I wish BGWfans posted more on instagram instead of that shithole twitter. Equally on both apps would be appreciated by me since I don't use twitter and neither do a lot of other people.
Member Requests
- Thread starter William545
- Start date
I didn't see a place for people to request information or reporting from BGWFans, so I created this thread.
I would second this request as the only reason I got twitter in the first place was to follow you guys and still don't really care for it
@William545, @horsesboy:
So, inside baseball time.
The Facebook and Instagram algorithms are BRUTAL. If we post something to either that doesn’t get a lot of engagement, our posts suffer for weeks or even months in the wake of it. In other words, if we post some Food & Wine progress photos to Facebook or Instagram and people are just sorta meh on them (as you’d probably expect from people regarding some booths being set back up in the park), then the next time we publish a major story that SHOULD go to the moon and back, it’ll be sunk by the algorithm.
Twitter is so liberating because more or less each post is treated individually—we can post minor news, brief observations, and even random silly bullshit from time to time and never risk our next blockbuster piece being harmed.
Anyway, how does this translate to me walking around the park on a Friday afternoon posting news? As I’m gathering the news, I have no idea what the big story of the day is—so I don’t post anything to Facebook or Instagram because if something bigger shows up, I’m screwed. So you’d think the obvious answer would be to do live coverage on Twitter and then at the end of the day post the most important thing we tweeted to Instagram and Facebook. That seems great, right? Well, guess when a bad time to post to Instagram or Facebook is? The dinner hour and beyond. Those posts will do worse than our average and hence, drag down our future content.
I could opt instead to wait till the next day and post the biggest news from the previous day, but then it looks like BGWFans is late to the story when, in fact, we were the first people to see it and we posted about it immediately on the platform that was most conducive to that form of content.
So yeah, I get the criticism—I hardly use Twitter myself—but it is legitimately, uniquely built to suit the type of live coverage BGWFans often does. Should I post important in-park stories to Facebook and especially Instagram more often? Yeah, for sure. That said, never expect to get even a fraction of our total coverage via either of those platforms just due to the realities of the algorithm—for the brand’s sake, we just can’t do it. ?
So, inside baseball time.
The Facebook and Instagram algorithms are BRUTAL. If we post something to either that doesn’t get a lot of engagement, our posts suffer for weeks or even months in the wake of it. In other words, if we post some Food & Wine progress photos to Facebook or Instagram and people are just sorta meh on them (as you’d probably expect from people regarding some booths being set back up in the park), then the next time we publish a major story that SHOULD go to the moon and back, it’ll be sunk by the algorithm.
Twitter is so liberating because more or less each post is treated individually—we can post minor news, brief observations, and even random silly bullshit from time to time and never risk our next blockbuster piece being harmed.
Anyway, how does this translate to me walking around the park on a Friday afternoon posting news? As I’m gathering the news, I have no idea what the big story of the day is—so I don’t post anything to Facebook or Instagram because if something bigger shows up, I’m screwed. So you’d think the obvious answer would be to do live coverage on Twitter and then at the end of the day post the most important thing we tweeted to Instagram and Facebook. That seems great, right? Well, guess when a bad time to post to Instagram or Facebook is? The dinner hour and beyond. Those posts will do worse than our average and hence, drag down our future content.
I could opt instead to wait till the next day and post the biggest news from the previous day, but then it looks like BGWFans is late to the story when, in fact, we were the first people to see it and we posted about it immediately on the platform that was most conducive to that form of content.
So yeah, I get the criticism—I hardly use Twitter myself—but it is legitimately, uniquely built to suit the type of live coverage BGWFans often does. Should I post important in-park stories to Facebook and especially Instagram more often? Yeah, for sure. That said, never expect to get even a fraction of our total coverage via either of those platforms just due to the realities of the algorithm—for the brand’s sake, we just can’t do it. ?
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Thanks for the explanation that make perfect sense now that you have explained it.
Another thing I want to be better at is posting tweets to the relevant threads as I post them to Twitter so forum members who don’t use Twitter can stay in the loop a little better.
Related: If I post news to Twitter, anyone should always feel free to port it over to the relevant forum thread. I won’t take any offense if you beat me—quite the opposite in fact. ?
Related: If I post news to Twitter, anyone should always feel free to port it over to the relevant forum thread. I won’t take any offense if you beat me—quite the opposite in fact. ?
Did you just give us an open invitation to beat you? Can we use sticks or does it have to be fists? ?
BGW would see this be be like ??? is it finally happening????
I, for one, thoroughly enjoy the Twitter real time updates. For instance on Saturday (member day) I glanced at my phone leaving the restroom and saw a BGWFans twitter notification "just announced that Alpengeist is opening today!" and boom we were on Alpengeist in 5 minutes. I'm not checking Instagram while at the park that often, if at all.
Tweets make a fast, easy, simple form of communication. Also for as much as BGWFans tweets quality info, you have to take into account there might not always be a photo to go along with every tweet.
EDIT: Also, yesterday, after the first 2 shamrocks were found, my girlfriend and I were still searching for the final one, and then saw through Twitter that BGWFans themselves found the 3rd and final shamrock! (Congrats btw). So we were able to accept defeat, end our search, and hit Apollo's instead of looking around for another hour for something we wouldn't have known was found.
Tweets make a fast, easy, simple form of communication. Also for as much as BGWFans tweets quality info, you have to take into account there might not always be a photo to go along with every tweet.
EDIT: Also, yesterday, after the first 2 shamrocks were found, my girlfriend and I were still searching for the final one, and then saw through Twitter that BGWFans themselves found the 3rd and final shamrock! (Congrats btw). So we were able to accept defeat, end our search, and hit Apollo's instead of looking around for another hour for something we wouldn't have known was found.
Twitter serves a purpose, but I do find reading it to be too stressful so I rarely look at it now. If I get a notification for somebody I follow that looks interesting I will read those. Sometimes I make the mistake of linger too long in the replies and that usually doesn't go well. Occasionally I'll tweet myself, but no one ever replies, and that is very ok with me.
Could the BGWfans blog be updated with even a micro-blogging style structure?
The Twitter feed tends to be bursts of information anyway. If you just summarized those at the end of a day into a single post on the blog, people could keep up via RSS.
Check out the way Daring Fireball does posting. Sometimes lengthy articles, sometimes just a sentence or two.
The Twitter feed tends to be bursts of information anyway. If you just summarized those at the end of a day into a single post on the blog, people could keep up via RSS.
Check out the way Daring Fireball does posting. Sometimes lengthy articles, sometimes just a sentence or two.