Who is Ken Armstrong?  Ken is all things to all men.  Irish playwright, author of several published short stories, blogger, CMF Ads Beta Tester, and Stumbler.  Stumbler?  Yes, Ken published a short story on Christmas Eve titled “Long Distance” that went viral on StumbleUpon, gaining him 21,879 unique visitors in a 3 day period.  Thus proving that you don’t have to steal a picture and write a cruel but funny caption on it to get traffic.  Ken’s blog looks about exciting as a soggy vanilla wafer, but his story touched people.   Now someone give his website a makeover.  (Just kidding, Ken) What follows is a graph of Ken’s traffic at Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff and then my interview.

Notice how the article was published on December 24th, but didn’t really explode until the 29th?  The story was released during a holiday weekend.  The 29th was the first Monday back to work for many people, but not a busy work day.  So a lot of idle office workers were surfing the net at the office.  Get back to work people and read the ghost stories on your own time!

Turnip:  How long have you been blogging, and what’s the most traffic one of your posts has received prior to your “long-distance” short story?

Ken: I graduated from a social network page in January ’08.  So I guess this is my anniversary!  I just started by putting up little posts which nobody read.  I took the ‘Field of Dreams’ view – “if I post it they will come…”  Boy, was I wrong?  I had to go and learn a thing or two about networking/socialising. 

The most traffic I would have seen before the New Year Stumble was around 600 visits in a day – the average is now somewhere around 150, I’d say.

Turnip: You have a long list of writing credits to your name, do you feel that translates to online success, or do you consider yourself an unknown blogger?

Ken: I don’t think the writing credits help me at all.  That’s why I don’t spend too much time shouting about them.  I reckon a Blogger is only as good as their Blog.  I definitely consider myself an unknown blogger but I am ambitious – I’d like to reach a bigger audience and I’m willing to keep working at that.

Turnip: I noticed you posted this on Christmas Eve, do you feel the success of the post was the content, the timeliness of it, or your promotional methods?

Ken: I think the timing couldn’t have been worse in terms of promotion.  It was Christmas Eve going on Christmas Day – nobody in their right mind was blogging.  I wanted to offer something nice for the holiday and there is a tradition here in Ireland of the newspapers printing a short story or two at the holiday season.  I also thought the subject matter was a little spooky, sentimental and ultimately optimistic – which suited the mood.  As it was I had truly lovely feedback on the story over the Christmas period but not an unusual amount of visitors.

I think that ultimately it comes down to quality of content – not necessarily this post but any post.  Anyone can get a few Diggs or Stumbles but, for something to take off, it’s going to need some people who don’t know you to just ‘like’ what you’ve posted, it’s as simple as that.

Turnip: People who are new to your blog don’t know if the story is fiction or non-fiction, which no doubt leads to the spooky feeling. Was this your first attempt at a ghost story and was it based off any real life experiences?

Ken: For a guy who aspires to do comedy, I seem to write about death an awful lot.  This particular story is fiction but it was written at a time when I was reading a lot of true life reports into EVP (electronic voice phenomena) and, indeed, some experimentation with my stereo system.  The little story in the middle of my story is loosely-based on a reported event – I think it’s the scariest part of the story.  I wrote the story in 1991 and it won me a fairly prestigious prize at that time.

Turnip: You successfully promoted your blog using the stumble network, any tips for other stumbleupon users?

Ken: As you and I have discussed on the excellent CMF Forum, I believe using StumbleUpon to find new material which interests you is a great way to build up some ‘stumble power’.  It’s a great tool for breaking out of ingrained surfing habits and adding a little randomness into the equation.  Beyond that, I would suggest that it is wise to stumble what you like rather than what you feel would benefit you most.  Build a genuine friends network and ask for their help only on the rare occasions when you feel you might have a post with ‘legs’ (let’s face it, nobody’s posts all have legs).  Don’t stumble yourself too much and don’t get into a simple stumble-exchange or you will be banned.

Turnip: Can you walk us though what steps you did to get the ball rolling. 1. You published the post 2. Then what…? For example, did you email friends to stumble it, use messenger, twitter, send direct messages to friends on stumble?

Ken: This post was remarkable in that I only did one thing.  I Stumbled the post myself, that’s all I did.  I put a little note on my review admitting I was doing the first stumble on it and then I left it alone.  Previously, on the few occasions that I’ve got a green-thumb or two, I have asked some close friends to consider thumbing it up if they liked it. 

On this occasion, it was January 1st, I’d put up a few more posts and I was looking at the story and thinking, “I really wish a few more people had seen it.”  So I stumbled it and moved on.  Then all hell broke loose – which was brilliant!  I think the fact that I tagged my review under ‘relationships’ helped in some way, I can’t say why though…

Turnip: What are your opinions of the CMF Ads beta test so far? Anything you would like to see added, changed, removed?

Ken: I’m really impressed with the CMF Ads Beta Test.  This one is right up my street.  It’s easy to use, intuitive and it looks great on the blog.  The master-stroke will be how the same space can be shared by a number of different ads at the same time – revolutionary, I’d say.  I think it’s been really well tweaked by Ben over the Beta Test period and I just want to see it up-and-running now!

Turnip:  Besides CMF Ads and StumbleUpon, any other social networks you recommend for bloggers?

Ken: I love Twitter.  I signed up for it months ago and left it sitting, bemused at the world-wide stream of twittering I was watching, wondering how I could ever jump in and why on earth I should even try.  Once you build a little cohort of friends and followers it becomes more bite-sized and manageable.  It’s a powerful tool, no doubt. 

The CMF forum is my virtual home though and I love how I am tolerated there.  I head over to the Batcave for increased levels of naughtiness and to watch some of the sharpest wits on the net bounce off each other.

Turnip: Thanks Ken.  I enjoyed your story, but I confess I didn’t stumble it until I wrote this article.  Hopefully your interviews are as popular as your short stories.

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