2016;
Any particular holiday message you wish to share with our readers.

So, without further ado, here we go!

Your Hopes for the Direction of Content in 2016

This question brought in a variety of responses, although the overriding message is one that was the core reason for Pure Blogging coming into being. From our team:

Krithika Rangarajan: I enjoy the content on this site…it’s eclectic, uninhibited, and passionate. I wouldn’t change anything (and this is what I’d like to see more of in 2016).

Judy Dunn:?I struggle with this one. In an effort not to offend others, my initial ideas for blogging topics get watered down. Especially in this election year, even the simplest of posts can be viewed as “political.” I would definitely like to see more stories in 2016 and a continuation of posts that provoke my thinking and widen my perspectives. I also like the mix of business and personal I’ve been seeing.

Mark-John Clifford:?I think what was accomplished this past year on Pure Blogging was perfect. We brought a great group of writers who were very diverse in topics together to build an influence on blogging. I don’t see how anyone could not notice what we accomplished. I’d like to see that kind of content growing.

Nancy Davis: Personally, I want to post more often, to remain myself, and care even less about pleasing the masses. Content that takes that approach is the kind I hope to see more of in 2016.

Mickey Gomez:?Continue to share content that challenges people to think. I don?t mean this in the ?get-all-up-in-someone?s-face-to-make-them-react? way (which seems all too abundant elsewhere, these days), but rather in the ?presenting-ideas-and-perspectives-in-unique-ways? way. If that even makes sense. How am I a writer, again?

Danny Brown: Personally, I’m tired of all the “too much content” mantra that many bloggers seem to be pushing. The problem isn’t too much content, it’s too much content that people are just pushing out for social shares and empty metrics. Get back to writing content that matters, and stop chasing the Buzzfeed economy.

Your Goals with Pure Blogging in 2016

While this site is only four months old, I’m incredibly proud of the writers on here so far (with more to come in 2016), as well as the diversity and openness of topics discussed.

To continue pushing this quality, here’s some of the things our team has in mind.

Krithika Rangarajan: My goal is to start contributing in 2016. This year flew by, but I am going to take the last three days of 2015 to plan my various endeavors to better manage my priorities (and time).

Judy Dunn:?I?definitely want to be more active in 2016. But I also like it that, with the nice-sized, prolific team of bloggers you have assembled, I don’t need to feel the pressure to be on any kind of deadline. (However, for me, that works both ways. I also know that if I don’t have deadlines, it’s easy to push things ahead.)

I also want to read and respond to posts on a more frequent basis. Lastly, I want to gather my courage to write with abandon.

Mark-John Clifford:?For 2016 I would love to see us grow with more bloggers and also bring in some rookie bloggers who are looking to get read. I don’t think there is a better platform out there for this. What?Danny?has put together is tremendous and we all can take some credit for making it happen.

Whether you wrote one post or many, we all had something to do with the success of Pure Blogging. Even if all you did was promote the posts, you were part of something big and fantastic that will keep going in 2016.

Nancy Davis: I think the blog has a a great direction and no change is needed.

Mickey Gomez: To write more honestly and without worrying about what others think. All too often I censor myself before hitting submit (on my blog as well) for a variety of reasons. My goal isn?t to change anyone?s mind, it?s to engage in a respectful conversation in which new ideas are shared.

In today?s online climate, though, simple disagreements often go from zero to Armageddon within two comments. But I?ve found that by NOT writing honestly, I?ve automatically let those types of commenters win AND I?ve missed out on a chance to learn from other people.

I?m also an intensely private person. I don?t see that changing, but I do think it?s a reasonable goal to share at least a little more.

Danny Brown:?My goals are simple – to grow awareness of the Pure Blogging “movement”, and attract the kind of readers and bloggers that are passionate about blogging in its purest form – raw, honest, thought-provoking. And continuing to show comments aren’t dead! 😉

Your Holiday Message for Our Readers

To round up this collection of thoughts, I asked our team what they’d like to share for the holidays with you. Here they are!

Krithika Rangarajan: Don’t apologize for being kind to others and – in many ways, more importantly – to yourself.

Judy Dunn: May we expand our perspectives in 2016. May we cherish humanity?all of it?and may we rediscover the innocence and honesty of children. And drink more wine. Wine is good.

Mark-John Clifford: My holiday wish to one and all is peace. Peace for you and your fmaily. Peace within and throughout the world. Love and harmony no matter what strife you run up against. And, finally, just be you!

Nancy Davis:?I want to wish everyone a beautiful and peaceful holiday no matter what holiday you do or don’t celebrate. Let’s not be defined by our differences, but rather bond over our similarities.

Mickey Gomez:?Be good to yourself. Be kind to others. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Celebrate what you have instead of what you don?t. Laugh often. Embrace wonder. Have fun.

Danny Brown:?A wise friend once told me, ?People bring their autobiography with them to every conversation.??The trick is in making sure people want to read it. My hope is for people to write the kind of autobiographies that inspire hope and love in others as well as themselves.

Oh, and a huge thanks for being here with us so far – we’re incredibly grateful, and we hope to see more of you (and bring a friend or two!) next year. Until then, laugh, love, be merry, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday period.

Your Turn

So that’s the Pure Blogging holiday message for this year.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the various thoughts, and they’ve inspired you some way or other to look at what you’d like to see in 2016 when it comes to content, either yours or the content you consume.

However, we’d love to her your thoughts, so don’t be shy – drop them in the comments below, and let’s work together on making them happen.

Thanks for a wonderful 2015, and for welcoming us into your blogging feed, whether that’s RSS or email. We hope we’ve kept you entertained so far, and we look forward to continuing to publishing content that matters in 2016 and beyond.

Cheers!

To read more from the team, visit our archives page where you’ll find each author and more.