Tips Tuesday – TikTok Videos, Site Owner Guide, Openverse, DeSo Blockchain

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• ADA and UX workshop in the DIY SEO course this week
• Where I’m at with making TikTok videos
• Some encouragement for those just starting out with video
• Why I’m returning Heartwood Art back to a hobby blog
• Why I’m starting another YouTube channel or two
• The DIY Site Owner Guide is live
• Why I hate the new cPanel interface
• My concerns with ModSecurity
• What to check when using free images from Openverse
• Why Meta is focusing hard on videos
• What Spotify losing artists means for ushering in the Creator Economy
• Will DeSo be the new decentralized social blockchain winner
• How streaming bots are disrupting the music industry and what it means for NFTs

Listen to the Podcast

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. We spill the beans on this week’s news, breaking stories for the day too, and special info just for those who watch. And the replay is available here on this Tips Tuesday post later too. But the live party is so much more fun.

Replay

Who I Help

All BlogAid posts and tutorials are intended to assist business-minded, hands-on bloggers and webmaster designers who are serious about making money and who want to stay up-to-date with site changes. And our BB Hub is a private member site and Facebook group for my site audit clients that has lots of extra perks and support.

BlogAid Happenings

There are major waves of change in the air these days. Are you getting swept up in that vibe?

Me and several of my clients and vendor partners sure are. I’ll have more for you on what’s going on here in a moment.

ADA and UX Workshop This Week

DIY SEO course members have let me know how excited they are for our upcoming workshop this week on ADA and UX.

This has become an important set of topics over the last year.

And, we have some bonus material for you this time that I know you’ll be delighted to get!

Making TikTok Videos

As mentioned earlier this year, my main focus for Q1 is to get the BlogAid TikTok channel going.

To that end, I’ve been taking a course to learn about the features and how to do things.

It’s rather basic, but has been a good start.

I also follow a few TikTok teachers on the platform and a new one has got my full attention.

His stuff is next level and right on target with what I want to do with my own channel.

So, I’ve been trying to hurry up and finish the course I’m already in so I can get all of the basics down for doing videos with my phone. And then I’ll be going through all of his tips to up my game.

One of the things I’ve been practicing is making videos in different parts of the house at different times of day and night to see what works best.

I was thrilled to realize I have a lot more options for settings than I had originally thought. That’s going to give me some nice variety.

But the audio sucks. It’s super boomy and echos because I have all wood flooring everywhere except in my office where I put down a rug and things on the walls to absorb some of the sound.

I already have a lavalier mic that I used years ago, as well as a boom mic that I use with my DSLR camera for my woodworking videos.

But I needed to order an adaptor to use them with my phone. It just came in and I’m looking forward to testing those mics out this week.

I’ve already got a good list of tips and such I want to start with.

And this week I hope to start on the more advanced editing features for making them the way I see others do their videos. 

And I’m seeing some of the crypto folks I follow doing videos from their desktops or with DSLR cameras. I’m trying that out now too.

So, lots to learn and test still. But once I get a set of techniques down, making the videos will become cookie-cutter easy for me and I hope to start producing them in batches for the regular tips list I have.

And then I can quickly make news of the day videos using the techniques I pick out for that type of video.

All this to say that the prep may be taking a few weeks. But I know this is going to pay off because I’ll be able to make videos so much faster and easier and they will look like I want and will attract more audience too.

You Start at the Beginning, Not the End

I will also say that doing things this way keeps my expectations in line with reality. Nobody starts off at the top with a great finished product.

It takes time to learn and practice and get good with something.

I hope anyone who is struggling to make videos will adopt this mindset and see what you are doing as play while you learn instead of comparing where you are now to where you see others at who have already been doing it for a long while.

Keep at it. You’ll get there.

Have you started down the video path yet?

I’m seeing several more of my clients doing them now and that really tickles me.

Heartwood Art Returns to Hobby Status

With all of the new video marketing and Web3 business opportunities I see opening up for me, plus all of the courses and learning and such that I need to do to take advantage of these opportunities, I had to shuffle priorities for my time.

I’ve decided to officially make my woodworking site a hobby thing again.

That’s for 2 reasons.

I had, well, actually still have, a lot of direct money-making ideas for that site.

But, as all of my DIY crafter and foodie folks know, those posts can take 10-20 hours to produce.

I’ve gotten way faster at it.

But, what I feared about turning it from a hobby to money-making site has come true. 

All that extra project documentation work is severely cutting into my enjoyment of the hobby.

