#theres definitely more but i wont spend 3 hours on it either

[mamadarama]

Just curious on your opinion here do you have any thoughts on the way Madara is being written? Recently I came to the realization that enstars writers aren't all that great,, and I notice that Madara at least in my opinion has had very little development and progression as a character but I'm genuinely hoping I'm wrong but I don't see much difference. And I do hope I'm wrong cuz I definitely haven't read every single story ever in Enstars and it could just really be Madara's character but it feels like he hasn't budged an inch and when DF rolled around it seems like he's gonna progress only for the writers to make him wanna split up literal months after (SS) and it was fine the first time since we explored that part of his character but right after that we got the Spring event and he's?? Back on his bullshit as if whatever happened during Secret Service didn't have much impact. And I do understand his character and all but I often wonder how much of that is just his character (immovable mountain with deep roots that will take years of continuous effort to move) or just the writers half assing because they can't think of a more compelling narrative for double face other than Madara wanting a breakup. It's especially sad to me with Last Mission because as much as I can understand DF being temporary and meant to end, it feels like nothing has changed in Madara during !! Era. I'm hoping that new gen Madara can change that since he's already featured in the new shuffle and scout story, and it does look like he's changing the vibes a little. Idk what are your thoughts and genuinely no hate here I love Madara and I'd love to hear your opinion :)

i think the writers do a pretty good job with the story actually !! i ended up spending a few hours writing like 3 pages of stuff so this one gets a readmore ^^;

theres a tldr at the end though if you dont wanna hear me talk in circles like some kind of maniac (understandable i dont either)

at this point madaras story is a tragedy and hes not really supposed to be a satisfying character . youre supposed to be some degree of frustrated with him like all the other characters are. the story isnt over yet though and maybe he will get a satisfying happy ending someday , but this is all buildup. having madara go through negative character development while the rest of the 3rd years have significant positive character development puts emphasis on one of the main points of his character: you cant help someone who doesnt want to be helped . shu wanted to become more empathetic. eichi wanted to unlearn his bitterness. kaoru wanted to leave his playboy reputation behind. izumi wanted to learn to control his emotions . madara has two sides to him that refuse to coexist— anger and misery. the angry side of him has given up on himself and leans into his perceived role as a villain because he believes alienating his friends is the only way to save them and for once be the hero. the miserable side of him is the sad and "selfish" part that keeps him returning to his friends again and again despite believing hes a bad influence on them, because he still seeks acknowledgment and praise from others and doesnt want to believe its too late for him. he bounces between these like a metronome . (maybe thats another layer of reasoning behind double faces name, idk) so, he doesnt know if he wants to be helped. he thinks he doesnt deserve it. pulling someone out of a ditch that deep requires some legwork on their part too, and if they wont put in that legwork, well... then there's nothing you can do. madara isnt quite a rooted mountain that takes a long time to move... hes more like an injured tiger pacing in its pit , so fixated on looking for a way out that it wont look up and see the entire top is open where its keepers are waiting to take it out and treat its wounds . now suppose this tiger is sentient enough to worry it might hurt someone on impulse when the disinfectant stings its wounds. additionally, lets say the tigers wounds came from falling and cutting itself on something in its habitat while making a risky jump , and it believes it deserves to be hurt for such a stupid misjudgment. so even when it notices the top of the pit is open, it will continue pacing pretending like it didnt. thats where madara is at right now .

madara broke up double face partly out of self sabotage, and partly out of a twisted attempt to "save" kohaku from him. kohaku and madara are an interesting contrast because their characters are set up in a very similar way. the difference between them is that kohaku doesnt hate himself even close to as much as madara does, and as a result he IS getting better. kohaku believes hes always going to be part of the underbelly of society doing dirty work and hes resolved to that like madara is, but he doesnt believe that means he has to do it alone . he acknowledges that hes not alone, he has the rest of alkakurei, the sweets club, jun, his sisters and tsukasa.... and madara. the first part of beating loneliness is recognizing youre not alone. madara thinks no one understands him (which in itself is its own kind of loneliness) and that if his friends understood "what he really is", they wouldnt love him. so in a way their presence eases one kind of loneliness and reinforces another. in his mind the only person who understands him is himself and therefore the only one who can save people from himself is also him.

theres a scene in last mission where madara says his reason for disbanding double face is something along the lines of wanting kohaku to live where he can feel the sun on him , and kohaku asks "what about my feelings?" . that pretty much sums up madaras entire thought process and why he isnt making any positive progress .

tldr; madara does have character development between es! and es!! , but its not positive. to have such a stubborn self loathing character make positive progress without a slow burn of warring with themself and dragging their feet would soften those traits. they want him to stand out and make you to go "ohh ok so this guy is MISERABLE miserable" .

so anyways i dont think its lazy writing its just character loyalty. but the fact that you noticed all that means youre reading him the way hes intended to be read. so congratulations!! you now understand what its like to be kohaku oukawa :) if he does get positive character development i hope its really slow though cuz if its too fast it would feel kinda abrupt. it needs to feel like hes fighting the writers for it to truly be madara

[nemuchi]

 ok time for a compilation of anime references in order of appearances, feel free to add more! I won’t recognize all of them. I actually love Astro Boy a lot but it’s been years since I read the manga so we’ll see how I do lol

1. pretty obviously the title card and the rest of the episode are a reference to Astro Boy 2. Boyd being named Tubio is a reference to Astro Boy's real name Tobio (or at least the real boy he’s based on) 3.

A Sailor Moon cosplay 4. Inspector Tezuka, named after Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy’s mangaka.

5. Akita is an Akita dog (it’s a breed). Akita Shoten is also a publishing company that released a bunch of Astro Boy compilation volumes. He looks familiar but I can’t place if his design is based on another Tezuka character or not. Dr. Tenma with his lab coat maybe.

6. Some anime figure in Akita’s disgusting lab looks an awful lot like Usagi from Sailor Moon lol. Bunny ears because her name means bunny in japanese?

7. Osomatsu-kun/san! one of my favourite animes

8. Buggy the clown from one piece (minus the skull) I can’t tell if the girl is a reference to something.

9. At first I thought this one was a reference to Astro’s character Pluto, but it doesn’t really look like him and there’s no cop as far as I can remember?? So maybe this is just Mecha animes in general. 

10. Blink and you’ll miss it, Lupin III. He’s there in a few other scenes for like 3 frames max 

11. And lastly, Tezuka would’ve LOVED to have his own Ducktales episode, he was a big Disney fan, even drew Astro Boy hugging Donald.

[honestlyandrogynousnightmare]

magic reveal

So ive been thinking about the magic reveal we did get and also the different magic reveals we COULD have gotten so i thought id project all my thoughts into another massive tumblr rant:

personally, i dont think the magic reveal was bad at all. yes, i wouldve done it slightly differently, i think it was done way too late in the show and left little time to explore how that reveal affected merlin and arthurs relationship, and obviously we never actually ended up seeing if magic was legalised and all. but i dont hate the magic reveal we got. the key part i really love is that it was done on Merlins own terms, he could have just lied, but instead he finally told Arthur the truth and i think that there were many reasons for that decision being made. 

firstly, Merlin definitely felt guilty and blamed himself for Arthur being stabbed, he must have at least partly blamed himself because everything he did directly led to Mordred turning into a little shit. Part of him might have just felt as if he owes Arthur that explanation yknow. secondly, i feel like by that point he was tired of lying in general, he needed to get that secret off his chest. those two things combined with the fact that Arthur was dying may have pushed him to telling the truth,  because deep down he did know that it was probably the last chance to tell Arthur the truth. 

i liked how they presented Arthurs reaction too, the clear message there was that Athur was angry at the lying, thats the part he saw as betrayal, not the magic itself. he didnt want to believe that Merlin was a liar, when he always saw him as the one person that was entirely honest with him. hell, he still trusted him enough to send him back to Camelot and Gwen so he knew Merlin wasnt evil. If the writers actually did a good job at developing Arthurs character, i feel like itd be more obvious that Arthurs stance on magic was different from his fathers, but yknow bbc and their shoddy writing. I love that moment of acceptance as well, when he tells Merlin that he doesnt want him to change. He doesnt even now about all the things Merlin sacrificed and lost in order to protect Arthur and Camelot but he still accepts him. I think that when he first fund out it was all like “holy crap i dont even know him” but after spending a few hours with Merlin he realises that its still the exact same person he knew the week before. 

anddddd as much as i like the way they did that magic reveal, the ending of the show left me with no closure and a lot of tears. my ideal magic reveal wouldve happened earlier, either at the start of season 5 or near the end of season 4. It would give us a chance to see them talk it out, and god we know that there would be arguing, and if arthur wasnt dying he would probbaly be shouting but the key part here is that arthur wouldnt hurt merlin. i think he culd consider sending him away if his father was still king just to protect him but we all know merlin would reply with “no <3″. but since i cant see the reveal happening when uther is king, i will be ignoring that scenario. and again, theres many ways this could play out.

the one way that ive always found interesting was arthur figuring it out on his own, because he may be an idiot, but hes not stupid. *if you like this sort of thing read “so close and im halfway to it  on ao3, its a merthur fic and the magic reveal in that one makes me cry so much and the fic is so well written* I feel like at one point, he would just put the pieces together, and it would all make so much sense to him? Merlins random disappearances and scars would make sense, the luck he had when it came to fights, Merlins weird reactions when someone mentioned magic, how on earth merlin of all people managed to survive every battle and fight arthur was in when some of his best knights didnt. 

then theres the very cliche “merlin using magic mid battle to save everyone” reveal. because its mid battle, i really cant picture them talking it out there lol,  i picture a lot of ignoring but also if other people saw him using magic, we all know the first thing arthur would do is give the knights a good old “if you kill him i will kill you and then myself”, it wouldnt be until later that they would actually talk. 

and then like the canon magic reveal, theres Merlin doing it on his own terms. i personally really like thhis one because it gives him so much more control over the situation and over his words. *another fic rec here if you like this sorta thing, its called “to the world that let you by” and its really beautiful and made me cry at 1am so there you go, and as you guessed it, its another merthur*. i love this reveal because it gives merlin a chance to explain, and arthur a chance to listen and try to understand. 

now there are loads of different sub categories that could go into those, like Arthur finding merlin creating butterflies out of thin air lol, but i wont go into those. whatever reveal would happen, i feel like “the talk” after would usually end up in a similar way. Arthurs reaction would be similar to what we got in the canon reveal, because the actual magic isnt what would hurt most.  it would be the lies. Arthur has been lied to and betrayed by so many people you cant really expect him not to react badly to being lied to. the magic sure would confuse him and put him in a difficult position, because you have to keep in mind that his entire life he has been told that magic is pure evil, and to him, merlin is the polar opposite of that. i think it would just make him question everything, like does he even know this man? has he won any of his battles or has it always been merlin? why is he in camelot? why would a sorcerer be serving him? but he wouldnt hurt him. he wouldnt even consider that imo, sure, he will demand an explanation, but he wouldnt actually thin about hurting him. 

and merlin would understand why hes angry about the lying, that much is obvious. and he would be reluctant to tell arthur about the things that were happening behind his back all those years, but he would be honest. and go that conversation would be hard for both of them, i cant really imagine them having it without a lot of crying, shouting and even more wine tbh. arthur isnt good at listening which is why this would be so hard for him too, but merlin has to be honest, completely honest with arthur for the first time in his life and thatd be difficult. 

and i think merlin would handle arthurs reactions well, even if arthur decided to lose his temper lol. but i can still imagine him being a bit bitter if arthur judged his choices and stuff when it came to poisoning morgana and freeing the dragon, asking what on earth HE would do in that situation. where the only choices he sees are bad ones, and he has to pick the one thats least evil. 

arthur would probably be most pissed off at the thing about his mother tbh, because merlin outright lied there, usually its just deflecting but he made that deliberate choice to lie. but i really do think he would understand all of this, while not every choice merlin did was good, he did it with good intention. 

and then arthur would remove the ban on magic and they would kiss and get married amd live happily ever aft-

thanks bbc.

anyway if you want any more magic reveal fics (or links to the ones i mentioned, ao3 can be bloody annoying sometimes) feel free to comment or message me or anything, i have a couple more in my bookmarks. 

thanks for reading this rant, scuse the bad grammar, id love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this and magic reveals in general so feel free to comment! have a great day<3

[samatok-i]

sooooo this is my first request here so I spent 737484647 hours thinking on what would be a good start but I think I'll settle for something simple,, may I request first date headcannons for the boyes?

I APOLOGIZE FOR THE WAIT TUMBLR RLLY LET ME HAVE IT!!! blease accept these qwq (im breaking them up by division so the post wont be so cluttered :0)

💫 Allstars on a First Date Pt. 1💫

♡Buster Bros♡ :

Ichiro: 

-He wants to take you to the movies! He’s not picky at all about what you guys go to see because he’s the kinda guy to enjoy the experience no matter what kinda movie it was! He’d love to talk about it afterwards with you if the movie was trash or if it was really good! (when he saw Into the Spider-verse with his bros he raved about it for days) 

-(his fav spidey person is Peni cuz he’s a slut for mecha anime)

-If you wanted to pick the movie that’d be totally fine with him! (unless theres a new movie adaption of an anime he wants to see- he’d agree with your choice but you can see the Longing in his eyes as he walks past the poster and you just might hafta give in lmao)

-Definitely pays for your snacks and drinks even if you protest because he’s a huge sweetheart (need me a MANS)

-He’s no scrub either he goes for the large drink, the large popcorn. AND king size m&ms??? Do you even deserve him????? No baby I’ll hold the food tray you’ve done enough 😤

-He finds y’all good seats and takes the tray so you can get comfortable before doing so himself and immediately going to demolish the popcorn before the previews end because he’ll always be a rebel at heart

-During the movie he (subtly but not Really) shifts closer to you and occasionally leans over or puts his hand on your shoulder lightly to whisper a joke or a thought he has about the movie in your ear (stay calm Reader-chan)

-You sorta spend the rest of the movie whispering jokes and making witty comments and giggling to yourselves like adult children and Ichiro thinks your laugh when your trying not to laugh is cute

-If something funny happens during the movie he’ll laugh loudly, if something sad happens you’ll hear him sniffling into his jacket sleeve and if something scary happens he’d keep that to himself but the way the his voice wavers when he asks if you’re okay kind of gives him away (he will Jump at the opportunity to hold your hand if you ask)

-He asks to stay after the credits because he cannot miss any after credits scenes its not in his blood, that’s not the kinda man he is

-After the movie is officially over he beats you to throwing away the trash and putting the tray back

-Would also immediately fire off about what stuck out to him in the movie and what he thought it lacked and ask your thoughts about it with a glimmer in his eyes

-He set a curfew for himself that he told his brothers he’d be back by but you both have a few more hours to kill so he asks if you wanted to grab dinner somewhere

-The place he takes you too isn’t fancy or high class, it’s just a nice, warm family diner he takes Jiro and Saburo to sometimes- he promises you’ll like it! (the place is also very special to him yknow)

-”If you don’t like it you never hafta go out with me again!” he joked but when you told him in all seriousness that you wouldn’t do that to him, some sort of tension fell away from his demeanor and he laughed warmly (relieved even) and said how that was real sweet of you

-Ichiro makes good conversation over dinner- he treats you like that he would an old friend or someone close to him and makes sure you stay engaged in the conversation just as much as he is

-After dinner (he pays of course- he was quick to whip out his wallet) you both make your way outside of the restaurant and you notice how he starts to fidget by rubbing the back of his neck and shifting his weight from each leg

-He asks if you had a good time and when you tell him you did (you Better) he visibly lights up, all traces of nervousness leaving him and his smile is big and its adorable

-(If you tell him that he wouldn’t know what to do other than stutter out a shocked thank you as his cheeks color)

-He says maybe you guys could go out again sometime? If you want? It’s totally chill if you don’t tho.

-When you say yes you didn’t think his smile could get any brighter and you realize how nice it makes you feel. How fuzzy.

-”Okay cool! That’s awesome! I’ll talk to you later alright? Be careful on your way home!”

-When you respond he starts fidgeting again like he wants to say something else and when you’re about to ask him what was up he quickly pecks your cheek before you could even register how close he had gotten. If his face wasn’t red before it definitely is now

-”I’ll call you okay? G’night!” he waves as he’s leaving and his big smile never leaves his face

Jiro:

-It’s arcade time! That would definitely be his first choice on where to take you

-Ichiro insists Jiro bring you over before y’all leave and although Jiro would love for his Niichan to meet you he can’t say the same for that little rugrat he’s forced to share a home with

-Of course he brings you anyway because Ichiro really wanted to meet you and Jiro can’t just say no to his older brother like that (Ichiro made Saburo promise to behave and he did so while wrinkling his nose and shooting Jiro a look behind Ichiro’s back and Jiro shot him a smug look in kind- Ichiro caught that one though and flicked his ear)

-When you reach the front door of the Yamada residence the door swings open before you could even knock

-Ichiro greets you warmly and eagerly ushers you inside telling you how much he’s wanted to meet you because “Jiro talks about you a whole lot yknow!” (Jiro makes a strangled noise of betrayal and his face goes red)

-You get an excited introduction from Ichiro and a less excited more being polite out of obligation introduction from Saburo (who’s about to make a quip at how Jiro even got someone to go on a date with to which Ichiro pushes Jiro towards you and says how you both ought to be going- “Also don’t forget about curfew got it? Have fun!”)

