I'm not very good at social media, despite having an account on every single one of them. I can't seem to gain followers anywhere. Partly because I spend too much time blogging instead of creating content that actually benefits people. Alas, if you don't write it down, it didn't happen, so I think blogging is nice. In an effort to gain followers by any means necessary so as long as it doesn't conflict with my morals, I decided to start posting cat pictures on the Internet.
This idea came to me while browsing Tumblr. On Tumblr, I found a nice blog that shares many videos about animals, [https://www.tumblr.com/overdoso], and I like these videos so of course I followed the blog. As usual, I asked myself why would someone spend so much time sharing content on social media like this. What are their motivations. What do they gain from this? The answer I found browsing their blog. Every once in a while, they don't post a video, but a link to an article in their website.
This means they use the cool animal videos as bait to gain followers, then send those followers links to their own website, turning them into essentially free advertising (minus the costs of procuring and queueing all those videos).
While I'd love to use all these social media accounts to post only articles to my website, it's clear to me that I'd never gain enough followers doing that to justify keeping all these accounts in the first place. I suggest anyone who wants to follow only my articles to just use RSS instead.
The reason I use social media is because I need to go where people are, since they don't seem able to find my website on their own. Many people actually use TikTok to search for how to do things on their computer instead of searching on Google. This means if the content doesn't exist on TikTok, they will never be able to find it, which is kind of sad.
In other words, social media is a means for a website to reach people. And for some time I thought that I would be able to reach people by using hashtags related to the articles I wrote. That clearly doesn't work.
If the people I need to reach aren't actively searching for computer-related articles, they won't be able to find my articles no matter how I share them. How can I reach someone who isn't even interested in my niche to begin with?
The answer is cat pictures.
Lately, I have been sharing Creative Commons licensed cat pictures that I find on obscure photography websites like Ipernity on modern social media like Bluesky and Mastodon, and I'm getting a lot of likes on them, at least compared to my actual articles that get almost no engagement. Although this does feel a bit dishonest to use other people's photography to further my agenda, I think this is a win-win-win for everyone. Consider that:
- The photo is CC BY licensed, so I'm using it in a way that the photographer allows, including giving attribution to them.
- I get to link to an obscure website, which is great, because one thing I really want to do is tell people that other websites exist, so this aligns with my agenda.
- People who like cat pictures will reblog my posts, giving me the slim chance of people actually following me for my computer-related articles.
- People who do follow me for my computer-related articles won't be annoyed by the random cat pictures I post, because, obviously, everyone LOVES cat pictures. I'm sure that this will brighten people's day when they see a random cat on their feed when they least expect it.
- I get to join popular hashtags I would normally be unable to participate in, like
#caturday, and even#christmasby posting Christmas-themed cat pictures. Do you have any idea how many posts are on Instagram with tagged#calicocat? I didn't even know they were called calico cats. You learn a new thing every day.
Unfortunately, there aren't infinite cat pictures on the Internet that are licensed for commercial use, although I do believe Flickr is going to have thousands of them, so at some point I'm going to have to start posting other sorts of pictures.
I do wish I could post some retro web pictures, but I don't think the people who are interested in the aesthetic would benefit from basic PC tutorials.