At this point, I just want to build stuff.

Heartwood Art is serving the greater purpose I need it to. It’s been a fantastic experiment in producing evergreen content that will continue to be a place where I can play with Gutenberg and video and SEO in ways that I just can’t do with BlogAid.

So, it indirectly makes me money by allowing me to show you those things in my courses.

I only post to that site about 6 times a year now and I have 2 posts almost ready to go from a build I did back in November.

After that, I have a couple more builds where I’ll be making 2 of something. And if I feel like it, I’ll document the second build, and maybe with a little less how-to detail than I normally include.

And I think that will keep the site current, let me continue to do fun Gute and video things, and take the pressure off me for being consistent enough to be a real money-maker.

Plus, it will return the joy to me of making anything I want, any time I want, and not have 15 more hours of work to do to create a post about it.

YouTube Lives

I think it’s pretty evident from the $232 billion stock drop Facebook had last week due to their decrease in users that the platform really is dying a slow death.

A week or so ago I asked folks who regularly attend the BlogAid LIVE on Tuesday night if they would be okay with doing it on YouTube instead. They said yes.

And as you heard me mention at the start of the year, I want to focus on making more tutorial videos too.

I’m super concerned about doing hour-long shows on the BlogAid channel because they tank my percentage of watch time – at least they did back when I was uploading the Tips Tuesday recordings to YouTube a few years ago. I’ve even stopped uploading the short intro for a year or so now.

So, here’s what I’m thinking.

I believe I’ll create a sister YouTube channel for these long livestreams.

And then I’ll do the introduction as a short to get more views on that on my original channel and pump those folks over to the livestream channel.

I’ll let you know when I get all of that setup and tested, as it has been a while since I’ve streamed on YouTube.

For this week, we’ll still be live on Facebook.

YouTube Experiment

I also have a new YouTube channel idea that I want to experiment with.

I’ve actually been mulling it over for a few years now.

And that NFT music project piqued my interest to explore it again.

I’m making it a hobby project for now, and it truly is an experiment type thing to see what becomes of it.

I’ll tell you more about it if it pans out to be anything worthwhile.

The main thing is, it’s something I find fun and is a great stress reliever too. And I want to keep it that way for now.

Do you have hobbies or creative outlets that have nothing to do with your business?

I think we all need things like that, don’t you?

BB Hub Happenings

DIY Site Owner Guide Posted

Woot!!! I’m delighted to share that the new DIY Site Owner Guide is now posted in the BB Hub!!!!

The first section is on your Routine Checks.

I’m now putting together tutorials for how to do some of those.

And then I’ll be sending out emails for doing the twice-yearly ones. We’ll do those again in July and then again in January of next year to help keep get us on a six-month schedule that hits at a good time of year for most of my clients.

And then I’ll do tutorials and schedule emails for the quarterly ones that we’ll start in April, which is the first of Q2.

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.

Hosting Tips

cPanel New Interface

cPanel just rolled out a new interface that looks like the Glass theme they wanted us to use all last year.

I hate it.

The whole thing is just words with no icons, which takes me a whale of a lot longer to read through to find things.

I’m going to wait to see how many other folks scream about this before I start making new public tutorials using it.

But honestly, I don’t expect cPanel to roll this back.

ModSecurity Concerns

To my utter dismay, WordPress has been insanely slow to address all of the ModSecurity issues that have been caused due to the heavy application of JavaScript when using Gutenberg.

Hosts have been deluged with tickets for things like Update Failed warnings to the point that they decided to deactivate the most common rules that were getting triggered. 

Worse, I’ve seen many hosts simply get rid of ModSecurity altogether.

This is leaving so many security holes at the hosting level that I can’t say if your site is truly secured or not.

The security I add for my site audit clients is substantial. But we need security at the host level too.

I know y’all are tired of having to turn off ModSecurity stuff at the host and at Cloudflare just to make a post. And I believe having to turn off the security entirely for all the hours you spend making a post puts your site at even greater risk too.

So, I’m currently working with hosts to find a good compromise for this that doesn’t significantly increase our liability, as the issue is not getting any better, and I no longer have any hope in WP or Imunify360, who makes the rules for ModSecurity, coming to any agreement over it.

READ: Fix for Update Failed not Valid JSON Response for steps to take if you run into issues while trying to save a post.

Image Tips

Openverse 

Have y’all checked out Openverse to source images and sounds yet?

It was purchased by WordPress a few months ago.

All of the media is supposed to be under the Creative Commons License or is public domain.