-When y’all make it to the arcade and get your game cards (they’re still tokens in my Heart) Jiro asks what game you wanna hit first and then y’all just sorta take turns dragging each other around

-His personal favorite games are 1v1 fighting games, racing games and dancing games- he loves the competition they bring and if you challenge him it’ll totally pump him up “You’re gonna regret it when I kick your ass!” 

-You guys go around the arcade with a new fighting spirit and try to kick each other asses at almost every game. Basketball, air hockey, hell even wack-a-mole- theres no holding back on any of them

-After you guys’ 3 round long dance battle you announce that you need a Break and he agrees (his jock ass could go for a few more rounds but he don’t wanna leave you out)

-He buys you a drink of your choice because he was informed that that was the Manly thing to do (”gentlemanly” was the word used but technicalities, technicalities) and asked if you’re down to get some food 

-Y’all both go for pizza (unless dear Reader is lack toes of taller ants then he wouldn’t mind letting you pick)

-You guys just share a big platter because Jiro’s funds are limited but he’d still like to treat you

-You guys laugh more often than you chew and take silly videos of each other eating to post on social media until you both decide that it was time to make more rounds around the arcade

-When it’s time to exchange game points for prizes Jiro loses his impulse control (read: non-existent) and picks out a bunch of dumbass shit

-”Bro I’ve wanted a kazoo for so fuckin’ long it ain’t even funny”

-If you want something a little higher on the points list but don’t have enough for he’d put back some of his shit (goodbye Creeper plushie) and say y’all could try combining points

-When its about time to leave Jiro clumsily says that he could walk you home- if you want! It comes out rougher than he intended and he can feel his face heating up but he’s determined to hold eye contact with you until you give him an answer

-He walks home with you until you both reach the front door of your place (also like how he was informed) and says he had a real good time and that y’all should definitely go again…y’know if you want…or whatever…

-You tell him you do and his face is Priceless (shock turning into something more like joy until he schools his features to look less like an excited puppy)

-Now unsure of how to end the conversation without being awkward he settles for the Bro Clap on your shoulder (totally not awkwa r d) and promises to get at you later 

-”I’ll dm you later ok? See ya!” he turns leaving you with a cool wave over his shoulder but he has the biggest grin on his face

Saburo:

-Oh god Saburo’s first date

-It’s his first date

-”Baby’s first date haha” “Shut up, maggot”

-He’s so nervous please help him

-He doesn’t have a clue how he was able to invite you out for the weekend let alone get away with calling it a date

-He’d be stroking his big fat ego if he didn’t feel like he was going to collapse- but he’ll be fine he has to be

-After all it’s just the aquarium! He actually likes the aquarium unlike the idiotic suggestions The Lesser One gave him (he would never go to the mall by choice). But he found the specimens kept at the aquarium to be interesting.

-Also Ichiro said he’d “chaperone” as his support (which Saburo would have never asked his Ichinii to do so in any other situation but…it’s a date. This is not his area of expertise. No matter how much research he had done on what to do and what not to do his anxiety never went away.)

-The plan was to meet the Yamada brothers at the aquarium and sure enough you couldn’t miss the two freakishly tall boys (one waving with both hands and the other meekly raising one hand in greeting)

-Ichiro took the lead, introducing himself on the way in and thanking you for taking care of Saburo (Saburo’s cheeks may have tinged a light pink at that)

-After making your way in Ichiro said he’d get out of y’alls hair and to text him if you needed anything

-Then you were both alone

-Saburo squashes the feeling of unease settling in his stomach and whips out a map of the building, asking if there was an exhibit you’d like to see first and then set off when you’ve made your pick

-At the exhibit he finds himself wanting to tell you what he knows about this particular species but he doesn’t want to annoy you or seem like he’s bragging about his knowledge (thats what kids at school usually assume- and although he Is known to brag he also like to share facts for fun)

-He starts slowly, “You know these animals are actually very interesting..”

-When you turn away from the exhibit to look at him and prompt him to speak more he’s actually startled and stutters a bit before continuing 

-You tell him that what he said was interesting and these animals were cooler than you thought!

-Oh. Oh.

-Saburo’s face feels warm as he opens the map again

-You guys laugh at the otters, marvel at the jellyfish and pet the little stingrays (Saburo was honestly a little reluctant at first but you coax him into it easily and the smile he wears when he touched one is a sweet little thing)

-He was becoming more eager to share his random information with you and you were just as entertained to listen

-He also laughs with you if you point out something funny the animals are doing

-”Hehe T-Pose crab.” “T-Pose cr a b” (these r what kids b talkin about dont @ me)

-He found himself loosening up around you qwq

-You guys eventually reach the gift shop and Saburo’s immediately drawn to these little sting ray plushies (they remind him of Mantyke from pokemon hehe) and he really wants one but…should he? In front of you?

-You catch him staring at them and then get a crazy idea: you both get one

-His cheeks flush immediately and before he can protest with something stupid you pick one up and give it to him while taking one for yourself. 

-Saburo was so caught off guard that he almost forgot to offer to pay (its Gentlemanly, Jiro, not Manly you fucking imbecile-)

-(Regardless MC BB taught them well)

-After you both snap a pic of your matching pokemon plushies, Saburo texts Ichiro asking if he could take you guys to McDonalds and Ichiro is fucking on it bro

-You all leave to get some McNuggies and make fun of the new Lion King toys because that shit is nasty (i know Hypmic is set in the near future but have you considered: i do what i please)

-It’s sundown by the time you all finish eating so Ichiro insists they accompany you home

-When you all reach your place Ichiro fakes a phone call and leaves you kids to be anxious alone

-Saburo says he hopes you had a good time and that if you’re ever free on the weekend again maybe you could hang out? If you’d like to…. (Ichiro fist pumps from behind the corner)

-You tell him of course you would and his cheeks grow warm again and he stutters out an “O-Okay!” and that he’ll keep in touch and he smiles and you smile and its cute bro

-He leaves you with a “I’ll see you at school” and a small wave

-He tries to keep his face neutral when Ichiro asks him how it went (and that his Mantyke plush is cute) but he fails horribly, a slow smile creeping onto his features

♡

WOO finally finished these for a second time! i still had a lotta fun writing them though!! the rest of the divisions will be up shortly ;3c thanks for requesting!! 💖💗💕

[h3llostrang3r]

A Lifetime to Remember

Perfect Match 

Pairing: Dames x Mc Summary: One-Shot.Melina Park is searching for Dames. Word Count: 3,800 Warnings: Language,Sexual content implied(I don’t think it’s anything more explicit than what you would find in a Choices 30 diamond scene.) Notes: I miss Dames. I still haven’t forgiven PB. I give them all my monies and they couldn’t give me Dames during the finale. 

Do you ever have the feeling that someone is watching you? You know, when you get those urges to look over your shoulder even though no one has called out your name. Did you really see something out of the corner of your eye or was your mind playing tricks? Or when you suddenly look up from whatever you were concentrating on because you could just feel a pair of eyes locked on to you. Like you can just feel the heat from their body and it sends a thrilling chill right through you? I have been feeling this more and more every day for the past few months.

Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. But it feels so incredibly real to me.

I’ve spent countless hours online searching for him…

Keegan hasn’t spoken to me since we took down Rowan and Cecile. She won’t give me any information on what happened to him. I’ve reached out to her and those I’ve found connected to her, but nothing. I don’t know why she’s ignoring me, I proved myself to her before - that I’m on her and all the matches side.

No signs of him and no body found. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I can’t think the worst. I refuse. I know he’s stronger than that. I need to know if Keegan or someone was able to fix his programing, he could have lost so much of what he had by now. He has to be out there somewhere …

That’s why I have spent so much of my down time online. Throwing myself out there. My online alias spreading like wildfire, ThePurpleHairPark. I’m in chat rooms, forums, social media outlets - there’s always someone watching,reading,lurking from behind their screen. The world knows about the matches and there are so many out there helping them. So there has to be someone that has seen him. All I need is one person to point me in the right direction. Or he can come find me. I know he knows how to. Or at least his past memories would.

Can anyone help me? Actually help me? The conspiracies, the theories, they’re insightful, but I need something more.

Where are you, Dames?

Please. I need you …

Melina sits back in her chair staring at the screen. She sighs heavily before she deletes the plead and publishes her newest post to her open forum. Her purple hair slightly covers her face as she hangs her head low. Some strand clinging to her cheeks as tears start to roll down her face. After a deep breath she wipes the tears and gets up to refill on her iced tea.

Melina was at the coffee shop close by to her apartment almost every day. Always getting looks from the customers coming in and out of the shop. She was never quite sure what they thought of her and her laptop sitting in her favorite spot by the window. She didn’t really care, she just wanted to make sure that she could be seen. Her goal was to be seen by him, by Dames.

As Melina stood in line, she checked her phone. No missed calls or texts from Damien. He had been so busy with work since they saved the President, she was thrilled that Damien’s business was booming, but it made it harder for them to make time for each other. They didn’t mind their low-key nights in just them, some takeout (Melina’s cooking still not improving, whoops) and a movie while snuggling on the couch. Yet, with Damien’s ever growing case files he would often come home, grab a snack and head straight to bed. Damien was still supportive of Melina spending time with Hayden, but even she seemed to be too busy for Melina lately.

Melina orders her iced tea - which is on the house, her friend Lily is now working at the register. Lily gives her a wink and flashes her a smile as she shoos Melina along. Melina mouths a, “thank you” as goes to wait for her drink.

Melina never minded being alone and single. There was always something to do, always a way to entertain herself or keep busy until she heard from one of her friends. So why was it now, when she had two loves in her life she felt most lonely? Even Nadia found time to be with Steve and his… abs. Luckily, her cousin would always make time for her at least once a week. But ever since they came out from hiding from Eros’ radar , life never went back to being carefree for Melina.

Her heart had been so full from being loved without judgement from two amazing people in her life, but now that love - where did it go? Had she expected too much? Was it unreasonable of her to want to see them more than 2 or 3 times a week? Melina’s mind often drifted to Dames when she was alone. There was still that spot in her heart reserved just for him. Which often ached at the thought of him, not knowing where he was or if he was even okay.

She had to find him. She needed the answer. Even if he didn’t want to see her again or even want to be with her, she just wanted him to be okay.  

Her name is called and she grabs her rather large drink and heads back to her spot. She stares at her computer a few moments - and there. That feeling. Her face grows warm, her heart begins to beat a little faster, the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention. Her eyes look up from under her long eyelashes - slowly scanning the faces in front of her, nothing. She slowly turns her head to the left, no one looking at her. Her back is against a wall so it definitely was not coming from behind. Melina bites her lip as she returns her gaze back to her computer. No, no, that feeling is still there.

She froze - too scared to turn her head again. Move your damn head, Melina. Do it. She ordered herself internally. Did her body know something her mind didn’t? She blinked and a tear began to fall. Exhale, Melina - slowly she let out the breath she was holding. Her body relaxed and she allowed herself to look to her right, out the window she always had to sit by.

There he was across the street, just staring at her with his hands in his pockets and a sad look on his face. That creep, that handsome fucking creep.

“Dames…” she breathlessly says out loud. Her eyes grow wide, she has to hurry or she’ll miss him. RUN she screams in her head, RUN MELINA. She scrambles out of her seat, almost knocking her laptop off the table, but she doesn’t care. Her feet threaten to trip over each other, but she corrects herself. She pushes the coffee shop door open hard and fast, if there was someone about to get hit there was no way she was going to notice. She looks across the street again, he’s not there.

No. Fuck this noise. He’s not getting away without saying a word to me.

Melina’s feet take her to the busy New York street. Her first few steps are in the clear. “Dames” she cries out with every ounce of her heart and soul. “Dames, please.” Her next few steps just miss a car passing by. Her head is spinning, the cars honking in the background seem so far away. The yelling from the other pedestrians not even registering. Her feet stay planted in the street as she frantically looks as to which direction he could have gone.

The honking becomes louder and louder, her ears now pounding. That’s when she looks to her right and coming straight for her is a yellow taxi. Time starts to slow, her breath catches - she can’t move, she wants to scream. Then the feeling, when you can feel the heat of their body against yours. Except this time - it’s real. Her focus goes to him, but is blurred in a flash.

Dames grabs her at incredible speed and throws them both safely to the sidewalk. He envelopes her in his strong arms and shields her from the fall on to the hard concrete. Her legs sting, but that pain is far away from her mind. He holds her for a long time, her face nuzzled in his chest. Her arms tucked between their bodies, her hands gripping for dear life onto his jacket. She inhales his scent, that mix of cologne and rum that reminds her of that blissful night in Paris. In his arms felt so right, she could melt into his touch and not move for hours - but she could live without the dirty sidewalk.

“Dames…” She manages to whisper, “I thought I lost you.” Her body trembles in his arms as the reality hits her. He is here, he is real, he is alive.  She lifts her head from it’s safe space. Oh what she would give to kiss along that jaw and to his mouth. To sink into his lips and wrap her arms around him and never let go.

“Melina what the hell were you thinking?” His face so close to hers, his eyes filled with concern. He brings his hand up to her face to brush back her hair and it lingers as he cups her jaw. Did he dare move his face any closer? Threatening to crash his lips against hers and tangle his hands in her hair, bringing her closer to him and never leave her again.

Before she can answer they are being helped up by onlookers. Her gaze doesn’t move from him, she’s not losing him again. She thanks them and brushes them off as she moves closer to him - if he tries to run she thinks she can be quick enough to grab him by the jacket.

“Please, Dames. Just come to my apartment. Y-you don’t have to s-stay. I …” She drops her head for a moment as she lets out a deep sigh. Looking into his eyes - God, is this real? Is he really in front of me? She says, “I just want to know you’re okay. Our last talk to each other, that wasn’t fair - it wasn’t right. That’s not how things were suppo-”

“Melina…” The way he said her name made her heart skip a beat. “I’ll come with you. We can talk, I promise.” She nodded her head, still in disbelief. Instinctively, her hand intertwined with his. “Do you want to grab your laptop?” He asked as he motioned to the coffee shop.

“I’m not crossing that street again, today. I’ll text Lily to hang on to it for me.”

**

The walk back to Melina’s apartment was silent, apart from the noise from the city, but it didn’t phase either of them. Absentmindedly their thumbs would graze one anothers - fingers still laced together. When they reached her apartment Melina led the way, giving her hips an extra sway for him as they climbed the stairs. She wanted him to watch, and she knew he would. It took her a moment to fetch her keys from her crossbody purse and unlock her door, the adrenaline was kicking in again. This is a part of her life Dames hasn’t experienced first hand. This moment would be intimate one for both of them.

They made their way inside, Dames moved towards her living room, taking it all in. With her eyes closed, Melina slowly closed the door imagining Dames moving closer to her. His hands on either side of the door frame, closing in on her. His chest pressed against her back, his pelvis against her backside, and his lips hovering so close to her ear. She would turn around to face him and that’s when he would press her hard against the door, his lips kissing hers and his hands gripping her hips as hers would tug on his collar.

“This is a really nice place, Melina.” Dames says, snapping Melina out of her thoughts.

“Ya, thanks. Over here is the kitchen… Where I keep the rum. I need a shot, do you want a shot?” Her heart is beating so fast, her hands begin to shake. She makes her way to the cupboards and pulls out two shot glasses and his favorite rum. He sits on a barstool on the other side of her counter, one elbow propped up.

“Melina, are you alright?” His voice is filled with concern as he watches her move quickly.

“Mmhmm. I just, need to calm my nerves. It’s been so long and it’s all happening so fast.” She pours the shots and slides one over to him. He takes his and stares at it for a moment before he returns his attention to her. She raises her glass to him before throwing back the shot. He quietly lets out a sigh, then follows suit. She’s already pouring herself another round and is quick to refill his. The second shot burns her throat, but seems to do its job as it settles her down. She looks into his eyes and she can see the pain in his eyes. The pain he’s been feeling since Paris, since they left him behind in Tokyo to fight Cecile and all those matches. Her breath hitches when he takes her hand into his.

“C’mon, let’s go sit down. Okay?” He says as he leads her from the kitchen to the couch in her living room.

They settle onto the couch, space between them, but their knees slightly brush against the other as they face each other. Her arms are crossed against her body, gently tucked beneath her heaving chest. His hands are placed on his thighs, rubbing back and forth - not sure how he should proceed.

“Dames, where the hell have you been?” Melina breaks the silence, he can hear the hurt in her voice. “I have been endlessly searching for you, hoping and praying that you were alive and until today I’ve had no fucking luck.” The tears start to form in her eyes and her voices begins to shake. “Why now? I know you’ve been in contact with Keegan. Why have you been avoiding me when you know how to get a hold of me? Why? Why?” The tears fall and her cheeks are wet, she can’t wipe them away fast enough. They just won’t stop.

He hates to see her like this, it hurts him to see her cry. He wants to just wrap her in his arms again and bury his face into her hair. He wants to make her pain end, but he’s the one who did this to her - it’s his fault. It’s all his fucking fault. Fuck it, he thinks as he reaches for her and wraps her into a hug. He gently rocks her and she cries even harder. He whispers “I’m sorry” over and over into her ear. It’s not enough, she deserves more than just his words, even if he means it with every ounce of his fabricated heart and soul. “I’m so fucking sorry, Melina.” He says before she pulls back.

