DESIGNING PROMO FOR NEILIZMS

So you have a site online. How do you get the word out on social media without pushing people away? How to tell friends, family and total strangers out there to drop by and take a few minutes away from their busy lives? With the amount of blogs and sites out there, how do you get people to drop by as opposed to the other places? Well how?  

If you didn't know, I dabble in political commentary, and have since October 2011. Since I launched my blog, I've written 365 commentaries expressing my opinions on the latest event that shook my world. And what had originally been just a way to rant and vent on Facebook has turned into one my major passions. And for whatever I think people might be interested in reading what I think. Happily that thinking, has begun to occur, as my blog and now been viewed by over 56,000 visitors.

Michael Moore in his brilliant Broadway show, The Terms of my Surrender, the possible future Presidential candidate (see the show you'll understand that) tells his audience to get up and do something. The smallest thing could change the world. In a way, Neilizms.com, my political blog is my little bit in trying to make America greater and the world safer for all of us. 

Approximately a year ago, I decided to see how many were visiting my many blogs online. You see I have several, sadly some I actually have forgotten and only remember when I do one of those Google searches on myself. I know, I do it too. I don't know about your reasonings, but in my case its about seeing if anything I'm doing as an actor, writer, graphic designer or illustrator is getting any buzz. 

Or if something I've worked on is in a festival, or if I find out my stuff are in places it shouldn't be. Its quite interesting and sometimes quite infuriating, but its away to see if all my hard work has been worth it. 

Anyway, to my amazement in August 2016, my political site, originally called Neilizms.blogspot.com had suddenly found an audience. I discovered that somehow 10,000 people had dropped by to read my posts. 

Believe me I was shocked, considering the first year of its existence, I was happy if 5 or 10 people had probably accidentally dropped by. But then an amazing thing occurred, I discovered that within a couple months the page views on it went from the 10,000 to 30,000, which was when I realized that I should promote the numbers on social media to possibly help attract a bigger audience. 

So I decided to showcase the visitors to the site by thanking my visitors with a little message on Twitter and Facebook. Which was when I designed the first announcement, which is the first graphic showcased in this post here. Its a shame I hadn't done this from the beginning, I guess a sleep at the wheel. Bad Neil, bad! 

Neilizms is supposedly just a hobby I do in my spare time, I get a thought. Something happens and my mind explodes and thoughts and words just comes spewing out of me. Well it might be considered a hobby by others, but to me its become possibly the way I express myself most. Good or bad I spend way too much time writing articles that probably should be a third shorter.  

But when you got things to say and you run the ship, well, you decide when to say good night. Well how do you get people to drop by? How to announce the latest page visitor tally? Better, is that all I have to pitch is that somehow my site has begun to gain popularity. 

Of course, from researching just a little, my growth in viewers, which I was stunned at is seriously small compared to others. As the numbers grew, I mean, one of my little commentaries has been seen by over 4,000 people. I might not be J. K. Rowling, but averaging over 300 per has to say something. Of course compared to others which average in the millions, my opinions pretty much have been on the down low. 

So once the numbers starting growing I decided my way to pitch it was to do what I used to do when I worked as an art director and graphic designer at Hachette Filipacchi designing onserts, inserts and other magazine promotional elements for their multitude of publications. 

I used to joke, how many ways can you say FREE or 50¢ off? So I began documenting the page views as an exercise in figuring out ways to announce the numbers. As well as trying to showcase a brief history of the site, and of course, most importantly a way to thank those who were nice enough to take the time to read what I had commented on that day.

As you can see from the graphics, each announcement is slightly different. Playing with colors, frames, type faces. I should note, for the most part I've only designed and showcased these designs on Facebook and Twitter. As of now, I haven't been creating direct mail packages or another any kind of ad campaign.  

I should also note, as of now, I honestly still haven't designed a logo for the blog. One would think I would have come up with that even before I first launched the site, when the original url was Neilizms.blogspot.com, I actually was waiting to shorten the site's url, eventually and wanted to wait to see if it would attract any attention.

Sadly backwards thinking. I would say that because of my other pursuits, I've been too busy to spend the time to design logos, but once scanning the items showcased here, it kind of looks like I could have done that too, or done a few less of these. 

That said, here are the designs I have come up with. Its actually been fun playing with the numbers. Kind of takes me back to my life before I transferred to editorial magazine design at the Home Plans Group and before that at ZIff-Davis.

As showcased after I reached 44,000 visitors, I decided to shorten it to 46K on the next announcement. I also started playing with the dimensions of the ads. The frames, and the colors used. Trying to alter each update every time to resign it and best promote the site. 

As the visitors to the blog have continued and the numbers has continued to grow, I thought it was important to make the announcement more substantial. Hence I made it more of a tombstone ad, like the ones I used to help design at Ziff-Davis and their Wall Street Journal and New York Times Forbes campaigns.  As you can see, as I updated this design, its began to get wider. You see I showcase them currently on Twitter, and I've discovered that a tombstone ad can look small when showcased on this Social Media site. I also think it looks better slightly wider, more white space as they say in design speak, well in this case… yellow space.

As well as announcing the good news while trying to get the word out, I also started creating banners to use when announcing the latest entry into the blog.

Along with promoting the growing numbers I also have used my site to try to make statements against what I see as hypocritical problems facing the media. In this case I've stopped watching CNN, as statement against their hiring and firing practices. Here are the first three designs to announce my 'viewer strikes' against the news network. Note, currently its reached 4 months.

The TOP 15 NEILIZMS As I continued writing the editorials, it was interesting to see which ones got the most traction. And once I had written enough I began charting which did the best. Perhaps trying to see what the audience I was acquiring was most interested in reading. Which turned into this design. Here are the first two I came up with.

So there you go. I hope this gives you a good idea of the many ways you can showcase numbers in design. As you can see it can get tedious having to keep coming up with solutions to this design problem, but it as you can see the solutions are never ending.  

Any questions, please ask, and please check out my blog. A direct link to it is:  http://www.neilizms.com 

Neil