But, when I searched for some images, I noticed a disclaimer below it that says:

“Openverse aggregates data from publicly available repositories of open content. Openverse does not host the content and does not verify that the content is properly CC-licensed or that the attribution information is accurate or complete. Please follow the link to the source of the content to independently verify before reuse.”

So, before you copy the attribution link, be sure to visit the hosting website and read the license from there and see if it guarantees the CC license or not.

You never know if someone took a Getty Image and put it up on Flickr and then Openverse grabbed it.

Video Tips

Meta to Focus on Video Hard 

Meta, formerly known as Facebook has a new directive straight from the top.

After the stock dropped off the cliff, Zuck has told them to do whatever it takes to win back users with new video initiatives.

I think we can say goodbye to still images on Instagram in favor of Reels at this point.

And I have to wonder if they are going to do a push for videos on Facebook too, as it is one of the few platforms left where you can see mostly still images.

All of this speaks to the power of TikTok and the culture they have created on that platform.

It’s just more fun than anything else out there.

Every day I see creators riffing off each other with duets, splicing, duel lives, and more.

It really doesn’t matter how many of these features other platforms add or not. They lack the culture to pull it off.

And IG Reels is just TikTok reruns at this point, and nobody wants to see the same content on 2 platforms.

If I do Reels, I’ll be making separate content for it, for that reason, I think. I’ve heard too many of my peeps say they don’t like TikTok. So, I’m not for sure what I’ll do with this yet.

But, YouTube is so hungry for Shorts that they’ll take TikTok reruns, so that’s what I’ll be doing there, as YouTube at least gives me a valid SEO component to warrant the reuse.

I’ve heard a lot of IG users screaming that they can’t stand all of the videos in their feed.

And with Pinterest being no better than a mall of products now, where do you go to see still shots these days?

Where are you posting your stills now? And are they getting seen and clicked?

Let us know how you feel about all this in the comments.

Creator Economy Tips

Spotify Loses More Artists

Have y’all been seeing the fallout over the Joe Rogan podcast on Spotify where more and more creators are pulling their shows due to the controversial stuff he is saying on his show?

I don’t want any debate in comments here over what Joe said or how you feel about it, please.

What I do want to focus on is the power of the Creator Economy.

Taylor Swift took her music catalog off due to payment issues and free music streaming undermining the artist.

Others have taken their catalog off due to Spotify investing in military-related things.

This issue with Joe Rogan, and the fallout, speaks to the direction we are headed where artists want direct access to fans and payments on platforms that are in agreement with their ideology.

DeSo – Decentralized Social Blockchain

There are Web3 projects in the works that are attempting to create decentralized blockchains for social media that address some of the Creator Economy issues.

One such enterprise is called DeSo.

I’m still reading up on it, as I think it is a good idea, but I don’t see how they can possibly scale it up to the level of Twitter, much less the complexity of something like Facebook.

I’d be glad if they could recreate something like G+ that has a “who you follow is who you see” policy, but is not the echo chamber of Twitter.

MeWe tried to create that, but they have just not caught on due to some of the political hoohaa attributed to some of their creators.

And I think we’ll have the same issue on any Web3 version of it too.

So, I’ll be keeping my eye on this, and similar projects. But I honestly don’t think a Web3 version of social media is going to pan out at scale.

Streaming Bots Disrupt Music Industry

Last week I was flipping TV channels and came across a show on the Vice channel called Black Market and their Rage Against the Machines episode.

It showed these phone banks in Asian countries and warehouses in the US that had bot programs written to mimic humans streaming music and such in order to make them appear way more popular than they were.

This translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars more being offered to music artists by labels who are trying to sign someone who already has a huge following.

The same thing is now happening in the NFT marketing.

If you thought it was hard to get organic traffic to your site, it’s nothing compared to trying to do it for music or art or such with this mess going on.

There is actually already legislation to make this sort of thing illegal. But it’s impossible to police as you have bots trying to determine if the thing streaming is a bot or a human. And the programs these fake streaming bots use is too sophisticated to get caught much.

What’s really scary is we’re seeing these types of bots impersonate big creators on TikTok and Instagram and other places too. I see it like crazy in the account I use for Web3 and Crypto stuff. And the comment bots are even worse – trying to trick folks into following a What’s App account and such.

I’m not looking forward to dealing with that when my BlogAid account gets big.

All social platforms have a dark side. But these bots are ruining a few of them and I’m not sure what the platform can do to combat them.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

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