She wants him to look her in the eyes when he tells her why. Why he hid from her all this time without one single word, even if those words were “fuck off”, but he didn’t even give her that.

“Melina, I’m so sorry. I was a coward. I was scared to come back to you when I knew my time was coming end. Knowing I only had months to retain all my past memories and feelings. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t bring myself to be near you and lose you all over again.” Melina couldn’t believe what ehe was hearing. He didn’t even attempt to let them try  -

“I eventually came into contact with Kaahn. I didn’t know if he could help me, but I couldn’t let Cecile and Rowan win. I couldn’t go down without some sort of fighting chance.” He sighed as he took Melina’s hands into his. They were so much smaller, and they were so soft. He loved how such a simple touch from her brought such warmth to him.

Her eyes grew wide, fucking Kaahn talked to Dames and he didn’t say a word?When Dames took her hands and it relaxed her for a moment, but she was still in shock. Who the hell did Kaahn think he was? “He attempted to fix my programming. Today is the last day before the original’s program was set to erase everything. Unfortunately, Kaahn doesn’t know if his override will work. I’m scheduled to… ‘reset’ if you will, at midnight. It won’t be until I wake up will I know if it worked. ”

Her world was flipping upside down. Her head was spinning, her heart was breaking, what was she supposed to do with this information? She finally had Dames back, but tonight he could be gone all over again. This wasn’t fair , Dames didn’t deserve any of this. He brushed her hair from her face, he wanted to comfort her as best as he could. He had already accepted what might happen to him, but this was all so much for Melina. He didn’t want her to have to endure all this. This wasn’t something she needed to worry about, she didn’t need to fuss over him.

“Stay with me.” Her eyes pleaded, her lips slightly parted in anticipation of his answer. “I know you wanted me to see you today. I know you weren’t expecting me to run like a mad woman into traffic, but …” she licked her lips and Dames let out a soft groan at the sight. “Please, stay. You’re finally here and I don’t think I can let you go.”

“What about Damien?” He questioned, his feelings for Melina meant the world to him, but he could never come between her and the person who he had to thank and curse for all these wonderful feelings.

She shook her head and said, “He’s surprisingly very open to me having intimate feelings for others. I don’t think you would be an exception. And it’s not about Damien right now. It’s about me and you right now, and right now I want to spend what could be last moments in your arms… if you want that too.”

That was all he needed to hear. He slowly closed the space between them, Melina’s sweet scent filling his senses, making his head swim. His lips found hers, they tasted like rum with a hint of peach from her iced tea that she had been drinking earlier. Her moan sent a tingle through his body. He needed more of her, but he was worried of what would come in the morning.  Dames broke away from the kiss and asked, “Melina, are you okay with keeping it light? I want to be with you so badly, but it’s not fair to you if I won’t have any memories in the morning. I …” Dames hung his head low, scared to meet his gaze with hers. Her warm hands cupped his face and she lifted his chin until he finally looked her in the eyes.

“I am perfectly fine with being held in your arms all night long, but don’t stop kissing me.” Dames stood up and brought Melina to her feet and embraced her in a hug. He lifted her up and she hooked her legs around his waist holding on to him like she would never let go, burying her face in his neck. He led them to the bedroom where they laid in bed all night intertwined. Both Melina and Dames fighting the urge to fall asleep. Their eyelids heavy, but their lips still finding each other. Both whispering each others names on their skin, and their lips. They both succumbed to sleep, the mental exhaustion too much for them to bear any longer.

**

When Melina wakes up she’s not sure what time it is. She can feel the warmth of the sun peeking through her curtains. Her face is still buried in Dames chest, her new favorite place to rest her head. She’s afraid to move, not knowing what will happen if she wakes him up. Will it be him? Will he remember her and the enchanting night they just had. Just him and her wrapped in each other, never letting go. She wants to cry, the anticipation driving her mad, she didn’t want this to end. She didn’t want to lose Dames again.

Moments passed and finally, he began to stir. She held her breath, this was it, the moment of truth. What would she even say if he didn’t recognize her - she guessed she could call Kaahn or Keegan and they would know what to do. Fuck. Why did it have to be this way? Why did this even have to be a thought?

She felt pressure on the top of her head. Was that? Was that a kiss? Another, and another on her temple. She couldn’t move, does he remember? 

“Melina.” He whispers in her vibrant purple locks. She looks up, and he’s smiling the brightest smile she’s ever seen. He’s beautiful, he’s perfect, he’s ….

“I remember. Everything.” He can’t stop smiling, his head clear of the fog that was his limited programing. Lifetime upon lifetime worth of memory just waiting to be stored. Kaahn did it.

“Stay with me.” Her voice gentle, she didn’t ask, she wanted him to know she wanted him.

“As long as you want me, I will always be here for you, Melina.” His lips found hers over and over again. They trailed along her jaw and down her neck. She moaned his name and begged for more. Piece by piece their clothes made their way to her bedroom floor. His groans grew louder the lower his kisses wandered. Her skin was soft, she was so beautiful and her taste was like ecstasy on his tongue. Melina’s moans drove him to please her harder and harder until she was trembling against his mouth.

“I want all of you, Dames. Please. I need you..” She begged between her panting breaths.

Dames kissed Melina ever so gently as he made his way between her legs. Their moans mingling as they moved against one another. Melina savored the pressure of Dames’ muscular body on top of her’s. She held him close, not wanting to let go. He was finally back in her life and to stay this time.

Dames is here, he is real, Dames is alive.  

[comicteaparty]

October 5th, 2017 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on October 5th, 2017, from 5PM - 7PM PDT.  The chat focused on Galebound by Respheal.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

Good day everyone~! This week’s Comic Tea Party is now officially beginning. Today we are discussing Galebound by Respheal~! (http://www.galebound.com/) For those new to CTP, discussions about the comic are freeform, so please feel free to bring up whatever you wish. However, every 30 minutes I will be dropping in a discussion question to help those who would like a prompt. These questions are totally OPTIONAL to answer so pay them no mind if you wish~! Remember, constructive criticism is allowed, but the primary focus here is to have fun and appreciate the amazing comics that the community makes~! Each chat a top comment will be picked and featured on an ad for this chat, so let’s have a great discussion~!

With that said, let us begin with this first question~!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

Kabocha

Oooh, favorite scene so far. Hrrrrrm.

Lyall

I really like din parting the waters

making the bridge

Amarok

oh these are questions for us?

Respheal

Yeh

Amarok

easy, the scene where Din jumps out the bed and charges his laser

Respheal

To prompt discussion

Lyall

i liked the fight in the hotel room too

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I'm definitely laughing at this.

no escape bruh

Kabocha

I really like Page 54 -- the end of the Dark Hour. http://www.galebound.com/comics/2415667/054/ I sat there for a while and was like... "What is this?" "Why is he smiling?" I've been really torn between Pascal thinking "You're so dead" and actually being relieved -- because who knows what could have happened? I've kinda stuck to the idea that Pascal REALLY wants to see killing Conan through though.(edited)

Amarok

well theres always Parkers house hears Conan choking in background

Lyall

Res' two page spreads are gorgeous btw

RebelVampire

not really a scene but one of my fave pages is definitely that one where pascal is looking out at the ocean realizing wtf just happened

Kabocha

yes.

I laughed super hard at that one

Respheal

Hahahah so many people said they relate to Pascal on that page xD

Amarok

yeah but few know about his fish friend

Respheal

"I sincerely love this page, my inner self relates to Pascal on a higher level"

Lyall

loooooooool

Kabocha

If it's not in comic, it's not confirmed, Amarok

Lyall

i feel that i personally have not bonded with pascal for some reason

perhaps my heart too sold on din

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I like this scene too. So glowy

Kabocha

We know very little about Pascal tbh. Din's been very quiet about him except "dude is gonna try to kill you."

Lyall

hurrrrhurrrrhurrrr

Kabocha

:3

Amarok

yes my favorite page

Lyall

love that spread

Kabocha

Wait, wait

Respheal

I was itching to get to that page so bad xD

Kabocha

How many words has Pascal said in comic so far?

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

uhhh

did he?

Respheal

Three

Kabocha

and what % of them has been a profanity

Amarok

2

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

oh

Respheal

2/3 were curses

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yeah

Amarok

that third one wasnt a word

Lyall

loooooool

Amarok

it was garble

Respheal

Yeah it was just "ugh...."

Kabocha

............. New name added to the nickname. I'mma stick it in the middle: "Foulmouth"

Respheal

xDDDD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

creative censorship, my friend

Lyall

PottyMouthPascal

RebelVampire

hey pascal was told to kill, not talk no talking needed

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

fartmouth Pascal

oops this is gonna be archived lel

Respheal

LOL

Kabocha

How many bad words DOES Pascal know, and are you going to invent new swears for him to use?

Respheal

Well I mean

He hangs out in bars so

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

so he swears like a sailor

Kabocha

When he finally does get more than a one-word line, he's probably just gonna be like "You ------ --------- -------- you and your ----------- horse"

Lyall

omg XD

i hope so

Respheal

--and the horse you rode in on

RebelVampire

the way this is worded makes me think pascal is gonna invent his own swears. gonna wind up using Din's name in one of them.

Kabocha

And then he whips out a knife and whoops, he really does have Murderpants now

Din will be so blown away

Respheal

.........

Wind puns

so many gale-blasted wind puns

Kabocha

has been kicked from the chat

lololol

Lyall

naaaaaah

Respheal

.....can...can I answer the questions too? xDDD

RebelVampire

if ppl got kicked for puns math would not be welcome here

rip math

Kabocha

Yes

Respheal

lololol

RebelVampire

you can answer the questions yes

Respheal

YAS

Lyall

math the punniest

Kabocha

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE SCENE RES

RebelVampire

i wont stop you

Respheal

THE SNAKE CHARMERS MONOLOGUE

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

kinda found it funny how they argued over a change of clothes

Respheal

That scene stayed pretty much the same in every draft

This page: http://www.galebound.com/comics/2437904/061/

Kabocha

Conan objects to being called a hick

Respheal

Nah he owns it xD

Amarok

ah the first attempt to explain magic

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

Lyall

OOoooooh i liked that scene too

RebelVampire

i liked din was nice in that scene and stopped magicking when he saw conan was sad

Kabocha

I'm not sure I trust this face sometimes

Lyall

no, trust that face most of all

RebelVampire

whats not to trust

O_O

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Respheal

Hmmm....

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

what he's friendly

RebelVampire

thats the face of honesty

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

or maybe not

Respheal

Oh I mean re: "i liked din was nice in that scene and stopped magicking when he saw conan was sad"(edited)

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Artemis trust him so it's good enough

Lyall

didn't he stop cause conan commanded it tho, lol

suuure he's just so nice tho

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yeah that's what I thought too

Kabocha

I feel like Conan was creeped out tbh

RebelVampire

shhh let me think din is nice O_O

Lyall

din is nice in my heart

keltyzoid!

so what is this tea party

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

din is nice I think

Kabocha

Din is nice to Conan.

Lyall

i don't feel like din is evil at least

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

so uh we discuss a comic every week

Kabocha

Din wants to overthrow a kingdom, though.

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

@keltyzoid!

Kabocha

Sooooooooooooo not really all that nice?

Lyall

i wouldn't say i think he's good tho either

i feel like he's someone's pawn

Kabocha

Din is nice in a very limited context

Lyall

cause din very much has an agenda

mariah (rainy day dreams)

He's got too much big shit to do to be soft and fluffy

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

he's nice

Kabocha

But sometimes you gotta feel like he's blowing smoke up someone's butt

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I'd like to believe

Lyall

wondered if he was conan's dad's servant or something

Respheal

@keltyzoid! https://comicteaparty.tumblr.com/about

Lyall

and he's bound to their family that's why he has to take orders from them

keltyzoid!

THANKS RES

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

like a book club only with comics

RebelVampire

to be fair to din's not so niceness moments, he did just meet conan and is fulfilling some obligation. those are not factors where someone is going to be nice.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Hmmmmmmm I like that theory!

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

why does Din want to overthrow a kingdom tho?

Lyall

so in that regard din is neither nice or not nice, he's just doing his obligatory duty

RebelVampire

@keltyzoid! https://comicteaparty.tumblr.com/faq you can also check out the faq which has more info ;3;

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

is the king that bad?

I mean kinda if he sents pascal to kill conan

keltyzoid!

ty ty

RebelVampire

well it may not be that the king is bad even. its hard to say when we havent seen the king.

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

@keltyzoid! you can read and catch up http://galebound.com/

it's a short read(edited)

keltyzoid!

Din and Pascal are some hard boys to draw, so shout outs to Res for drawing them over and over again

Respheal

Thanks! :'D

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I like Din's floofy hair

keltyzoid!

GOD YOUR ART HAS GOTTEN SO GOOOODD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

so floofy

Respheal

THANK YOU

That means a lot ;w;

RebelVampire

din has the best hair ;3;

Lyall

love din's floofy hair too

Respheal

Very floof

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yeah

keltyzoid!

curly boy

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

all the floof

Lyall

they say curly haired boys are pervs tho

keltyzoid!

who says that

Lyall

people

Respheal

pffft

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies Lyall is not curly haiir tho

Kabocha

How would Din feel about being called a floofy guy though lol

Lyall

lyall you need a perm

Kabocha

having someone sit there and ruffle his hair

admittedly, I thought, at first, that the line by his eye was just an age line XD

Lyall

strange imagery of conan ruffling din's hair

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

he'll shoot lasers at everyone

LOL

Respheal

@Lyall and that's how Conan dies

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

well conan can do that

Lyall

LOL

but what if he does it and commands don't kill me before hand

Kabocha

Conan's gonna end up shoved in the sea or something

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

what he can command Din to be a nice doggy and let Conan pet him

Mahotou

i'm late but i'm here!

Respheal

Well that might help xD

Maho! o/

Mahotou

o/!

RebelVampire

welcome!

welcome all new ppl

Mahotou

is it ok to ask for a summary of what's transpired so far at the tea party?

RebelVampire

i think the bigger question is is din's hair naturally that floof or does he spend hours getting it to floof O_O

keltyzoid!

pet DIn's hair but be careful not to dislodge the 8 to 10 random items he has hidden in there at all times

Lyall

secret dagger stash

keltyzoid!

he doesn't know what's in there right now but he knows it would be a pity to lose them

Respheal

LOL

Lyall

it's more like wild untammed floof

Mahotou

Din's hair is a portal

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I'd like to think it's natural floof

Respheal

@Mahotou The question is favorite scenes, but it devolved into discussing the floofiness of Din's hair

Lyall

rather than picture din with curlers in at night

RebelVampire

@Mahotou weve talked about fave scenes and aboout pascal's swearing

keltyzoid!

his floof is powered by the universe itself

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I mean can he summon hair sprays?(edited)

Respheal

Oh yes and that 66.7% of Pascal's dialogue thus far has been cursing(edited)

Mahotou

XD

keltyzoid!

curse him and his poofy shirt

Mahotou

pasc cant catch a break

Lyall

oh i love din's jacket too

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

Mahotou

speaking of, a fav scene is pasc's smiling

keltyzoid!

belts

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I like the scarf

Lyall

best jacket

Respheal

:D

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

likes all the scarf

Lyall

din the best dressed man

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yis

powerful and fashionable

Lyall

probably someone's tool

keltyzoid!

but Pascal is so fancy

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

fancy murderpants

Lyall

pascal is a snappy dresser too

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

both of them are

Respheal

Magicians, they like to dress well

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

that red scarf is cool

Lyall

they must work for rich people

who care how they dress

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yeah

keltyzoid!

or maybe he just knows of a really good antique store

Amarok

im back

what i miss

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

and Din forced Conan to dress up too

Respheal

o/

RebelVampire

or they just like to look really cool while they performing their magic. how else you gonna impress da ladies

Amarok

oooh we talking dress up

Lyall

maybe it increases your magic powers to dress nice

the secret of fashion magic

Respheal

Sure let's go with that

Kabocha

Din dropped that giant bag of cash at first

Amarok

oh thats the one thing that tells us that "Lucie" isnt Lucie

Kabocha

so I mean

keltyzoid!

the fancier you are the more magic you can do

Kabocha

dude's got access

Amarok

she hasnt complimented on his new outfit

Respheal

She's a lil busy freaking out over his well-being

keltyzoid!

one time i saw a guy on Penn and Teller and he was dressed like a homeless man and his magic was sub par

Respheal

LOL

keltyzoid!

whAT

Amarok

uh huh sure

Lyall

is she really her

i feel like it's a mirage to manipulate conan

Amarok

ill take shes a fake for 800 bob

keltyzoid!

it's a mirage to sink ships >:/

Lyall

yeah

Kabocha

What is Pascal in a glamor?

Lyall

like i find it more believable that she's fake than real just randomly there

Amarok

unless Pascal got his fish freind for a ride

Kabocha

(sorry, going with the jeopardy style answer lol)

Amarok

hes still trudging the shore

Respheal

Oh xD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

XD

RebelVampire

pascal busy building sand castles

keltyzoid!

hell yeah

Respheal

LOL he would too

Lyall

fffffft

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

does he like sand castles?

he might murder the sand castle

Lyall

who doesn't like sand castles

Kabocha

No, no, he'd only stab people who crushed his castle

Pascal has principles.

Lyall

he'd curse and cry

keltyzoid!

