Social Media Love

I am sure my regulars are tired of my love fest with Google Plus, but here is the proof in my eyes. As a brand, Facebook is so hard to drive new followers. I even paid money one month to advertise my page and got clicks but they didn’t convert. And honestly besides my regular readers who will post comments here, the only others who are following are friends and family who don’t comment. So I post on Facebook and get little traffic from it and fewer comments.

On twitter I have had greater success as you can follow and engage with people whether they care to follow you back so you have a more robust conversation, sharing and I get more traffic from twitter than I do facebook.

As of today, I am at 3750 people and it has grown organically. I know some people who will put as many people in their twitter/google plus circles hoping to get 10% to follow them back and thus have a bunch of followers. I don’t engage in that practice. I prefer to have a nice balance between who is in my circles and who has me in theirs.

When I started, I circled about 200 people (mostly bloggers I already knew, cartoonists or training professionals). From there I engaged in what they were saying, others found it and started following me and it has grown. For any given cartoon I post, I get more traffic here and more interaction than either of the other two.

If people are interested, I can post some other time on some of the things I did that built it but if you don’t see me much anymore on FB and Twitter, you know why.

Why Google Plus is better than….

So it is no secret that I have been somewhat neglecting my friends on facebook, twitter, etc because my time on social media has been taken up by Google Plus.  While it of course has some limitations I wish they would work out sooner rather than later, the above cartoon pretty much sums up why it is better IMO than other social media.

As always let me know if you need an invite.  And for people who have recently joined who are lost, ahem Bo Lumpkin, a fellow cartoonist Debbie Ohi has created a nice page with links to help get you started.  You can find it here.

Free Caricature

That’s right, it is back. You can win a digital caricature of you, a friend, your dog or your favorite celebrity.   This is an exclusive contest for those following Beartoons on Facebook.  Don’t worry for those of you who don’t have Facebook, I will be doing other contests soon.

Here are the guidelines:

• Go to the Beartoons Facebook Page and hit the Like Button
• Add a comment there that you want to be included in the contest
• Share the contest with your Facebook friends for an additional entry.  Let me know in the FB comments
• Enter by Midnight Tuesday July 5.
• Winner will get a free digital version of their caricature.  Use it as a gravatar, on facebook or however you would like.

Entrants must allow me to use one of their source pictures in a blog post to show the results and as always my disclaimer is there is no guarantees that you will think the finished product looks anything like you.  But that is a better guarantee (and price) than those crappy street caricature artists give.

Good luck

Charity Challenge Week One Results

Week one is complete and we started out thing with a bang.

First though, let me thank the folks at the Webcomic Alliance for letting me hijack their site today and blog about the challenge.  If you are a cartoonist or interested in cartooning as a business, they offer a wealth of information, so check them out.  In addition, since several of their members are behind the Webcomics: What’s Cooking Book which is also raising money for hunger,  I promised to pay an additional $5 for every book they sold this month.  I’ll update at the end of the month on that tally.

Here is the week one breakdown:

$2 each for 11 new followers me on Facebook

$2 each for valerie_smith, drawntobewild, CincyCasino, DigitalAdhesive, ChewyHuman, Beefstu409, Wombie, CincyLiveMusic, manchesternova, InfctiusCharity, Foreman_8157 for following me on Twitter.

$10 each for including me in their cartoon:

• Bo Lumpkin at Gatorhead
• Bo Lumpkin at Gatorhead (yes two of them)

$5 each for those adding a link or banner to Beartoons on their site:

• Mel at Dummies of the Year
• Bill at Deyank’s Blog
• Tony at TM Comics
• Lisa at OCD Blogger Girl

$10 each to those who blogged about the challenge:

• WebcomicAlliance
• Mitzi at Bloggin Boots
• Lisa at OCD Blogger Girl
• Bo at Bo Lumpkin
• Duncan at The Mad Hatters
• Mach3 at Quarter Bar
• Mel at Dummies of the Year
• Sheila at Sheila Deeth Drabbles
• Writerdood at Sargastic Irrevalence
• Robert J at Refrigerator Magnate
• The Loon at the Friggin Loon
• and RT (I don’t know what else to call you) of College Book Renter who posted about the challenge on Facebook.

Please let me know if I missed anyone!!!

Which gives us a week 1 total of ………$204

Let me know if I missed anyone. If you want to find out how to get involved just click the image above to go to the post that explains it all.

Next Page »