I did roundups of my online presence both both the first quarter (here and here) and second quarter (here) of this year. Here’s the third quarter, starting with the posts on this blog, then looking at Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and (new) Threads, featuring an ancient massacre, nuclear apocalypse, a powerlifting scandal, Irish accents, and my cousins.
The top post on this blog in the last three months and written in that timeframe was about an ancient atrocity.
In second place was my commentary on this year’s World Science Fiction Society business meeting. I got almost everything I wanted either passed or rejected.
In third place is an actual book review, which is a relief because I do like to think of this as primarily a book review blog. I got no commentary on the post itself, though some spirited discussion on Facebook.
In fourth place, more WSFS, as I appealed for members to take the strongest possible action in response to the affair of the 2023 Hugos.
And in fifth place, some personal psephology as I looked at who my Hugo votes transferred to.
Of the various social media channels, Bluesky is the one I take most seriously. There is a nice online resource at https://www.blueskypulse.io/ which gives you the likes, reposts, quotes and comment count for the Bluesky account of your choice. Unfortunately it doesn’t allow you to segment by date, but by eyeballing the numbers I find the following:
The post with most likes, reposts and quotes was this one of which I am rather proud, using a frame from Wally Wood’s 1953 graphic adaptation of one of Ray Bradbury’s most famous stories.
The post with the most replies, and the third highest number of likes, reposts and quotes, was this admittedly ragebaity comment.
Second on all metrics was this little bit of political history trivia – the British equivalent is Harold Macmillan, whose life overlapped with every UK prime minister since (but not including) Disraeli.
And the post with the third highest number of replies is this wholesome meme.
On Facebook, which is still a valuable channel of staying in touch with friends and family despite the advertising cruft, I ticked the box to be a “digital creator” last year which gives me all kinds of stats for the numbers viewing and engaging with each post. It doesn’t give is the number of ‘likes’ or shares, but you can eyeball those from the stats that you get.
My top Facebook post on all metrics was this piece, which as noted above was a bit ragebaity. (It also must have had by far the highest number of ‘likes’ and shares.) Presumably it slipped into some forum where this is a hot topic. What I didn’t anticipate was that Facebook stopped notifying me of replies after a few days, so I didn’t know that the discussion continued to spiral.
The post that came second on all metrics except number of responses was my discovery of an old Atlantic piece from 2019 about the disappearance of MH370.
The post with the second highest number of responses was, as noted above, my review of Sam McBride and Fintan O’Toole’s book.
The third most viewed Facebook post, with also the third highest viewers and impressions, and probably the second highest number of shares, had also been successful on Bluesky as previously noted.
The post with the third highest number of engagements and comments was a perhaps over-optimistic thought from earlier this week. It probably also got the second highest number of likes.
I’m also doing my best to curate my LinkedIn presence with more professionally relevant material. My best scoring post of the quarter was this reflection on nation, language and European integration, written however not by me but by Eddy Wax of Rapporteur (formerly EurActiv), and probably doing a bit better because I tagged someone else in the text:
The second highest scoring post was a link to an obituary of a great woman:
The third highest scoring was actually a job ad from my office (we have made the hire, he’s from Northern Ireland and he starts on Monday). I’ll skip that and go to the next, which is the top LinkedIn post of my own original content from the quarter, a historic detail that struck me on the first day of the Bled Strategic Forum last month. (The four prime ministers are my old friend Andrej Plenković of Croatia, the conference host Janez Janša of Slovenia, Andrej Babiš of Czechia and the newly elected Péter Magyar of Hungary.)
I’m a little uncertain about my Instagram numbers, because the number of ‘likes’ now is the combination of the numbers from Instagram itself and Facebook. However there is no overlap between the top three Instagram posts of the quarter and the equivalent Facebook list above, and also I can’t be bothered to disentangle them.
The most likes went to a family picture, which includes my grandfather’s four oldest grandchildren (I am the oldest), his four youngest grandchildren, and two in between who were born in the same year as each other.
The second went to an instant reaction shot of E.J. Swift enjoying her win of the Clarke Award, on the evening of the solar eclipse in August.
And the third was a broken roadsign in Northern Ireland.
I’m not a huge fan of Threads – there are literally two people who I follow there rather than elsewhere – but it now has a pretty decent stats offering, so I can see that my top posts are:
Top views, likes and replies (also the winner on Facebook, and second on Bluesky):
View on Threads
Second highest number of likes, third on views and replies (also placed on the Facebook rankings):
View on Threads
Second highest number of views – this is the new one, which just bubbled under the in the Facebook and Bluesky rankings:
View on Threads
Second highest number of replies (also placed on the Bluesky rankings):
View on Threads
The raw numbers for the number of engagements on Threads are rather impressive – the same level as Facebook, in fact – so I do wonder who all these people are who read my Threads and don’t interact.
So, I’m pleased that several of the blog posts that did well were among those that I had put some thought into. That’s not always the way it works!
The story about the Belgian powerlifter who was deprived of her title by a spotter’s deliberate racist sabotage did well, partly I think for the reason I identified in the post – it had not escaped the French language zone (well, I saw it in Dutch originally). Also it is a very hot topic.
If I cared more, I would discover how to game the system to get the Facebook and Threads algorithms to serve up my material to a wider audience. But I’m writing mainly for my own satisfaction, not to gain clicks, so I probably won’t do that.
Tagging other users works best for LinkedIn; photos of people beat photos of landscapes (let alone art) on Instagram.
And we keep learning.