Conan's gonna break his sandcastle like the bully in Cool Cat Saves the Kids

RebelVampire

is that why pascal out to murder conan and his dad O_O conan's dad crushed pascal and the king's sand castle?

Respheal

......Sure

Lyall

nah pascal is being controlled by someone else too

Respheal

xD

Kabocha

Cool Din Saves the Kids

Lyall

feel like pascal and din are just both being used

RebelVampire

oh theyre for sure just being used

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

awww

poor pascal

Lyall

really din and pascal are BFFs that grew up together and dated

RebelVampire

i mean the opening kind of set the tone for that XD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

omg

def ship

Lyall

then they're like well it's a job

sorry bae

Kabocha

OMG ;'D

keltyzoid!

Din and Pascal?

Lyall

yus

Kabocha

Din has a boyfriend that is not Pascal, I'm pretty sure

Lyall

I hope

he's super good looking

Kabocha

I think Din's type is blonde? :3

Mahotou

that's a truth

Kabocha

Where's that pic, Res?!

Respheal

wuh?

Oh

Of Din's BF?

keltyzoid!

yeah it's Conan shut up

Mahotou

they want the boyfriend Res

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

Mahotou

xD

Kabocha

omg

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Conan can just be a chaperone

Lyall

i don't wanna push spoilers out of res tho

Respheal

https://respheal.tumblr.com/post/161779575831/drew-a-thing-for-fun-i-have-no-idea-why-theyre

Mahotou

OH WAIT

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

huh

Mahotou

THERE IT IS

Lyall

awww he's not my type

but if he makes you happy din i support

Mahotou

he's for Din anyways lol

RebelVampire

QUESTION 2. In the most recent updates, it’s revealed that Din may have purposely let the assassin, Pascal, get away. It also opens up an important question: can Din be trusted? Why would Din let Pascal get away if that’s true? Why is Din so secretive instead of just telling Conan the truth? Is Din really just out to hurt Conan too?

Mahotou

xD

Respheal

Oh hoh hohohohoh

Kabocha

Din did say the less Conan knows, teh better.

Lyall

surprisingly doesn't like long hair on male characters that much

RebelVampire

thats what all secretive ppl say when they just want someone to shut up

keltyzoid!

maybe it was just a prank

Kabocha

I feel like Din doesn't want blood on his hands? Or at least on Conan's hands, to be honest.

Amarok

well Din doesnt really know Conan

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

He's concerned for Pascal in a way

Amarok

but he knows Felix

allegedly

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

who's felix?

Lyall

maybe din has been ordered not to tell conan things

Amarok

Conans father

RebelVampire

felix is conan's dad

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

oh carp I forgot

Kabocha

He knows Conan enough to know that he was some guy in a stable who had a life and was going to help with an assassination plot

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

see my memory fails me already

Mahotou

*patpat

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

XD

Lyall

it's okay mharz i forgot too

Amarok

But the question and answer is Does Din trust Conan

Kabocha

So, Conan's plausible deniability in this is key if Conan's not gonna get the axe.

Amarok

enough to allow himself to be potentially controlled by him against his will

Lyall

i doubt din trusts conan

i mean he just met him

conan is more like luggage to din probably

Kabocha

tbh I think there's some serious gaslighting going on right now though

Mahotou

same

Kabocha

Stuff's going to explode as soon as Checker-- erm, Artemis manages to get Din to wake up.

RebelVampire

i dont think he's been ordered to not say anything. honestly i get the sense din is just being nice in this regard and feels the less conan knows the less conan's life is disrupted and the quicker they can get stuff done

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Somehow I just feel like it's his duty to protect Conan

Lyall

same

RebelVampire

i agree it seems he might be bound to conan's family

Lyall

i don't feel like their relationship is that deep atm

cause din is doing a duty

and conan is basically the cargo

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yeah

RebelVampire

hahaha conan as cargo

Superjustin of Time and Space

Lol

Respheal

Early on, he was even thrown over Artemis like luggage

Lyall

yuuuuus

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yep definitely luggage

Superjustin of Time and Space

(and yeah just peeking in to see what's up)

Respheal

o/

Superjustin of Time and Space

\o

Lyall

hi super~!!

Superjustin of Time and Space

Keep up the good work Respheal, your stuff's awesome

Respheal

Thanks :'D

Superjustin of Time and Space

and hey Draco!

You're welcome~

Respheal

PFFFFFFFFFFT

Lyall

loooool

Respheal

-dies-

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

Amarok

as for the why would Din let Conan escape

Superjustin of Time and Space

OMG that pic

Amarok

obviously commands are verbal

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Din let Conan escape?

Respheal

Why Din would let Pascal escape you mean?

Amarok

Pascal yes

derp

Respheal

LOL

Lyall

ah that makes more sense

Respheal

Maho xD

Lyall

my memory is fuzzy but i was like when did conan escape

Amarok

anyway

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

if Din let Conan escape, the story is over

Lyall

you had one job Din

Amarok

COmmand are verbal so to override them u must have percise language or else a technical loophole could proceed

Kabocha

now I want to draw some stuff like galebound was a totally different comic

Superjustin of Time and Space

Alternate Ending

RebelVampire

well its not over weve established din knows where conan is O_O

Tenor

@Respheal I didn't get to read but i wanted to drop in and saw I love the art at least! <33 KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

say*

Respheal

Thanks <3(edited)

Amarok

as Din may not know the wording of the contract, he must improvise

Lyall

i hope din has this huge secret ulterior motive that really goes against everything that's been said and done so far and he was playing both sides in order to free himself or something, lol

cause he seems that type

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I hope you don't go too far. I've only read the main pages

RebelVampire

i assume din just has past history with pascal

since i mean

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I feel that too

RebelVampire

din knew who he was

wasnt like "oh rando assassin"

unless theres a magician association

Respheal

omg

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

and not just I just know he's an assassin

there's a connection

Superjustin of Time and Space

I love these images @Kabocha

mariah (rainy day dreams)

They went to baby murder magic school together

Lyall

looool

Kabocha

You know, in Ink Drop Cafe, I've been talking about how Pascal is secretly out to kill Conan, because Conan's clearly the evil little brother

Lyall

they do look a like

i have a hard time telling them apart tbh

Respheal

rip

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LMAO

Superjustin of Time and Space

Wait

there's sucha thing

Respheal

I gotta admit that's more me sucking at drawing :'D I WILL GET BETTER(edited)

Superjustin of Time and Space

as babby murder time hour?

Lyall

i think that's why i haven't bonded with pascal, he reminds me of conan mostly

but like better dressed

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

you did improve a lot Res

Respheal

Thanks <3(edited)

Superjustin of Time and Space

Indeed

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

:3

Mahotou

same face syndrome is a butt

Respheal

Pascal needs to show up moar so I can get more practice drawing him xD

Lyall

hahah oh dear

Superjustin of Time and Space

XD(edited)

Lyall

i was thinking they were secret twins or something

RebelVampire

while were on these subjects. let us theorize

http://www.galebound.com/comics/2289959/001/

who that other kid in that page

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Lucie?(edited)

Respheal

pbbt

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

A childhood friend?

Lyall

maybe one of them is din as a kid(edited)

cause of the black hair

Mahotou

OMG YES WHAT DO OTHERS THINK ABOUT DA OTHER KID?

Kabocha

my initial thought was it's conan

Lyall

same

i thought it was conan the first time but the hair looks black

RebelVampire

what if the other kid is pascal

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

that might be pascal lel

Lyall

pascal and din

mariah (rainy day dreams)

mind blown

Kabocha

http://www.galebound.com/comics/2460520/067/ Conan has forgotten something though

Amarok

i subscribe to that was Conan and Din in the first few

Mahotou

i thought it was conan at one point and pascal at another point. and now i just dont know

Amarok

and he has memory loss

Lyall

it's just some random kiddos, gosh

Amarok

and has a history in Evenheim

Lyall

for establishing shot

Amarok

else why would the City Daemon help him

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

The woman is Conan's mom shot

Superjustin of Time and Space

Dang Kabo I love these too much

RebelVampire

well one of the kids is din. unless theres another green eyed floof person

Amarok

im guessing said scene was shortly after Conan's mom died and deadbeat dad left

Superjustin of Time and Space

your sketches

Lyall

oh wait there's more to the kiddos

wow i completely forgot about this part, LOL

okay yeah that's def Din

no doubt

i remember i knew that when i read it

cause it's pretty obvious

unless he has a twin

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

that was 17 years before the start of the story

Kabocha

gotta be Din. 'cause dem green eyes

Lyall

and the hair

RebelVampire

i lean towards its pascal just cause it being conan is too obvious imo.

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

he has floofy hair

Lyall

yeah

and he's better dressed than conan cause he's wearing blue

blue always the best

Respheal

xD

Kabocha

but we've also seen Conan's dad

and conan's dad is kinda fancy.

Lyall

well it's not din's boyfriend

can cross that off

RebelVampire

conan is their half brother O_O and his mom was a princess so he got a less shitty life

problem solved

Respheal

I mean, I haven't introduced that many characters yet xD So it's either one of them or someone tht hasn't been introduced yet~~~~

Lyall

that's very magi rebel, hahah

Superjustin of Time and Space

introduce more

Respheal

ikr

soooooooooon

ish

Lyall

conan is alibaba

Respheal

Soon in webcomic time

RebelVampire

LOL

it could be someone new tho, i dont discount that.

its not lucie

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

webcomic time = 10 years

RebelVampire

she is also crossed off the list

Lyall

i thought she was related to din cause of her black hair

mother or sister

RebelVampire

who are you talking about draco?

Respheal

The woman from the prologue I presume(edited)

Lyall

yus

Superjustin of Time and Space

k I'm gonna listen to some music, you guys enjoy the rest of the chat

Respheal

Alrighty, have fun!

Lyall

kay, laterz Super~!

Superjustin of Time and Space

Thanks~ And laterz!

RebelVampire

thank for coming super~!

Superjustin of Time and Space

You're welcome. ^_^

Kabocha

http://www.galebound.com/comics/2294666/003/ The last line on this page

The hate between Din and Conan is not quite strong enough

Lyall

oh

Kabocha

you know how some comics have power of friendship? These guys gotta be powered by hate. :'3

Lyall

this

Respheal

LOL

Amarok

right now its mutual distrust and distaste

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

rip

Lyall

doesn't this imply that din is borrowing power from people he hates to change the world to his own ideals so he is a two faced snake that's going to betray his master at some point, lol

Amarok

especially wiht that accent and old outfit

Kabocha

Right now Conan is basically the one in charge...

Well.

Lyall

sorta

he's not really

Kabocha

Yeah.

Of Pascal.

Respheal

xD

Lyall

din is borrowing power from whoever told him to get conan

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yep

he was looking for Conan's dad too I think

Respheal

Correct

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

which is something strange

Respheal

Wondering where the heck he is, anyway

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

cus Din and Conan gave different years on how long he was missing

Lyall

check the brothels

Amarok

imagines din with a "wheres felix" book(edited)

RebelVampire

what sort of power are we talking about tho? like do you have to be bound to someone to access more magic? are we talking about political power? etc.

Respheal

xD

Lyall

i think it's more a position of power

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

mind power?

Lyall

like a rank of some sort

RebelVampire

cause if were talking about rank

Lyall

well not official rank

RebelVampire

what if that lady was a court magician and she took the boys in and trained them

Lyall

but more access to stuff

maybe but she was dressed pretty poor too

Respheal

How many doodles did you make??? xDDDD

lmao

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Does the king have the same powers as conan does?

Kabocha

I'm doing these as I go

RebelVampire

her dress was pretty nice imo. plain but nice

Mahotou

rank is involved with the command ability right?

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

it does?

Lyall

her hair made me think she's poor tho

Mahotou

and i think she's a mage from implying they (herself and kid din) are stray dogs

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

again only reading the actual pages

RebelVampire

its possible the king has the same powers cause in res' world info city daemons are generally heard by high ranking officials

Amarok

if it does how does teh rank pass?

Kabocha

I think rank was only mentioned in the comments

Amarok

the old king is dead. long live teh king.. but whos the king?

Kabocha

so it's wild mass guessing at the moment

Lyall

iamking

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

that means conan is in a high position if he can command pascal

Lyall

well if he's the king's son he'd be a prince of some sort maybe(edited)

Mahotou

which i guess bring's his lineage into question (looks at felix)(edited)

Lyall

fuzzy memory tho will not benefit me here

RebelVampire

to be fair some tidbits of info are more a question of did you read the supplemental world info

cause theres some juicy hints in there if you connect some dots

Respheal

This is true

There's a lot of stuff I just plain can't fit in the comic xD But it's usually not 100% necessary info

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

was thinking what if Felix is somehow related to the king

wild guess

Kabocha

Felix is a rival for the throne?

That's a good theory....

Lyall

oh reminds me i was thinking you should put the dusk appendix in the main menu bar if you can

cause i didn't think to look for world information in the about page

only when rebel pointed it out did i know it existed

Kabocha

I'mma subscribe to that one mharz

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

why does the king want Felix and his heir Conan dead?

Mahotou

is felix an illegal baby of royalty? is conan?(edited)

Respheal

Hmm, I can see about making it fit in there

Making Conan a bastard lol

rip

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. Conan himself is rather strange with having a rare ability to hear city daemons. He also has suggested there are important things he may have forgotten. Why or what is Conan that makes him as much a target as his father? Is there are a reason he seems to have hidden abilities? Has he forgotten something that will later be pivotal to the story?

drops question early since were on the topic anyway

Amarok

hes a target cause his father is a target, making him a source of leverage

Kabocha

Someone wants to flush Felix out. :3

Lyall

i just assumed he had his memories hidden to protect him and hide him from others

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I wonder if it's becos Conan's memory was rigged which is why he says his father went missing 14 years instead of 25

RebelVampire

leverage only works if you intend to keep someone alive tho. so i mean hes leverage for din maybe, but not for pascal

or the king

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Like I feel Din's statement is more legit

Amarok

Conan has the ability to hear THAT specific Daemon cause the City Daemon of Evenheim will protect its own people

meaning Conan has history in Evenheim

Kabocha

Could conan be older than people think?

Mahotou

Din's the kidnapper and Pasc is trying to kill Conan. he's targeted not to be ransom but to be killed. why's he a threat?(edited)

Amarok

reinforced by the mark on Dins back, the same mark on Conan's Watch, and the same mark hanging above Evenheim's gate

Lyall

maybe conan isn't a real person

Respheal

Suddenly we've got a D.Gray-Man situation if he's older than people think xD

RebelVampire

yeah i think conan has some sort of high station in evenheim at least

Kabocha

'cause Conan was born in Evenheim, or so we think... There's gotta be some record of it -- so Felix being missing mysteriously for 25 years would be a little odd, eh?

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

rip

Kabocha

unless Evenheim doesn't keep records

Amarok

im thinking Felix or at least the Renaud family used to be in control of Evenheim

Kabocha

OOPS OUR PUBLIC RECORDS GOT BURNT DOWN

Respheal

LOL

Lyall

well if he's assumed dead and had a different name it's easy

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

brb gonna food.

:3

Mahotou

my guess is that while felix went missing, he had conan. so conan knew he was around cuz he was living with his dad

RebelVampire

yeah

thats how i interpreted the 14 vs 25 thing

is that din didnt know where he was

but conan did

Kabocha

oh god, conan's dad was one of those sovereign citizen guys wasn't he

Respheal

oh lord

Kabocha

that's the REAL reason Conan has missing memories

RebelVampire

it couldve been conan's mom who was from the affluential family. felix is just some bum

Kabocha

his mom was dying of stress of his dad saying "you can't put me on trial here because that flag is wrong"

Lyall

i hope

his dad is incredibly good looking(edited)

RebelVampire

http://www.galebound.com/cast/

hes the bottom right guy

Lyall

oh geezus

Mahotou

that cast page is a good resource

Lyall

he is

i don't care if he's an asshole he's my new second fave

Respheal

xD

Lyall

looks like you got a bro conan

pascal

Respheal

I had fun with some of these descriptions lololol

Mahotou

Too good for this cruel world

Lyall

like

pascal looks more like felix's son than conan does

maybe pascal was given conan's real appearance to protect conan

since pascal can protect himself

and is loved less

Amarok

Pascal isnt smart enough to be a decoy

Respheal

His murderin' pants

Amarok

xD

Lyall

maybe pascal is a clone

a magic clone

Feather, Duke of Hot Leaf Juice

I am finally home, so I ahve to say this

RebelVampire

pascal is too good for this world and wait a second pascal has green eyes

Amarok

he gets back to the king after completing the task

Feather, Duke of Hot Leaf Juice

So that horse might be a person

Lyall

maybe the horse is felix

Feather, Duke of Hot Leaf Juice

That was my crack theory for the longest time

Respheal

wat

Lyall

felix is an animagus

Kabocha

he's a cat.

Amarok

"congratulations captain murderpants on a job well done" "but im only a lieutenant" "I just promoted you"

Lyall

felix the cat

har har har

Feather, Duke of Hot Leaf Juice

Alright now I got that here I'm gonna poof, I feel like dying sorry qwq

Lyall

kay~! laterz Feather~!

