I've really done a poor job of updating this blog this semester. There's not really any excuse either: I spend practically half my day in front of my computer so I can't really say I didn't have the opportunity. It's not like I didn't have the content either which is why I'm slightly disappointed I didn't do a better job keeping this blog up to date. Really, I think if we get down to the bare bones of it, I just don't care much for blogging.
Like a real life journal, it seems tedious for me to sit down and just record my thoughts. Let me explain. When I sit down in front of a computer, I go through a mini-series of tasks before I even surf or do anything spontaneous. It goes a little something like this:
- Unlock computer
- Hotmail (professional email) - Immediately read or reply back to work emails.
- Hotmail (old email) - Check for social media activity.
- Gmail (main work) - Immediately read and reply back to any non-scheduled emails. Click the refresh inbox button a few times because it's lied to me before.
- Hotmail (company email) - Check for any pressing messages.
- Facebook - Open every new notification in tabs. Alt + Tab, Ctrl + W, Repeat. Open Avatar Trials page and check analytics. Open Ubisoft page and check analytics. Create post for personal, game, or work.
- Umail - Scan for important emails from students or professors.
- Twitter (personal) - Check for anything in Connect from interactions to new followers
- Twitter (Avatar Trials) - Check Connect. Immediately follow back anyone not following us.
Most of the time, I go through each of those 9 steps before I do anything else. Now, you might be thinking - "Ross, why don't you use hootsuite to manage your social interactions" and the answer is I have it, but it's missing some things I feel are important to my social network experiences. The lack of search on both facebook (while generally less useful) and twitter (kinda crucial) is what makes the site unfriendly for me. I also dislike that I'm limited to 5 areas with a free account. I could easily link many more social media or web platforms to it, but with five I have to really focus on what I'm sending from it. This might just be a problem of me having too many responsibilities for one website.
Oh, and I don't like web forwarding because while I know it's very reliable, I don't like the idea of losing any files. I also like keeping my email accounts logged in on different browsers so I can quickly shuffle between personal, old, work, and company accounts. It makes it so I can just focus on one task when I'm in a certain browser. Chrome is for personal and some entertainment, firefox is just business, and IE is...the company email. They've definitely made IE better, but I just supremely dislike how the preview screens show up when your mouse is hovering over the taskbar icon. On Chrome and Firefox, it shows one preview per window, but IE shows one preview per tab. This becomes a huge annoyance when I open more than three tabs in IE then go to Firefox to do stuff then come back to IE and I have to do a lot of unnecessary work to get to the right tab. /tangent
Anyway.
When I'm going through my previously mentioned steps, my goal is generally Lead Generation. What does that mean? Well, for my purposes, a lead is either a person who will buy our game or is a member of the press who would be interested in reviewing it. Wiki says: "lead generation is the generation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business"
Lead Generation is finding those people who will be a net sum for the future of Avatar Trials. They may talk about it with their friends or even just interact with us online, but as long as their is activity surrounding the game, I'm doing my job. Right now, we're almost to 80 followers and we just hit 100 likes on facebook. I want to continue to grow and with the game coming out tomorrow, bust out my marketing budget so we can get hundreds of people to see our game the first day.
So I guess my answer to the my question on why I suck at blogging so much is because I love to work. I'm pretty driven to see this game succeed and while I'm not counting on any mindblowing "Indie Breakthrough" success or press, there is a strong possibility this game is big seller.
Oh, and here's my work schedule for today and tomorrow. Fun times ahead, for sure.
My goal is top 20 downloads on Friday, but I think we can do better.
My lifetime goal is 1000 downloads, but I truly believe we can and will exceed that.
My personal goal is to beat Minions! lifetime sales. Let the games begin.
