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Posted by Steve Beaudry on May 14, 2020

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Why Slow and Steady Wins the Race in Social Media

A lot of the times, new business pop up and their owners are so excited about this new venture that they think they need to see quick growth on social media. This mindset may lead them to make some rash decisions such as buying followers or spending too much on ads. And it may look impressive to investors to have gained over 1,000 followers in under a month, but savvy investors know there's more to it than that. And the day-to-day consumer probably won't even pay attention.

Let's get this out of the way right at the front: Do not buy followers. No one knows for sure, but it's estimated that about 15% of social media accounts are bots. That's 15% of about 3 billion. So, if you had every bot on Twitter following you, it would bring your follower count up to about 450 million. Sounds impressive, right? It does right up until you realize that bots aren't buying your products or telling any real people about you. You could make the case that the high number of foll…

Herbalism and Potion-Making in Dungeons and Dragons

One of my players, a cleric, insists on being able to pick flowers and herbs along their journey to use in a recipe to make healing potions. The DM Guide is pretty clear that making healing potions costs 25 GP and 8 hours per day, a minimum of two days depending on the rarity of the healing potion (DMG ch6), but it doesn't go into the specifics of what this gold is supposed to be spent on. I run a game that is mildly homebrew (in that it's my own story with a few of my own non-official elements) but is careful to follow as close to the official rules as possible. I also like to craft stories that are similar enough to reality that they can somehow make sense even if they're magical. So I looked into how people in Days of Yore™ healed their wounds and learned all about poultices.
A poultice is, quite simply, a mound of ground up herbs and/or flowers or roots that you place on the wound and hold in place with a bandage. It has chemical properties that help the wound heal fast…

The Astricast: Star Trek

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You Need a Social Media Agency

One thing I've noticed over the past few months is that a lot of people are looking for an in-house social media manager instead of an outside agency or freelancer. I'm not sure if an agency is just something they don't think of, or if they honestly think an in-house employee is a better option. I mean, it makes a kind of sense. If you hire someone from the inside, you expect that person to have a greater knowledge of and loyalty to your brand. Because they're a part of the tribe; they're on your direct payroll; you have direct influence over their work. Right? Well, that's not as much of an advantage as you might think.

It's true: if you hire internally you have a lot of opportunities to pass along knowledge and new developments to your social media manager for them to share with the world. On the other hand, a lot of new developments you don't necessarily want to share yet (or at all). The kind of information that you want out in the world; that you …

The Astricast: Police Brutality

Here’s what I know about police brutality
In the past week, America has been shattered by yet another death of a black person, George Floyd, at the hands of a police officer. Unfortunately, this is neither a rare, nor a new occurrence. African American people have routinely been disproportionately harassed and brutalized by the very people who have sworn to protect them as part of the public. Comedians have joked about it, movies and TV shows have addressed it, protestors have railed against it, but for some reason, policymakers haven’t done anything about it. It appears that the death of George Floyd has been America’s last straw. The officers responsible for his death have been charged with murder, and the whole Minnesota police department has been sued by the City of Minnesota. Beyond that, protests and riots have broken out in every major city across the United States. Unfortunately, these demonstrations have, in some cases, provoked the very action they were organized to protest a…

How Social Media Saved the World

It cannot be understated that we are living through a history-making difficult time. Hundreds of thousands of people are falling victim to a global pandemic and everyone is else either staying home or acting brazenly stupid. It shouldn't be surprising, though, that one of the upshots of all of this is that there has been a rise in meme-making.

First defined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 as a cultural idea that takes on a life of its own and is passed down through generations much the same way that genes are, the word "meme" has itself taken on a life of its own to define pictures made and passed around on the Internet that often lampoon various aspects of life. I don't think I've seen any new memes in the past few days that weren't about the COVID-19 epidemic. But this isn't the first time a global catastrophe has been made fun of in what could be described as a "childish" fashion. In fact, one of the memes I've seen compared the uptick in Cor…

The Astricast: Google

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