Feather, Duke of Hot Leaf Juice

But yes, my crack theory was the mare was a person who happens to be the true heir and all the jazz

Respheal

Hahahaha drop in to post that crack theory and then poof out xDD

Alrighty see ya o/

Lyall

don't you mean

Respheal

Get feelin better

Lyall

true mare

Kabocha

during the dark hour, Artemis was a ... night mare

I'll see myself out thank you

Respheal

But yes, that's where Pascal got the cinnabon part of his nickname

RebelVampire

i wonder if its telling that felix and conan have middle names but the others dont. is this an indication of their fancy O_O

Lyall

mark of royalty

or pretentious namers

Respheal

Bit of a family tradition

Conan's grandpa's name is Matthias, and his great-grandpa would've been a Lucas

And on it goes

Lyall

ooooooooh

i drank way too much caffeine today

Kabocha

If Conan isn't ejected from the gene pool

Respheal

lol

Kabocha

his kid should probably have the name "felix" at some point(edited)

BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF THERE'S A SECOND CHILD

Lyall

conan's real name is Felix Jr.

RebelVampire

then the second child is banished

there can only be one

Respheal

xDDD

Kabocha

this is why pascal wants to kill conan

Lyall

how spartan

but conan is younger

Kabocha

Conan was the favorite.

:3

Lyall

but he doesn't dress as well

Kabocha

Clearly not.

Lyall

fashion too important

Kabocha

his dad was a hobo. Lyall

no he's wearing an ascot

Mahotou

that's why conan was hidden away as a stable boi

Lyall

hobos don't wear ascots

Kabocha

Din's sleeping on the ground right now

and he was in an alley with a blanket and probably a hobo then :'3

Din is King Hobo.

Lyall

no he was poor then

and sleeping on the ground is necessity

Kabocha

So you mean Din had a whirlwind of success?

Mahotou

he travels on foot and by caravan. sounds like a bumkin

Lyall

no din sold his soul to the devil of the story

Respheal

To be fair, Maho, they haven't gotten around to trains yet xD

Kabocha

Really, that part of things had to be a breeze.

Mahotou

so Res, how's din's soul looking on that pedistal?

Respheal

owo

Kabocha

Wait, if Din sold his soul to a devil...

Where is Rex.

Lyall

everywhere always

Mahotou

lol

Kabocha

it all comes back to freaking Rex.

Respheal

I'm gonna start responding to theory questions with a kyubey expression

Mahotou

yey!

Kabocha

"Wanna make a contract?"

Lyall

rex is a terrible bad guy, i hope res did better than that, hahah

RebelVampire

on a more serious note din said that theyre after "felix or his heir" so does that mean they knew felix only had one kid or that there can only be one heir so if felix had more kids it doesnt matter?

Lyall

gawd I hope Felix had a whole bunch of kids

Respheal

Good question!

Lyall

his kitten litter

Respheal

Din:

Lyall

Felix: Find them all Din, now find me

Respheal

THIS ISN'T POKEMON LOL

THERE IS NO CATCH 'EM ALL

xD

RebelVampire

this is why felix left. he has to go around the world having kids

Lyall

Felix: Sorry Din, my duty in life is to make babies with every one i meet

Kabocha

oh god

Respheal

omg xD

Lyall

Felix: I must share the beauty that is I

Kabocha

Felix's theme song is now Vanilla.

(by Gackt)

Lyall

rather Booty Call

Respheal

-dies-

Amarok

welp gotta go for now

Respheal

Awww, see ya! o/

Amarok

i may be back

Lyall

Bye Amarok~! Thank you for coming~!

Respheal

Thanks for joining :D

Ah heck

You guys are asking good questions though >:3

RebelVampire

thanks for coming Amarok~!

Lyall

i know nothing about Felix but he is now a full time player in my mind

Respheal

And have grazed a fair number of truths(edited)

Lyall

the horse was conan's mother all along

RebelVampire

i think we could also ask why now? like theyve not cared for 25 years about felix but now theyre like "welp better go assassinate him"

Mahotou

maybe they were looking for him for 25 years tho maybe the question is, who let slip that felix has a boy in the horse land(edited)

Lyall

his gambling debt got too high

RebelVampire

thats true it mightve just take 25 years

yeah thats an equally valid question

why do they suddenly know about conan

Lyall

omg he looks like Loki from Matantei Loki Ragnarok there

RebelVampire

did felix send them a letter and was like "hey guys just want to tell you i definitely dont have a secret son in this location."

Lyall

http://www.absoluteanime.com/mythical_detective_loki_ragnarok/loki.jpg

cause it's obscure

Respheal

Definitely don't go to the ranch in Norin that has a sign saying "Renaud Ranch". No one of interest there.

Kabocha

:'3

RebelVampire

His name is definitely not conan either.

Kabocha

Felix goofed up there

Lyall

good going felix

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

what I miss?

Lyall

felix not smart, just lucky

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

huh?

RebelVampire

were talking about why everyone came to get conan now instead of earlier

Respheal

I think we were talking about why people are after Felix and Conan

Yeah

Lyall

yus

Respheal

3. Conan himself is rather strange with having a rare ability to hear city daemons. He also has suggested there are important things he may have forgotten. Why or what is Conan that makes him as much a target as his father? Is there are a reason he seems to have hidden abilities? Has he forgotten something that will later be pivotal to the story?

-copy-pastes the question-(edited)

-cuz I kinda forgot what the question was too-

xD

Kabocha

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Lyall

Icanfinallydotext OTL

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

oh

RebelVampire

throws confetti for draco

Kabocha

Answering this question is hard

Lyall

i always assumed conan was a prince

RebelVampire

i definitely think whatever conan forgot is important

Lyall

or something to that effect

RebelVampire

cause of the amulet

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

he's an outsider prince

Kabocha

Conan forgot his mom.

Lyall

prince of demons

prince of pizza

Respheal

wat

Kabocha

Like, seriously, that lady in the flashback

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

they have pizza?

RebelVampire

Din: Conan what do you remember about your mother? Conan: ....I have a mother?

Lyall

do they have pizza?

i've no idea

Kabocha

LOL

Respheal

Probably something LIKE pizza

Lyall

omg conan that's sad

Respheal

Aww

Lyall

Conan: Wait, what's a mother

Respheal

OH NO

Kabocha

CONAN WAS BORN IN A TEST TUBE

Lyall

Din: I am your mother

Respheal

Suddenly Lost Boy

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

omg

Respheal

WAT

Mahotou

he was just talking about how he was upset that his dad didn't come to her funeral too. (edited)

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Din is not a Damon, Draco

Lyall

it's a dark hole i can paint you

Kabocha

http://www.galebound.com/comics/2460520/067/ But no, seriously, I feel like this was really really heavily implied

RebelVampire

no i definitely think thats his mom too

Kabocha

either that or conan has an older sister

RebelVampire

in the flashback

Lyall

it's

his first wife

Kabocha

conan had a wife

Mahotou

i thought he may have forgotten what her last words were

Lyall

yus

Kabocha

omg

so he really IS older

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

Lyall

conan is really a lot older than he looks

but when he was hidden he was made younger

Kabocha

add another 11 years onto that

Lyall

because he too is a magician

Respheal

Ha, add 11 years and he'd be Din's age

Lyall

shot

maybe

conan is felix

and pascal is his son

RebelVampire

i dont think were going that far into the twilight zone

Lyall

hey it can work

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LMAO

Lyall

you can connect the bridges to make it work

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Draco it's not reincarnation

Mahotou

Kabo is SO PREPARED with these images xD(edited)

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

stahp applying Zenchav logic here

Lyall

Conan: Why do you look so much worse than with your age lines

Respheal

And then suddenly Din and Conan are fraternal twins

Lyall

i can connect anything

do not take theories from me

Kabocha

@Mahotou -- no, I'm actually literally drawing this as I go

I know I said I'd prepare stuff, but I can't make this up

RebelVampire

so one thing conan definitely forgot in that flashback is the amulet cause clearly hed seen it before

Lyall

kabo super good at drawing fast(edited)

yus

and his first horse

that someone stole

:<

Respheal

Probably Parker lol

(jk)

Lyall

gdi parker

Respheal

xD

Kabocha

we need to see Parker in comic

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Kabo is like a cali

Respheal

Someday!

Lyall

yus

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

is parker cute?

Lyall

always the important question

Kabocha

parker's drunk all the time XD

Respheal

^

Lyall

:<

Respheal

He's uh.....

Lyall

that's not cute

maybe

Respheal

He's made an appearance in a lil derp comic I did for TWC

Lyall

is his first name peter

Respheal

https://respheal.tumblr.com/post/156311533421/twc-challenge-2-featuring-conan-and-his

Lyall

awww kiss him parker

when he's awake

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

aww he's a cute tubby guy RebelVampire

QUESTION 4. Din tells Conan that the reason Conan is being hunted is because of Conan’s father, Felix. What exactly did Felix do to make so many enemies? Where do you think he went? Is he dead or is he out wandering the world somewhere? Do you think Conan will run into him or is Felix’s role inconsequential?

Lyall

my eyes are tired so i read hunted as haunted

Kabocha

Felix stole a horse.

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

the king's horse

Artemis is the king's horse

Mahotou

i think conan will meet with felix somewhere down the line.

Kabocha

Also, probably slept with someone's sister that he shouldnta

Lyall

well felix slept with a lot of people's significant others

Respheal

And that's when Conan punches the hell outta Felix (jk lol.....or am I?)(edited)

Lyall

UnU

RebelVampire

conan should punch felix anyway

say thanks for leaving to get milk and not coming back, dad

Lyall

Felix: Come son, let us embrace

Kabocha

So, who did Conan inherit his ahoge from?

His ma or his pa

Lyall

the pressing questions

Respheal

That's actually a good question

That I don't remember the answer to

Lyall

D:

Respheal

-looks up refs-

Mahotou

its the grandpa

Lyall

from the horse

UvU

Kabocha

OH WAIT

I know

neither. XD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Felix: You shall do my bidding

takes over the underworld

Lyall

no felix that's bad

Respheal

If rank is determined by ahoge, Pascal is probably higher ranked

Lyall

lolol

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

oh wait that's a different story

Lyall

Felix: Conan let me show you my magic bag

I hope Conan's real name is Katz

Kabocha

Yeah, Pascal would have the larger of the two ahoge

Respheal

Katz?

Mahotou

Pasc has windmill sweeping hair

Kabocha

...Those two I DID draw yesterday

Lyall

like Cat

so it's Felix and Katz

Respheal

omg

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL

Lyall

and a magic bag

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Felix the Katz

Lyall

do not let me name things, i'm sorry

Kabocha

How much DOES conan know about his dad

Lyall

nothing probably

how much does conan know about himself even

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Felix is probably a threat to overthrow the king which is why they want he and Conan dead

RebelVampire

well he knows hes missing

Lyall

how can you know your dad if you don't know yourself

Kabocha

that's deep.

Respheal

Well, Conan has hinted a bit as to how much he knows about his dad

Which is to say: not much

Lyall

Conan: I had a dad?

Respheal

OH NO XDDDD

Lyall

Conan: I thought I was born from these horses and Parker

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

might be fabricated

definitely fabricated memory

Lyall

yeah that's true

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

poor guy

Lyall

even if he had a memory it could be false

Kabocha

have we seen conan's belly button yet

Lyall

conan is an unreliable source for info atm

Kabocha

DOES HE HAVE A BELLY BUTTON

Respheal

........wat

xDDD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yep

Kabocha

if he's not got parents

like, if he was some sort of magical being

would he actually have one?

Respheal

Alright Conan, lift yer shirt

Lyall

does conan have abs,

the important questions

Respheal

hell yeah

Boy works on a farm all day

Lyall

10/10

RebelVampire

>v>

Lyall

work it farm boy

Mahotou

he had a nice back

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

he's ripped

Kabocha

Din also has a nice back.

and a nice tattoo

Mahotou

that page where he took off his shirt

#hesstrippingagain

Lyall

The tattoo is proof he sold his soul

for powah

RebelVampire

it looks more like a brand than a tattoo to me. like someone took a hot poker and put it to his back. and it went sizzle sizzle

Lyall

my first thought was what he's advertising

Mahotou

being branded gave him powerzz

Lyall

someone used din as a billboard

Mahotou

powerful slave?

Lyall

that's really a company

RebelVampire

or being branded is him being marked as magician cattle O_O

Lyall

ooooooh

Mahotou

that

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Din Works for Conan's clan

Lyall

that's what i think

Kabocha

I feel like I've seen din's tattoo somewhere in comic tho

Lyall

slave to conan's family

RebelVampire

the watch

Lyall

yus

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Pascal works for the King

Lyall

but maybe it's not the real king

RebelVampire

its the same emblem on conan's watch or looks supsiciously similar

Lyall

maybe felix was the real king, but went into hiding

that's why he's missing

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yep

maybe it was invaded

Lyall

yis

Mahotou

sht someone help me compare the watch to din's sholder

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

then King whoeverhisname is

Lyall

we shall call him Gink

King Gink

Mahotou

Gink-king?

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

is scared that Conan's clan will go revenge

RebelVampire

draco you cant always just make new names by spelling backwards

Respheal

Watch: http://www.galebound.com/comics/2362830/035/ Shoulder: http://www.galebound.com/comics/2369956/040/

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

which is why he wants Felix and his heir dead

Lyall

yes I can

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

LOL draco

Respheal

@Mahotou ^

Lyall

Conan's real name is Nanoc

maybe Felix is a robin hood type

pushed into hiding but doing good for the poor

but he looks like an ass

so i doubt it

RebelVampire

but i cant say for sure about the similarities. theyre just suspiciously similar.

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

draco

Conan's mind is fabricated as to protech him

well that was kinda obvious(edited)

Lyall

yis

Kabocha

I feel like I remember seeing a comment once about some of the scenery in Evenheim and I'm like what are some of these comments talking about

cameos?

Kabocha

and other stuff

Respheal

Hahaha if it makes it easier to refer to the king Din's looking to overthrow, King Cymaria works (they go by their city-state name sometimes)

Ah yeah there were a few pages with cameos from other comics

Lyall

maybe the king is a woman

cause their name ends in A

i'm sorry i really drank too much caffeine

RebelVampire

if this is a matter of felix is the true king i still dont get why theyd wait so long to deal with him. not to mention even if he changed his name i think hed be found out cause a king being dethroned is kind of a big deal

Lyall

yeah that's true rebel

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

probably because Conan is more powerful

and they were waiting him to grow up

lel

Lyall

but maybe he's a different kind of royalty

i'm not fully theorized in the construct of the world

RebelVampire

im not talking about conan im talking about felix

Lyall

so the hierarchy of such could be different than the assumed

RebelVampire

conan wouldnt of been born yet

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

but it's related

Respheal

Conan's 22, for reference

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

wait

he's 22?

Lyall

like maybe there's a different kind of royalty amongst the magician

than with the lands

Mahotou

its in the cast page too right?

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

again, I didn't read anything aside the main pages

Respheal

It's fine ^^

It's all optional supplementary stuff hiding back there lol

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

it's more fun to speculate that way

RebelVampire

yeah conan is 22 so he was born 3 years after din and his cohorts think felix went missing.

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Felix ran away

Lyall

i want to read it all again, and the supplemental stuff :<

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

met the magician girl

lived with them for 11 years

Lyall

looks at pile of pages to draw

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

then ran away again

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

rip my theory

Lyall

would felix be din's father then

Respheal

:3

Lyall

wha

RebelVampire

so i guess felix left when conan was 8?

Respheal

Oh nah I'm just trolling with my reactions mostly xD

All of the theories have been good!

Correct

22-14=8

Wait

Lyall

bad parenting felix

Respheal

Yeah

Lyall

abandoning your son

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

psh who does that

Lyall

for the greater good

of brothels

no not you rex

get back in your hole

Kabocha

We need an icon for Felix now

Respheal

That would be the grumpiest icon

Lyall

felix joins dad of the year club

Respheal

xD

RebelVampire

you can never have enough grumpy icons

Mahotou

i think Din's grin would be more appropriate for Res.

xD

Respheal

That's like the criteria for being a Magician: have a blood-curdling evil grin

RebelVampire

i really love the pattern on pascal's shirt random

Lyall

lolololol

yus

Respheal

Pascal likes dressin up

Lyall

he wears it well

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

he and din are

Mahotou

Pasc "i'm an assasin so i'm in all black but i wanna stand out and be fancy soooo RED CRAVAT"

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

yiss

Respheal

LOL

Lyall

lolol

Respheal

Hahaha Pascal wears the red cravat solely cuz it matches his magic's color

He's like IT MATCHES YES

Kabocha

and his eyes!

Lyall

omg XD that dork

Kabocha

also the blood of his enemies!

Respheal

Well yeah the ring around the eyes matches their magic too

Kabocha

res, where's that stupid pic of pascal I drew

Respheal

(Din's is kinda hard to see sometimes--I gotta fix that)

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I like red so I approve

Lyall

blueisbest

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

red

Lyall

blue

Respheal

>w>

Respheal

Gonna quote @Mahotou here

"WHO'S BLUE?????"

Lyall

felix?

RebelVampire

the entire comic

Respheal

Now it is! xD

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

draco

Lyall

mharz

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

no

Lyall

yes

ironically mharz's name is blue and mine is red

RebelVampire

with 6 minutes left to go does anyone have any closing thoughts?

