This, this is another one of Web Site, Blog, Portfolio and Social Media Updates post.
It is taking me bit longer to write new posts, but, here it is. Updates for Q1 and Q2 of 2023, what happened, and what are future plans.
To start it, I’ll say – yeah, few months without blog posts, it happens, or to be precise – Customer Support Representative job appeared which took almost all of my time out of Socials and managing this personal web site. I was on this position for 3 months, from late 2022. up to end of January 2023. It was pretty much job where you need to safe about everything, from providing correct answers or even get better help for Customers which are waiting orders. You got it right, waiting for orders.
My work was for EMEA Region and for English speaking markets of multinational conglomerate and their subsidiary corporation which have big brands in it. It is linked with House of Mouse (TM), and it was all in Christmas and late Black Friday/Cyber Monday time, when orders can be stuck because of courier(s) or even lost. Pain incoming as Customers will call, chat with us, or send angry email why their order didn’t arrived at time. On plus side was that we were working from home, using equipment which company who got us that job provided. It was decent and new(ish) hardware based on HP Prodesk G6 Mini PC’s with multiple HP 24 inch monitors, varying models, mostly by year of release and high quality Jabra headphones.
Fun times ended as there were layoffs from conglomerate and their corporate subsidiary for which I worked, so company who got us that job decided to give us 2 weeks of paid notice of dismissal. Thankfully, they kept our CV’s for future positions which may open, and as of latest news I’m in one of steps for newly opened position for same job, but for different client, hopefully will learn more later on when I will get new interview with HR Team.
Speaking of Portfolio, you might find that I also did some small redesigns for one project. That was long time in work, and I really mean it, long time in work. Project is for my own Parish’s web site and it all started in last summer when I got some ideas how to make it faster and smoother for mobile as old design wasn’t updated for almost 4 years and it had some accessibility problems as well, and also – GDPR Cookie Consent was out-of-date, didn’t worked properly.
Refresh of site had 5 major design concepts, and after deliberate testings and finally, upgrading from Sections to Flexbox Containers in one of tests while doing site in Elementor I decided to this layout. It was lot of A/B testing with various people from Parish, including our Priest who decided on final layout which actually won in big percentage then others. All development and design changes happened on one of Oracle Free Tier VPS (same as this web site) that I created just for that purpose.
Another change happened with my Socials, they were bit, how to say it – wasteland without posts, but now, they are back in action. Now I’m trying to regularly post on Facebook and Instagram using Meta’s Business Suite application which is perfect for posting on both platforms simultaneously. That application also helps when I manage Parish’s Socials as well, it is helpful for quick message answering and comments reading then opening separately Facebook Page or even Instagram page. Man, I daily have bunch of Instagram notification in which I wouldn’t get comments or messages, but with Business Suite it helps a lot.
When I’m speaking of Socials, I decided to get myself Twitter Blue subscription. I’m not ashamed to do it, seriously. With it my Twitter brand/personal profile got Blue Verification Badge, which I tried to get in good old days when it was opened back to get Verified. With it, well, one reply got way more likes then before and have better reach, and it was on also Verified Sports account. While I’m on topic of Twitter, one idea that I had when EMSC LastQuake was in need for better Twitter API access was to create hashtag, and well, they accepted it and started bit modified one. I’m so f*cking proud of that idea which later got sequel with official hashtag from EMSC LastQuake. Sometimes, my genius idea can get improved and help for non-profit association in hard times.
As I’m on topic of Social Media platforms, sadly, I have some good and some bad news about my YouTube channel. Let me start with good news – in month of February I got big subscription and watch time/views spike. I went from less then 200 subscribers to almost 400 in a week, to week later 1000 subscribers and beyond. At first I was, well, one company contacted me on my business email with proposition of promotion for small price, which I accepted and well, that is one spike, while another started after they saw how I got good numbers and decided to run promotion for more then week and after that my channel exploded with subscribers number. It reached 1600 subscribers, before bad thing happened. Yeah, bad thing is that on small reach of enabling Monetization option my channel got struck with 2 Copyright Strikes on Unlisted videos, no idea why and because of what, but I know that will not fight for that Strikes as they were from companies and I would lose with them. That broke camels bone and got me to start new channel on new email account. Within last few days I re-uploaded some of videos from old channel, others will get on it after I check all unlisted videos to don’t have anything which can trigger Copyright Strike. It will take me again time to get back to numbers after promotion, but well, now it doesn’t really matter, let it get slowly as before to at least 200 subscribers, after that will see what would be.
As for future of this Blog and all Socials – they will be in use, there are some post ideas in notepad, notebook and in Draft, some will need good rewriting and checks, some will use partially ChatGPT to get some inspiration and fact checks if possible. Socials will be updated with new ideas, funny memes and useful posts or even some promotions of services that I use and for which I’m affiliated (have coupon codes, affiliate links or some other kind of affiliation without sponsorships).
Until next update and next post, be safe out there.
Cover image created using Canva.