Lyall

ummm

tell us all the secrets

Respheal

Since we're getting close to it, I was gonna mention what the next chapter's gonna be called

#speculation

Mahotou

OOOOOOOOOO

Kabocha

:3

Respheal

Chapter 4: Hear, Obey, Defy

:3

Mahotou

*looks at Din

RebelVampire

rip conan

Lyall

din gonna disobey

tsks

it's okay din

i support you

kill him if necessary

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

be free Din, be free

Lyall

yus

free your genie bond

Respheal

Hahaha funny you should mention that

Din -> djinn

Lyall

oh i noticed

Respheal

xD

Lyall

and then i forgot

Respheal

LOL

Lyall

but now i remember

Kabocha

When's Din gonna have another slasher smile?

RebelVampire

but were all assuming it means din gonna betray conan i think. it could be that they cross the bridge, someone is like "din you take that boy to the king gosh" and then din is like no go jump off a bridge

Lyall

look at din

of course he's going to betray him

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

I trust Din

with my pennies

Respheal

:3

RebelVampire

i trust artemis

Lyall

I trust din to do what's right for the story

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Artemis is best

Lyall

i trust din to do what's right for din too

unless

he forms a really really strong bond with conan

which could happen

but he does not have that atm

Respheal

Hahaha I will say, a lot of you were SERIOUSLY on the right track

I was screaming

xD

Lyall

it was the horse theory wasn't it

Respheal

Yes

You caught me

Lyall

felix is a horse

Respheal

Conan's mom never died, she's been the horse all along

Lyall

just horsing around

RebelVampire

to be fair tho if din wants to overthrow the king its not to his advantage yet to betray conan if conan is some necessary component

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Din wants to be king

RebelVampire

i approve of King Din

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

overthrows the king first then makes conan the king

Lyall

i feel like a lot of the story pieces are still missing for me to make a real judgement on who's right and wrong

Lyall

I support king Din 100%

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

then overthrow conan

Lyall

i want a picture of king Din

Kabocha

Res was totally blown away by the theories.

Respheal

Yeah, that's the thing--there is a LOT of missing info right now

Lyall

i feel he'd be very lelouch

Respheal

More info will come of course.....but then that might just spawn MORE QUESTIONS

-evil laugh-

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

gonna wait until chapter 10

Lyall

d'aaaaw

Mharz of Angels & Punchy Ladies

Likes to pile up things

Respheal

Oh heck chapter ten's gonna be nuts

Lyall

res so good at keeping spoilers

Respheal

.....so is every chapter up to that but y'know

RebelVampire

Unfortunately, the scheduled Comic Tea Party is now complete~! Thank you everyone so much for joining this week’s chat~! That being said, if you would like to continue discussing the comic, we encourage you to do so~! We want to give a big thank you to Respheal, as well, for volunteering Galebound for our reading queue. If you liked the comic, please be sure to support Respheal’s efforts. If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions about CTP, please feel free to PM me, or e-mail me at rebelvampire@startfaire.com.

With that said, next week’s Comic Tea Party will focus on Voidchild by David Lindholm. Please use this week to read as much of the comic as you would like. Hope to see you next Thursday (October 12th) from 5PM to 7PM PDT~! Until then~! Comic: https://tapas.io/series/voidchild/

[brownornaterugs]

school talk. 

i had to take these out the tags cos it was ridiculous..

i dont really have a BUNCH of options. idk how i feel commuting 2+ hours to schools outside the city. esp if i want to take at least 4 or 5 classes a semester since i could prolly handle that (should also think about not stacking intensive classes together so i’m not having to do 5 projects a week until that’s something i know i can do later on).

when i get home i should call my old school so they can give me my goddamn login info so i can see what classes i took cos im using that transferology site to see what creds can transfer (and what i actually got creds for cos im p sure the D i got in econ didn't count but maybe it did and maybe it was actually a C even tho i never showed up. god... i was such a shitty student. i think that was the class i never showed up to on time either cos i was working as a reporter..) 

i dont really wanna go to a school that's primarily for art..maybe..i donno. doesn't feel right and also brain is still in the What If I'm Not Good Enough mode. i dont have any formal training other than the 3 semesters in college :/ and it shows in my art.. that a lot of my skill lacks technique and knowledge of foundation... but that's silly cos that's what school is for! so i can learn that stuff! and get feedback on my progress. but could someone who's never done any art at all... could they apply and get accepted so that they CAN learn art??

still... i could just go to a nonspecific college n get a degree there. i also like.. need to think of what my end goal should be too i know im not really playing the game well but i need to play it in a way that benefits me in ways i care about or i wont go through with it. idk maybe i’ll grow out of that and be a better adult about it but i dont care to tbh!

i have.. some art related goals i wanna put in the works too. dream-related. i donno how it’ll work out.. but i want to attempt it but it’s gonna require a million days of research and planning. i can’t just jump into it. but school would definitely help me out in that area! i never wanted to but theres a certain class i’ll prolly need to take so i can also be a bit more realistic about my goals too. im gonna spend all winter break researching and writing out plans.

i’ve probably got a good... at least 3 years of college.. just based on the workload i can see myself being able to manage. i overdid it my first year and wasted 8 credits that i had to take again n i don’t want to do that. especially with art. this is my jam.

[dulltwig]

So I’ve been playing God of War (the new one) for a while now and I wanted to share my thoughts on its gameplay, its themes, and how holy cow guys how did it go so wrong? Also be warned this 100% contains spoilers from all parts of the game so here we go!

So before i dive into the message of the game or anything i wanna jsut put it out there ive played the first GoW, some of the third, I’m halfway through this one and ive watched a playthrough of the full main story line of the the newest installment, anyway! So the game is fucking pretty, let me tell you that much. You can tell a boatload of time was put into so many meticulous details there’s literally no way youll see half of them. not kidding. like, i find it to be RIDICULOUSLY contradictory that this game is going for some cinematic experience, and then wants the gameplay to be fast paced and destructive! Like, wow these norse ruins filled with symbols and statues are neat -HEY KILL MORE DRAUGR THAT YOUVE ALREADY KILLED 3000 OF- ok but i want to look at that -YOU NEED TO BLOW UP THIS THING SO YOU CAN MOVE ON- ok but like this room is really neat -HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE HERES EVERY MINIBOSS IN THE GAME RESKINNED FOR THE FIFTH TIME THAT YOU NEED TO BEAT ALL OF IN A REALLY SLOW SET OF BATTLES ONE AFTER EACH OTHER- alright god fine i wont look at your fucking game ill just mash r1 and then r3 to tear open the same guy in the same way for god knows what number time!! it’s just, its fucking stupid. there’s so much attention to detail that you’d expect it to be a more narrative driven game, which it tries to do, but the fucking core gameplay is so opposite everything that it builds that you dont notice jack shit going on in the environment unless theyre like forcing it to be a part of how you need to progress. Also, with the game’s little hide and seek for what are in my opinion relatively necessary health and rage upgrades, it makes the player 1000x less concerned with the actual environment and instead like theyre parsing a 3d where’s waldo book to destroy the 6TH FUCK C URN WHERE IS THAT MOTHERFUCKER I SWEAR TO GOD! like hm cool these statues definitely have a story but god fuckin damn do i not give a shit unless theres an urn i need to break to get the next ibunn apple!! its just, i feel bad for all those people who put all this work into making it look gorgeous and needed to resort to a game of i spy to make the players actually look at it. its a fucking shame. Also, i mentioned reskinned enemies? let me tell you! theres a lot of those! i mean, like, with the exceptions of the valkyries (and even then ive only fought one so i might be mistaken) youre essentially fighting the same enemy with one or two moves added since you last faced it for the entire game. even the final boss of the game is the first boss fight but with added moves!! its repetitive as shit! and most of the difficulty that the game does have, coming from someone who plays video games probably too much, is super fucking artificially added through bullshit enemy levels and OHKO’s if you dont spend hours grinding side content. WHICH LEADS TO MY NEXT POINT!

It also makes this weird rift in gameplay where its super punishing to go after side content and explore the world because the difficulty of side content is DRASTICALLY different from the main quest. At the time of writing this, im taking on level 2-4 enemies in the main game, just about everything has a green health bar (indicating it should be an easy enemy) or a yellow health bar (indicating it should only be a little difficult), but the side content im running into enemies that are consistently level 5-7, and even at max health and equipment that puts me at level 4, i can still get killed in two or three hits on normal mode. Maybe im pushing too much into side content early but for a game that wants the player to get immersed in the world and yadda yadda i feel its really offputting that the player essentially gets punished (gasp!) for exploring (bigger gasp!) its so dumb and just a totally unnecessary thing to do, especially when you go for a realm tear and it can either drop like 2 level 3 guys or 3 level 8 guys and there’s literally no indication as to what itll be until youve already activated it! its dumb! NOW ITS TIME FOR THE NARRATIVE THAT I DONT HAVE A SMOOTH TRANSITION FOR! OH BOY DO THEY TRY TO REDEEM KRATOS!! like, wow, this dude fucking singlehandedly killed the entire greek pantheon and then some! oh, and his own family! and, like, im not sure about this but im pretty sure he kills like a whole fuckin civilization of innocent people? but like yeah, sure, let him learn how to be a father, thatll redeem him sure! NOPE! they didnt even do that right! kratos was singlehandedly responsible for fucking ruining atreus. i mean, the guy just doesnt fucking know what a child is, in like a really just fucking dumb, toxic masculinity kinda way. like, kratos fucks up. even when atreus learns hes a god because kratos is a god and yadda yadda, kratos isnt even like “HEY BOY STOP ACTING HIGH AND MIGHTY, JUST BECAUSE YOURE A GOD DOESNT MAKE YOU ANY BETTER THAN THESE MORTALS”, he jsut fucking lets the kid parade around on an altar of superiority and tomfuckery. it even goes so much to his head he just fucking kills Modi because he can and modi shit talked once, like if i killed everyone that shit talked me id be in jail for the death of hundreds, you cant just do that shit and have it be ok. kratos is just fucking dumb and the violence of the game really, uh, goes against the whole, like everything theyre trying to do to be like “aw kratos isnt so bad and atreus isnt gonna kill him for being a dick”! i can seriously only see two routes for the next game that they set up REALLY. HARD. AND IN YOUR FACE. 1) atreus (now known as loki because itll be the next game and thats the end of game reveal) kills kratos at some point because he learns of everything that Kratos has done in greece, because, idk hes loki he’ll figure some shit out, or 2) Kratos dies trying to protect Loki from Thor because Thor is the Next Big Baddie and we need a reason to continue using God of War in the title and what better way than to make Loki a rage filled hateful character that needs to exact revenge on an entire branch of mythology because they killed his dad, who wasnt even that good a guy, but he was still his dad so fuck them all, you know? It’s gonna be fuckin dumb whatever it is, but there’s no way Kratos survives the next God of War, assuming that’s what it’s gonna be called, like jsut from a sheer narrative standpoint, and the fact its teased in one of the final cutscenes of the game that he’s gonna die in loki’s arms, but i dont know what the fuck that snake looking shit it so im not gonna try to guess u feel me i dont know norse mythology. but uh, yeah. also the whole ragnarok thing, that’s, uh, next game i guess? but i dont mean to be here talkign about whatll come sooooo... i swear i had more to say but quite frankly ive been typing this for more that 30 minutes and im not spending more time figuring out what it was gnight yall but yeah this game fucking doesnt know what it wants to be thats the tldr for ya

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

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[the5thforce-blog]

Discussion

The Naked Scientists Forum Messages * Profile Info Modify Profile Actions Show Posts This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to. Messages Topics Attachments Messages - the5thforce Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6 1 New Theories / Multiverse gravity « on: 25/03/2017 10:33:16 » The multiverse's gravity keeps it together in time which means consciousness is the center of a supersymmetric energy feedback loop where each moment is a superposition within infinity, spatial energy polarity like gender/charge, mass and color can be called supersymmetrical within the multiverse ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 2 New Theories / Re: What are the economics of sexual orientation? « on: 25/03/2017 09:55:50 » For better and worse, female rape victims rarely become calculated motivated serial killers or world war dictators so we can safely say neglect and social isolation is infinitely more psychologically and socially damaging, clearly both are undesired but by nature inversely proportionate and reinforced by a lifelong victim mentality We need to establish permanently that the mission is superior, all enjoyable deviance equals someone elses misfortune ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 3 New Theories / Re: DNA Pixelation « on: 25/03/2017 09:24:59 » Analogies and logic, were spatial holograms with the longest dna Google says theres organisms with longer individual dna strands, but when taking all the dna of each cell in the whole organism combined human dna is likely most complex atomically also when considering the overturn during 4 billion years of evolution ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 4 New Theories / Re: DNA Pixelation « on: 25/03/2017 08:19:46 » High radiation has caused excess human gender variation, men are forced to resist the bad radiation ratio provided by our sun to ensure their decaying DNA survives We should identify the genetic ratio that would ensure the longest survival when deciding who can live on mars ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 5 New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :) « on: 25/03/2017 07:22:12 » Geographic manipulation of the population and prime numbers of pi causing gold influence ReplyQuoteNotify 6 New Theories / Re: Mind is the best virtual reality « on: 25/03/2017 06:41:54 » More neurons allows more memory which allows more consciousness- both emotion and intellect When language has divided human genders beyond compatibility, bigger minds can only be wasted spreading their light to machines and technology ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 7 New Theories / DNA Pixelation « on: 25/03/2017 06:20:50 » Melanin preserves DNA density by blocking radiation, radiation causes mutation which inflates the DNA and decreases cellular density causing pixelation, racial mixing decreases excess genetic inflation which increases cellular density but also increases cellular malleability/adaptability which increases the risk of incompatibility when gone wrong, denser cells allow for more synapses and neurons, faster and denser muscle fibers, and more elasticity Inbreeding preserves desireable traits which increases compatibility but also increases DNA pixelation Pixelation allows lighter weight and requires less energy but decreases functionality ReplyQuoteNotify 8 New Theories / Re: Internet-DNA « on: 25/03/2017 04:05:32 » We can use the internet to reverse dna pixelation ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 9 New Theories / Re: Sex is our primary function « on: 24/03/2017 14:20:25 » We need all the sexually compatible genetics we can sustain due to our decreasing ozone layer allowing more radiation into our atmosphere combined with satellite and wireless radiation rattling our DNA constantly which is accelerating human mutation along with all other organisms on earth ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 10 New Theories / Re: Mind is the best virtual reality « on: 24/03/2017 13:33:43 » if we could design our own stem cells in our mind and release them to become any cell we could become shapeshifters ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 11 New Theories / Re: Internet-DNA « on: 24/03/2017 01:31:08 » DNA is the longest living chemical reaction, the internet is a reflection of our DNA ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 12 Physiology & Medicine / Re: Did the vagina evolve to operate like a trapdoor? « on: 24/03/2017 00:02:48 » Collagen promotes skin elasticity which can only be sufficiently consumed on high meat diets, veganism is creating less elastic females which may improve sex for some females but during pregnancy and puberty a diet high in collagen is necessary to minimize damage ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 13 Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does benzodiazepine use cause brain damage long term? « on: 23/03/2017 23:23:55 » Benzos similar to weed inhibit memory formation, over time memory degrades if you dont use it but the altered states of memory were the desired result anyway Tranquilizers inhibit muscle formation over time and are known to cause heart attacks and other motor dysfunction Its safe to say memory (brain) inhibitors should treat mental problems and muscle inhibitors should tranquilize the moving problems ReplyQuoteNotify 14 Physiology & Medicine / Re: Mixing abilify and cannabis? « on: 23/03/2017 22:25:22 » Debilify the tranquilizer only serves to ensure your tolerance to the real medicine- benzos stays low enough to work when needed as a last resort Abilify costs 24usd per pill, benzos cost 00.02usd, the only problem with benzos is they work too well- they allow unhappy people to finally pull the plug without anxiety and usually without a fuss Tranquilizers known to cause heart attacks and other muscle disorders need to be the last resort while benzos should be available in every convenience store ReplyQuoteNotify 15 New Theories / Re: What are the economics of sexual orientation? « on: 23/03/2017 21:38:13 » Since genders are completely malleable, creation can only be channeled into the opposite gender, stealing from the other side by choosing your side can only further create the bad you were trying to avoid in the other side Sex requires genitals that arent too big or too small, mutual masturbation or sexual autism cant be spread for a reason because its never worth spreading, spreading homosexual genes is the definition of inhumanity All products of sex are either sexually disturbed or sexually desireable, the biggest disturbance in the world "ISIS" wont stop attacking until we stop promoting sexual disturbance Members of i-SLAM only ask that we stop driving them crazy by promoting incompatible systems in their land, they already know what ALL-ah means ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 16 New Theories / Re: Healthy schizophrenia? « on: 23/03/2017 17:43:02 » The ability to recognize and explain loose associations requires more neurons+ connections which is mental capacity, mental illness or undesireable memories are the result of bad situations that can only be improved by researching what makes the situation bad which builds connections between the neurons provided by our DNA and assists with creating more desireable memories Bad situations cause bad memories which cause schizophrenia, voice hearing requires a source we havent determined yet, voice hearing can cause good or bad memories aligned with situation ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 17 Technology / Re: Is higher education outdated in the age of the Internet? « on: 23/03/2017 17:13:47 » Since fulltime minimum wage is the middle class now and all below that are the poor we should raise minimum wage to optimally align with where we think the middle class should be then provide the difference to the poor until they attain fulltime minimum wage, id say 15-20usd per hour is the minimum for a single person, 20-30usd for a parent and we need to encourage those above minimum wage to always spend any money they earn above the minimum in order to accelerate the economy and technology towards energy sufficiency since we understand how nuclear fusion works we should make oil as cheap as possible and use it to build more fission and fusion reactors along with solar wind water, we have just enough oil to safely expand to mars which infinitely increases our chance of survival even if earth sustains damage ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 18 Technology / Re: Is higher education outdated in the age of the Internet? « on: 22/03/2017 19:17:27 » Based on what I enjoyed and found useful id design public school in 2017 to involve one physical education class for 2-3 hours incorporating exercise strength training physics biology physiology nutrition sports recreation and even survivalist projects both outdoors and indoors, then an open ended collaborative research class moderated by teacher(s) where the students decide the direction of daily research using technology driven purely by curiosity for 2-3 hours, and one intellectual elective involving experts/teachers giving lectures and answering questions for the last 2-3 hours 1 Body-education class 1 Self-education class 1 Teacher-education class Homework should be easy enough to enjoy but hard enough to encourage socializing outside of school, my favorite classes were physical education, physics, foreign languages, and art ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 19 New Theories / Re: What are the economics of sexual orientation? « on: 22/03/2017 14:24:16 » Quote from: tkadm30 on 22/03/2017 09:14:44 Quote from: the5thforce on 22/03/2017 06:11:24 They put it in the inelastic one that stays stretched out Are you feeling frustrated because people can have their own sexual identity? Only when it interferes with mine or worse- I inherit their dysfunction. Maximizing function always maximizes choice, hetero interaction is always the maximum of social energy efficiency, we only guide entropy during our 80 year tour of earth, the 4 billion years before that were decided for you ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 20 New Theories / Re: P vs. NP problem « on: 22/03/2017 13:57:44 » Likely related to the false belief that we can create non-linear quantum computation more efficiently than biology, which my guess results from a misunderstanding of quantum "entanglement" ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 21 New Theories / Re: What is a global democracy? « on: 22/03/2017 13:32:14 » "2nd/3rd world" is materialistic propaganda, homeless are everywhere except... in socialist countries! You know what they do when one person starves in north korea? They start killing those in charge and arming themselves since theyre all in the military. Sex is the primary reward of life which bigger populations tend to have more of We tend to abort functional males via homicide if you consider that those in our population able to kill were usually able to create, instead of aborting females with less desireable traits before their first memory even exists- if asian females can understand that a sexually contributing female is harder to create than an able male surely anyone with a brain can, increased competition for a slightly smaller healthy female pool is always more energy efficient than supporting a massive incompatible "feminist" illusion ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 22 New Theories / What is a global democracy? « on: 22/03/2017 10:54:02 » Now that we've color divided ourselves into the rainbow of asexuality and mutual masturbation or mutual-asexuality as our superficial knockoff of the uncertainty-principle, we should try listening to the bigger older more socially successful populations who evolved around the biggest oldest mountain on earth and inspired all other human cultures, if were lucky maybe they'll let us raise their aborted females ReplyQuoteNotify 23 New Theories / Re: What are the economics of sexual orientation? « on: 22/03/2017 06:11:24 » Quote from: Demolitiondaley on 21/03/2017 23:16:45 Quote from: the5thforce on 21/03/2017 15:02:48 Quote from: tkadm30 on 20/03/2017 10:34:30 Quote from: the5thforce on 20/03/2017 05:36:44 Thats only true until gays artificially procreate spreading their incompatible gay genes onto their offspring, what about their kids free will? There's no such thing as gay genes. Sexual orientation is independent of our biological reproductive system. Even animals can turn into homosexuality, then go back to heterosexual behavior. All minds use the same laws of physics, homosexuality can only be caused by dysfunction, in animals the dysfunction is mainly pheromone sensory disorder, in humans the dysfunction is sex organ size, gay's sex organs are usually too big or too small which is why they dont enjoy sex in the right place, to contain deviant organs we need to discourage gay procreation Why would having a huge shlong make someone predisposed to being gay? If it doesn't fit in "the right place" what other place could a gay guy put it that another guy could offer that a female couldn't offer? I'd like to look at the statistics you seem to be aware of that identify abnormal penis size amongst gay men. They put it in the inelastic one that stays stretched out ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 24 New Theories / Ethical consciousness « on: 22/03/2017 05:36:36 » Since big brains never evolve inside low functioning bodies we have the ability to know real world functionality is the dominant ethic, a brain needs something enjoyable and worth doing otherwise it can only blame its most recent creator/influencer who can always be traced to the existence of energy itself- the idea that fundamentally energy being worse than nothing is written in our universe's elements- absolute nihilism even if only after a certain point, eventually the memory of bad energy thoroughly vaporizes any good remaining in the brain and the two are always related in our self contained world bound by the uncertainty principle, time itself is the only energy inheritence within zero sum space where good and bad can only amplify eachother over time, a true temporary zero-point seed is required to experience consciousness, all opposites including zero and infinity obey the uncertainty principle, infinity can only be represented by binary objective time followed by the random subjective relativity-bound space it distorts during the act of measurement aka consciousness, space is the entropy of what can only start as nothingness, zero, uncertainty, the spectrum of consciousness is an equilibrium between the biggest worthwhile infinity and its opposite- the smallest thing- nothing is still a thing, since many humans still reach the conclusion that energy is objectively worse than nothing and intelligence only amplifies the ability to recognize dysfunction, intelligence is always a double edged sword that we die by when humans continue to expand the void of dysfunction fundamentally starting with sex, as we approach the universal limits of worthwhile informational complexity which is the technological singularity we can only approach the energy scale/efficiency ratio of conscious complexity, biological machines are basically inherently intrinsically fundamentally importantly most efficient since it can only use the lightest elements available, beyond this point we should only attempt to improve biological function while preserving as much organic sexual diversity we can as its our only tool to fight radioactive decay, (homo-sexuality is a contradiction, gays are asexual mutual masturbating victims of a radioactive mutation we can safely catagorize with decay and dysfunction) otherwise we need to let the brain reach natural equilibrium with function to minimize incompatible emotion Goldilocks ratios are the most deceptive quality of energy, due to the uncertainty all energy peaks before its half-life and youll always know after its way too late yet still way before you thought you wanted to know sustainable ethics can only be a functional understanding never solely an understanding of dysfunction something is the entropy of nothing, something functionally diverse or nothing at all is the consensus, sex is the unbreakable bond of our energy and there is no replacement, a brain contraction can never be better than a body contraction so long as the brain is attached to the body meaning when sex fails----->good riddence brain ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 25 New Theories / Re: What are the economics of sexual orientation? « on: 21/03/2017 22:15:26 » Quote from: tkadm30 on 21/03/2017 16:12:29 Quote from: the5thforce on 21/03/2017 15:02:48 All minds use the same laws of physics, homosexuality can only be caused by dysfunction, in animals the dysfunction is mainly pheromone sensory disorder, in humans the dysfunction is sex organ size, gay's sex organs are usually too big or too small which is why they dont enjoy sex in the right place, to contain deviant organs we need to discourage gay procreation You should start your own religion. Im a pantheist, youre already in my religion ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6 SMF 2.0.13 | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines Designed by Raphisio. Theme by SMFTricks The Naked Scientists Page created in 0.05 seconds with 14 queries. The Naked Scientists Forum Messages * Profile Info Modify Profile Actions Show Posts This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to. Messages Topics Attachments Messages - the5thforce Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 6 26 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 21/03/2017 15:02:48 » Quote from: tkadm30 on 20/03/2017 10:34:30 Quote from: the5thforce on 20/03/2017 05:36:44 Thats only true until gays artificially procreate spreading their incompatible gay genes onto their offspring, what about their kids free will? There's no such thing as gay genes. Sexual orientation is independent of our biological reproductive system. Even animals can turn into homosexuality, then go back to heterosexual behavior. All minds use the same laws of physics, homosexuality can only be caused by dysfunction, in animals the dysfunction is mainly pheromone sensory disorder, in humans the dysfunction is sex organ size, gay's sex organs are usually too big or too small which is why they dont enjoy sex in the right place, to contain deviant organs we need to discourage gay procreation ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 27 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 20/03/2017 05:36:44 » Quote from: tkadm30 on 17/03/2017 23:28:09 Sexual orientation is the product of our free will (undetermined/quantum logic). We have the freedom to pick up a partner independently of the configuration of our DNA genes, and the freedom to have sex (or not) independently of our mental states. Thats only true until gays artificially procreate spreading their incompatible gay genes onto their offspring, what about their kids free will? ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 28 New Theories / Re: Healthy schizophrenia? « on: 19/03/2017 23:51:13 » Quote from: tkadm30 on 19/03/2017 08:38:49 Quote from: the5thforce on 18/03/2017 21:16:51 Schizophrenia is depressive thoughts and excessive paranoia triggered by social stress or isolation which is first caused organically and then may trigger voice hearing, negative insulting voices may amplify or increase depressive thoughts and paranoia until coping skills are acquired at which point voices can become positive and provide approval, praise, stimulation and entertainment in essence curing the schizophrenia There's no such thing as healthy or non-healthy schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a fabrication of modern psychiatry to label a misbehavior as a disease. Misbehavior likely due to social stress or isolation ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 29 Technology / Re: Is higher education outdated in the age of the Internet? « on: 19/03/2017 19:02:08 » People really only need to learn english, politics, economics, nutrition, physiology, and physical education, all the rest are unnecessary in todays society or can easily be learned online, even programming ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 30 New Theories / Re: What is objective time? « on: 18/03/2017 23:01:16 » We exist inside a 5 dimensional white hole because a black hole can only ever have 4 dimensions- a hole youre not inside can only exist abstractly to the observer ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 31 New Theories / Re: Healthy schizophrenia? « on: 18/03/2017 21:16:51 » Quote from: Kryptid on 18/03/2017 05:47:23 Quote from: tkadm30 on 17/03/2017 23:07:36 What is a bonker? Personally, I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia but have never heard any inner voices in my head. Interesting. How do your symptoms manifest? Schizophrenia is depressive thoughts and excessive paranoia triggered by social stress or isolation which is first caused organically and then may trigger voice hearing, negative insulting voices may amplify or increase depressive thoughts and paranoia until coping skills are acquired at which point voices can become positive and provide approval, praise, stimulation and entertainment in essence curing the schizophrenia ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 32 New Theories / What is objective time? « on: 18/03/2017 20:47:10 » Objective time fundamentally requires consciousness due to our existence, without consciousness relativity becomes irrelevant Relativity spectrum≠Uncertainty principle Time always has two dimensions from wherever/whenever it is perceived (the past and the future), the point of perception is itself a superposition of all the futures energy potential colliding with the pasts energy generating the energy of each new moment, consciousness exists on the surface of a circular expanding energy wave through a near perfect vacuum, since consciousness is temporary consciousness is the virtual particle generating all other virtual particles, or you can say consciousness is the real particle generating all virtual particles as the concept of consciousness always has the most relevance during communication ReplyQuoteNotify 33 Physiology & Medicine / Re: Did the vagina evolve to operate like a trapdoor? « on: 18/03/2017 17:15:16 » While most people have heard hand size, foot size and overall body proportions correlate with penis size, the best indicator may be head shape Since head shape partially indicates the shape your head squeezed through at birth, head shape can indicate the shape of your mothers vagina which is analogous to the shape of the penis Head wideness can indicate vaginal wideness which indicates c-v distance (distance from clit to vaginal opening), wideness is analogous to penis girth and c-v distance analogous to penis length both proportionate to head size C-V distance is the primary factor responsible for penetrative female stimulation, followed by trapdoor mechanics which relies on tissue elasticity which affects healthy pregnancy Assuming tighter females with shorter c-v distance can enjoy penetration more, smaller head size can indicate straighter females but decreased intelligence and less-hung males, bigger head size can indicate smarter males with bigger penises but potentially less-straight females Optimally males should seek females with smaller well rounded heads or the inverse of their own head shape, females should seek males with larger well rounded heads or the inverse of their head shape Since C-V distance matters more than trapdoor mechanics, slightly wider heads are a better sexual bias than thinner heads Aesthetic and functionality including brain region affecting spatial, sensory, and balance are also relevant, wider heads appearing slightly more cartoon but thinner heads leading to decreased sexual compatibility If you like lots of sex go for wider headed partners which may be an aesthetically counter intuitive tradeoff for some, keep in mind thinner headed people would tend to have stronger orgasms but less sexual compatibility between male/female Conclusion: opposites need to find a way to attract eachother in order to keep opposites attracting, racial (melanin) "opposites" rely on local climate, social environment, and other functional-tradeoffs determining the local-optimal ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 34 New Theories / Re: What is free will? « on: 17/03/2017 22:26:35 » Quote from: tkadm30 on 17/03/2017 22:04:53 Quote from: the5thforce on 16/03/2017 21:16:44 Free will is a fundamental contradiction caused by the uncertainty principle. Fundamentally, if our free will require quantum-like entanglement of the mind and matter, we're "free" to act upon this quantum energy via our consciousness. Quote from: the5thforce Absolute freedom can only be everything or its opposite which is nothing(nothing has the potential to be anything), will implies something but not everything(only the will), something is a limit within everything, free will is the probability of something within everything. Nice word salad. ;) Quote from: the5thforce Our free will is a probability based on the set of discrete energy contained within our physical bodies and surrounding environment, we can increase our freedom by increasing the entropy of our body/environment, the more you think and move the more freedom you have. Mathematics (and statistics) is the study of predetermined logic. Free will is undetermined logic. My associations run loose but theres still meat in the salad, 'undetermined-logic' is another contradiction ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 35 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 16/03/2017 22:57:37 » Relevant info from another thread: I read an article on human pheromones being a myth which I disagree with, under the best circumstances where the mother and father are both present and provide a positive influence on the childs life we learn to associate male and female scents with whatever (hopefully healthy) early intimate interactions we had with our parents and siblings carrying into adulthood ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 36 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 16/03/2017 22:31:08 » The uncertainty principle is a dichotomy and a spectrum simultaneously which can only move towards entropy equilibrium, since all energy in existence is caused by the uncertainty principle (nothing/uncertainty/"female" vs something/principle/"male") we can apply the concept to any dichotomy to achieve equilibrium. Most people would agree sex is our most desired interaction in life meaning a lack of sex causes the least desireable outcomes as a society which is why in order to attain a fair and balanced society we should work to achieve sexual equilibrium. Sex is a non-overlapping structurally-genetically analogous spectrum in all but cases of intersex genitals, game theory dictates that discouraging homosexual procreation is the only way to contain the spread of asexuality even if only considering that homosexuals have inherently fewer dating options/less opportunity, but since our sex organs are analogous and all of our minds use the same laws of physics, we can only assume homosexuality is the result of undesireable physical traits. The most humane way to contain this sexual disturbance so we can reach equilibrium is to discourage homosexual procreation to prevent creating more people with fewer opportunity both homosexuals and even worse their potential heterosexual offspring who can only inherit these undesireable physical traits. Sex or gender is just one example of a dichotomy-spectrum, since we need all the functional genetic diversity we can physically sustain else increase the risk of fatal mutation, disturbances to secondary spectrums such as racism and religious hostility can only be the result of sexual disturbance. ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 37 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 16/03/2017 22:25:27 » Until we have the ability to manipulate our DNA in realtime to become any shape desired, we should work to attain the most equitable shapes. We should also acknowledge that even the most exotic shapes would tend to prefer hetero-interaction with endless ability to switch so we should keep this in mind when deciding what is moral and most equitable ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 38 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 16/03/2017 22:12:36 » Opposite sexes are required for sex to exist, sex is the primary function of all dual gender organisms on earth from which all other functions and genetic complexity evolve based on the life and mating choices of all previous related organisms in the lineage which creates the structure of their DNA, throughout life DNA is radioactively altered allowing for more mutation to occur the longer the organism survives. The sex organs of both genders share analogous structures intended to ensure both are capable of enjoying sex, orgasm stimulation evolved as the function of all sex organs, when sex is not enjoyed it is no different than organ failure and should never be replicated, you may as well be a different species if you cannot find a way to enjoy the varied sensations of sex which can include both pain and pleasure(switch) combined to suit preference using technique(foreplay, speed, cadence, arrousal level), so long as flesh is in contact there will be stimulation If you cannot find a way to enjoy sex do not replicate sex and do not procreate, lesbians who cannot enjoy sex can only create daughters with less ability to enjoy sex and sons who can only create daughters with less ability to enjoy sex, while gay men i assume can only create a tendency to prefer stirring the unsanitary toxic waste of another human as the anus is only an inch away from the vaginal opening ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 39 New Theories / What is free will? « on: 16/03/2017 21:16:44 » Free will is a fundamental contradiction caused by the uncertainty principle. Free/uncertainty-will/principle Absolute freedom can only be everything or its opposite which is nothing(nothing has the potential to be anything), will implies something but not everything(only the will), something is a limit within everything, free will is the probability of something within everything. Our free will is a probability based on the set of discrete energy contained within our physical bodies and surrounding environment, we can increase our freedom by increasing the entropy of our body/environment, the more you think and move the more freedom you have. ReplyQuoteNotify 40 New Theories / Re: P vs. NP problem « on: 15/03/2017 20:53:59 » N can only represent a random number else remain 'nondetermined', P vs NP may have been intended to be a trick question but that doesnt change the truth ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 41 Technology / Re: Internet enables free education « on: 15/03/2017 17:31:57 » I believe the only industries humans will have in the near future will be: Food(farming, restuarant) Shelter(material mining, construction, housekeeping) Healthcare(assistant, nursing, surgeon) Manufacturing(design, assembly) Entertainment(performance, sport, gaming, recreation, art) - Teaching will be replaced by the internet, recreational socialization will become the focus of brick and morter school Tech design will be replaced by personalized customization, programming will be replaced by native languages Practical science is close to solved and will be replaced by simulation assisted engineering Repair is being replaced by increasingly affordable upgrades Business and politics including marketing will be replaced by mass media/mass communication Delivery/transportation will be automated though I believe recreational driving/off roading will become even more popular - Humans are approaching a point of universal understanding of our world where energy efficient engineering is becoming our only obstacle, tech has caused white collar/button pushing jobs to become easier than blue collar jobs which are inherently the last to be fully automated energy efficiently so we need to ensure were paying livable wages for the basic labor that has been equalized by tech with what were once high skilled white collar jobs Lastly I believe churches will adapt by continuing to move towards a pantheistic approach like unitarian universalism ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 42 Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What are time crystals? « on: 15/03/2017 07:55:53 » Im trying to understand the concept of time crystals, so far im imagining particles somehow entangled with decohered particles which re-cohere with our observed universe's worldline to form a pattern or 'crystal of time', is this accurate? ReplyQuoteNotify 43 New Theories / Re: P vs. NP problem « on: 14/03/2017 22:11:02 » Quote from: Bored chemist on 14/03/2017 21:55:30 Perhaps it would be better if you tried to understand the problem, before pretending that you have solved it. Insult and claim I dont understand without reason, clearly youre wasting your time ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 44 New Theories / Re: P vs. NP problem « on: 14/03/2017 20:34:49 » Nondeterministic algorithms can only provide inherently incorrect solutions meaning they are indeterminable, else they require randomization as the wiki you posted mentions ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 45 New Theories / Re: Multihole wormhole « on: 14/03/2017 14:14:37 » Maybe somehow create a ring of blackholes and shoot through the middle using some sort of blackhole catapult ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 46 Physiology & Medicine / Re: Did the vagina evolve to operate like a trapdoor? « on: 14/03/2017 11:40:42 » While potentially considered less aesthetic(which I disagree with), or harder to clean before soap and showers were invented, male foreskin which is analogous to the female clitoral hood evolved to protect the penis head from injury(warning: partial severance) while also providing more sensation, girth, and better thrusting for both male and female during sex, the foreskin reduces wear and tear which delays the onset of erectile dysfunction. The female foreskin aka clitoral hood increases surface contact with the clitoris as the penis penetrates the vagina pushing the clitoral bulbs outward forcing the clitoris, clitoral hood and labia to tug downward toward the hole proportionate to the girth of the penis. Mutilation of this vital organ is especially tragic in western society where men are often less than ideally driven to become angry masturbators or “w***ers” as referred to in the great state of england, else face wasting their orgasms during sleep every 1-2 weeks ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 47 New Theories / Re: Sexual orientation economics « on: 13/03/2017 06:57:34 » Also consider the role clothes might play in disrupting healthy desensitization to our own form, curiosity creating precedent and bias overcoming function If a lesbian does not enjoy sex why create a son to desire what you are unwilling to give or force the next girl to do what you are unwilling to do else force your son to stay single when you are unwilling to stay single which wouldve increased your sons opportunities in the local dating pool to begin with Theres a word for lesbians who prey exclusively on bisexual women, theyre called 'bulldaggers' ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 48 Physiology & Medicine / Re: Did the vagina evolve to operate like a trapdoor? « on: 13/03/2017 06:46:58 » In all conscious organisms pleasure is the primary incentive, most animals are incapable of comprehending reproduction or predicting the future on a level that would motivate them to have enough sex to sustain their population. Nutrient deficiency ensures we stay hungry, nutrients are responsible for taste, animals become desensitized to improper nutrients Most animals have clitorises, in hyenas the entire vagina is one big clitoris ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove 49 New Theories / Internet-DNA « on: 12/03/2017 21:25:56 » Since the early adopters/cyber pioneers/most frequent users of the internet have had the most access to information and mass communication during its most influential period, they will have left the greatest mark on the future of society. Assuming most of the data lives on forever I can imagine internet data analytics will become increasingly useful for solving future problems in addition to understanding human history. I believe the internet will serve as the memory for future AI which may eventually attempt to resimulate our universe based on the data, it also means were infinitely more likely to already be an "accurate" representation of a potentially very old 'organic' reality template just by existing in this era and should act wisely expecting that each move may forever be immortalized in AI simulations tearing at the seams of existence ReplyQuoteNotify 50 New Theories / Dichotomy-spectrum equilibrium « on: 12/03/2017 20:41:29 » Dichotomy-spectrum applies to all energy in existence, all energy experiences entropy towards equilibrium, black and white is a dichotomy-spectrum, mass and light is a dichotomy-spectrum, male and female is a dichotomy-spectrum, uncertainty-principle is a dichotomy-spectrum, time is a dichotomy-spectrum (past/future), observers are dichotomy-spectrums, space waves are dichotomy-spectrums All dichotomy-spectrums expand over time due to entropy ReplyQuoteNotifyRemove Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 6 SMF 2.0.13 | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines Designed by Raphisio. Theme by SMFTricks The Naked Scientists Page created in 0.06 seconds with 16 queries.

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

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...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

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Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

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He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

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This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

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“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

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This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

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“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[we-johnnygonzalez-blog]

5 Real Examples of Advanced Content Promotion Strategies

Posted by bsmarketer

Content promotion isn’t tweeting or upvoting. Those tiny, one-off tactics are fine for beginners. They might make a dent, but they definitely won’t move the needle. Companies that want to grow big and grow fast need to grow differently.

Here’s how Kissmetrics, Sourcify, Sales Hacker, Kinsta, and BuildFire have used advanced content promotion tips like newsjacking and paid social to elevate their brands above the competition.

1. Use content to fuel social media distribution (and not the other way around)

Prior to selling the brand and blog to Neil Patel, Kissmetrics had no dedicated social media manager at the height of their success. The Kissmetrics blog received nearly 85% of its traffic from organic search. The second biggest traffic-driver was the newsletter.

Social media did drive traffic to their posts. However, former blog editor Zach Buylgo’s research showed that these traffic segments often had the lowest engagement (like time on site) and the least conversions (like trial or demo opt-ins) — so they didn’t prioritize it. The bulk of Zach’s day was instead focused on editing posts, making changes himself, adding comments and suggestions for the author to fix, and checking for regurgitated content. Stellar, long-form content was priority number one. And two. And three.

So Zach wasn’t just looking for technically-correct content. He was optimizing for uniqueness: the exact same area where most cheap content falls short. That’s an issue because many times, a simple SERP analysis would reveal that one submission:

(image source)

...Looked exactly like the number-one result from Content Marketing Institute:

(image source)

Today’s plagiarism tools can catch the obvious stuff, but these derivatives often slip through the cracks. Recurring paid writers contributed the bulk of the TOFU content, which would free Zach up to focus more on MOFU use cases and case studies to help visitors understand how to get the most out of their product set (from the in-house person who knows it best).

They produced marketing guides and weekly webinars to transform initial attention into new leads:

They also created free marketing tools to give prospects an interactive way to continue engaging with their brand:

In other words, they focused on doing the things that matter most — the 20% that would generate the biggest bang for their buck. They won’t ignore social networks completely, though. They still had hundreds of thousands of followers across each network. Instead, their intern would take the frontlines. That person would watch out for anything critical, like a customer question, which will then be passed off to the Customer Success Manager that will get back to them within a few hours.

New blog posts would get the obligatory push to Twitter and LinkedIn. (Facebook is used primarily for their weekly webinar updates.) Zach used Pablo from Buffer to design and create featured images for the blog posts.

Then he’d use an Open Graph Protocol WordPress plugin to automatically add all appropriate tags for each network. That way, all he had to do was add the file and basic post meta data. The plugin would then customize how it shows up on each network afterward. Instead of using Buffer to promote new posts, though, Zach likes MeetEdgar.

Why? Doesn’t that seem like an extra step at first glance? Like Buffer, MeetEdgar allows you to select when you’d like to schedule content. You can just load up the queue with content, and the tool will manage the rest. The difference is that Buffer constantly requires new content — you need to keep topping it off, whereas MeetEdgar will automatically recycle the old stuff you’ve previously added. This saved a blog like Kissmetrics, with thousands of content pieces, TONS of time.

(image source)

He would then use Sleeknote to build forms tailored to each blog category to transform blog readers into top-of-the-funnel leads:

But that’s about it. Zach didn’t do a ton of custom tweets. There weren’t a lot of personal replies. It’s not that they didn’t care. They just preferred to focus on what drives the most results for their particular business. They focused on building a brand that people recognize and trust. That means others would do the social sharing for them.

Respected industry vets like Avinash Kaushik, for example, would often share their blog posts. And Avinash was the perfect fit, because he already has a loyal, data-driven audience following him.

So that single tweet brings in a ton of highly-qualified traffic — traffic that turns into leads and customers, not just fans.

2. Combine original research and newsjacking to go viral

Sourcify has grown almost exclusively through content marketing. Founder Nathan Resnick speaks, attends, and hosts everything from webinars to live events and meetups. Most of their events are brand-building efforts to connect face-to-face with other entrepreneurs. But what’s put them on the map has been leveraging their own experience and platform to fuel viral stories.

Last summer, the record-breaking Mayweather vs. McGregor fight was gaining steam. McGregor was already infamous for his legendary trash-talking and shade-throwing abilities. He also liked to indulge in attention-grabbing sartorial splendor. But the suit he wore to the very first press conference somehow managed to combine the best of both personality quirks:

(image source)

This was no off-the-shelf suit. He had it custom made. Nathan recalls seeing this press conference suit fondly: “Literally, the team came in after the press conference, thinking, ‘Man, this is an epic suit.’” So they did what any other rational human being did after seeing it on TV: they tried to buy it online.

“Except, the dude was charging like $10,000 to cover it and taking six weeks to produce.” That gave Nathan an idea. “I think we can produce this way faster.”

They “used their own platform, had samples done in less than a week, and had a site up the same day.”

(image source)

“We took photos, sent them to different factories, and took guesstimates on letter sizing, colors, fonts, etc. You can often manufacture products based on images if it’s within certain product categories.” The goal all along was to use the suit as a case study. They partnered with a local marketing firm to help split the promotion, work, and costs.

“The next day we signed a contract with a few marketers based in San Francisco to split the profits 50–50 after we both covered our costs. They cover the ad spend and setup; we cover the inventory and logistics cost,” Nathan wrote in an article for The Hustle. When they were ready to go, the marketing company began running ad campaigns and pushing out stories. They went viral on BroBible quickly after launch and pulled in over $23,000 in sales within the first week.

The only problem is that they used some images of Conor in the process. And apparently, his attorney’s didn’t love the IP infringement. A cease and desist letter wasn’t far behind:

(image source)

This result wasn’t completely unexpected. Both Nathan and the marketing partner knew they were skirting a thin line. But either way, Nathan got what he wanted out of it.

3. Drive targeted, bottom-of-the-funnel leads with Quora

Quora packs another punch that often elevates it over the other social channels: higher-quality traffic. Site visitors are asking detailed questions, expecting to comb through in-depth answers to each query. In other words, they’re invested. They’re smart. And if they’re expressing interest in managed WordPress hosting, it means they’ve got dough, too.

Both Sales Hacker and Kinsta take full advantage. Today, Gaetano DiNardi is the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva. But before that, he lead marketing at Sales Hacker before they were acquired. There, content was central to their stratospheric growth. With Quora, Gaetano would take his latest content pieces and use them to solve customer problems and address pain points in the general sales and marketing space:

By using Quora as a research tool, he would find new topics that he can create content around to drive new traffic and connect with their current audience:

He found questions that they already had content for and used it as a chance to engage users and provide value. He can drive tons of relevant traffic for free by linking back to the Sales Hacker blog:

Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting company out of Europe, also uses uses relevant threads and Quora ads. CMO Brian Jackson jumps into conversations directly, lending his experience and expertise where appropriate. His technical background makes it easy to talk shop with others looking for a sophisticated conversation about performance (beyond the standard, PR-speak most marketers offer up):

Brian targets different WordPress-related categories, questions, or interests. Technically, the units are “display ads, but they look like text.” The ad copy is short and to the point. Usually something like, “Premium hosting plans starting at $XX/month” to fit within their length requirements.

4. Rank faster with paid (not organic) social promotion

Kinsta co-founder Tom Zsomborgi wrote about their journey in a bootstrapping blog post that went live last November. It instantly hit the top of Hacker News, resulting in their website getting a consistent 400+ concurrent visitors all day:

Within hours their post was also ranking on the first page for the term “bootstrapping,” which receives around 256,000 monthly searches.

How did that happen?

“There’s a direct correlation between social proof and increased search traffic. It’s more than people think,” said Brian. Essentially, you’re paying Facebook to increase organic rankings. You take good content, add paid syndication, and watch keyword rankings go up.

Kinsta’s big goal with content promotion is to build traffic and get as many eyeballs as possible. Then they’ll use AdRoll for display retargeting messages, targeting the people who just visited with lead gen offers to start a free trial. (“But I don’t use AdRoll for Facebook because it tags on their middleman fee.”)

Brian uses the “Click Campaigns” objective on Facebook Ads for both lead gen and content promotion. “It’s the best for getting traffic.”

Facebook's organic reach fell by 52% in 2016 alone. That means your ability to promote content to your own page fans is quickly approaching zero.

(image source)

“It’s almost not even worth posting if you’re not paying,” confirms Brian. Kinsta will promote new posts to make sure it comes across their fans’ News Feed. Anecdotally, that reach number with a paid assist might jump up around 30%.

If they don’t see it, Brian will “turn it into an ad and run it separately.” It’s “re-written a second time to target a broader audience.”

In addition to new post promotion, Brian has an evergreen campaign that’s constantly delivering the “best posts ever written” on their site. It’s “never-ending” because it gives Brian a steady-stream of new site visitors — or new potential prospects to target with lead gen ads further down the funnel. That’s why Brian asserts that today’s social managers need to understand PPC and lead gen. “A lot of people hire social media managers and just do organic promotion. But Facebook organic just sucks anyway. It’s becoming “pay to play.’”

“Organic reach is just going to get worse and worse and worse. It’s never going to get better.” Also, advertising gets you “more data for targeting,” which then enables you to create more in-depth A/B tests.

We confirmed this through a series of promoted content tests, where different ad types (custom images vs. videos) would perform better based on the campaign objectives and placements.

(image source)

That’s why “best practices” are past practices — or BS practices. You don’t know what’s going to perform best until you actually do it for yourself. And advertising accelerates that feedback loop.

5. Constantly refresh your retargeting ad creative to keep engagement high

Almost every single stat shows that remarketing is one of the most efficient ways to close more customers. The more ad remarketing impressions someone sees, the higher the conversion rate. Remarketing ads are also incredibly cheap compared to your standard AdWords search ad when trying to reach new cold traffic.

(image source)

There’s only one problem to watch out for: ad fatigue. The image creative plays a massive role in Facebook ad success. But over time (a few days to a few weeks), the performance of that ad will decline. The image becomes stale. The audience has seen it too many times. The trick is to continually cycle through similar, but different, ad examples.

Here’s how David Zheng does it for BuildFire:

His team will either (a) create the ad creative image directly inside Canva, or (b) have their designers create a background ‘template’ that they can use to manipulate quickly. That way, they can make fast adjustments on the fly, A/B testing small elements like background color to keep ads fresh and conversions as high as possible.

(image source)

All retargeting or remarketing campaigns will be sent to a tightly controlled audience. For example, let’s say you have leads who’ve downloaded an eBook and ones who’ve participated in a consultation call. You can just lump those two types into the same campaign, right? I mean, they’re both technically ‘leads.’

But that’s a mistake. Sure, they’re both leads. However, they’re at different levels of interest. Your goal with the first group is to get them on a free consultation call, while your goal with the second is to get them to sign up for a free trial. That means two campaigns, which means two audiences.

Facebook’s custom audiences makes this easy, as does LinkedIn’s new-ish Matched Audiences feature. Like with Facebook, you can pick people who’ve visited certain pages on your site, belong to specific lists in your CRM, or whose email address is on a custom .CSV file:

If both of these leads fall off after a few weeks and fail to follow up, you can go back to the beginning to re-engage them. You can use content-based ads all over again to hit back at the primary pain points behind the product or service that you sell.

This seems like a lot of detailed work — largely because it is. But it’s worth it because of scale. You can set these campaigns up, once, and then simply monitor or tweak performance as you go. That means technology is largely running each individual campaign. You don’t need as many people internally to manage each hands-on.

And best of all, it forces you to create a logical system. You’re taking people through a step-by-step process, one tiny commitment at a time, until they seamlessly move from stranger into customer.

Conclusion

Sending out a few tweets won’t make an impact at the end of the day. There’s more competition (read: noise) than ever before, while organic reach has never been lower. The trick isn’t to follow some faux influencer who talks the loudest, but rather the practitioners who are doing it day-in, day-out, with the KPIs to prove it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!