Let’s get social – NonStop turns to social media to stay abreast of the news!

Forgive me if I take liberty with the heading. I am sure not everyone in the NonStop community turns to social media to read about everything that is happening with NonStop. But then again, I am not going to rule it out, either. Of late the views of my posts to LinkedIn, for instance, have passed 2,000 impressions (an impression is a record of someone who spends more than 30 seconds reading the post), which has taken me by surprise. In the past a normal impression total rarely topped 500. Am I now doing something right or has the interest in NonStop climbed of late?

There was a time shortly after I started blogging such numbers would have truly surprised me. When I started, it was at a time when I had just signed-on to GoldenGate Software as its Director, Business Development. With my focus directed at IBM, HPE and ACI, my initial thoughts about blogging had to do with product and vendor promotion with just a little bit of social observation thrown in as a hook aimed at attracting readers to the post. However, soon after my blogging endeavor began, along came LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter) and more. Even though I had been forewarned by a colleague (and former ITUG board member) that I was blogging faster than he could read, these new channels became as important a communications vehicle as the blog I had created.

While Facebook is rarely checked for technology updates and X has become a drain on our time (although it’s still worth checking to find out more about events), it has been LinkedIn where my posts have taken on a fresh look. Short posts weaving a little bit of philosophy in with an observation or two and then ending with a reflection seems to be working – have you been checking LinkedIn and are you one of my now almost 3,000 followers?

So, what is the NonStop community reading and where does the encouragement to write more posts come from, you ask? Following are just three examples of LinkedIn posts that have attracted a crowd.

Promoting events and vendor participation certainly gained more impressions than they had in the past and for that I can only surmise that the interest in NonStop is neither waning nor looked upon as a technology outlier. On the other hand, it has also become quite noticeable that the NonStop vendor community has supported events in 2023 in even greater numbers with the likes of ETI, NTI and others committing upwards of half a dozen team members. This level of support goes a long way to fostering even greater support from NonStop customers. But going 1352 impressions for a single vendor promotion – a real surprise.

Promoting events as important as the annual NonStop TBC Conference attracts large numbers of impressions but when it comes to promoting popular digital publications like NonStop Insider, this year we saw an even larger number of impressions.

And then there was the short update on our business endeavor given that the focus of our business has been content creation and promotion. The lead-in to this update was a short, thanks to those who congratulated Pyalla Technologies, LLC having been in business 14 years, but it was this promotion that helped send readers to the NonStop Insider publication site to check out the latest news for themselves.

Promoting events and then publications certainly created a positive response even if the hook for the publication was our journey with Pyalla Technologies, when it comes to a record number of impressions, that post that led to that result was a surprise to us.

Whereas those previous two posts (above) gained 1,000+ impressions – it was with the next post that numbers truly skyrocketed. The focus was a continuation of celebration of those previous 14 years Pyalla Technologies, LLC being in business but what it also highlighted was that adding a little personal information didn’t put off those scrolling through LinkedIn. 2,340 impressions and probably still counting!

Yes, serendipitous or simply being “Johnny on the spot” played a big part in becoming “lucky” through the years but so too did the clients’ contributions with whom we worked as they always seemed to have a story to tell at just the right moment. And for that, we owe them our gratitude even as we are thankful for the opportunities we have been given through the years.

Looking ahead to 2024 expect to see many more posts to popular social media channels like LinkedIn as well as the continued support of our column in The Connection and our business blog, both of which go by the title of Real Time View. The realization that with posts and the immediacy that they present – you will always hear it first in social media, or so it seems – news about all things NonStop can be readily reported then perhaps it is no stretch of the imagination to find that this is where NonStop turns to social media to stay abreast of the news!

And why is any of this important or even newsworthy? Consider this – someone in your organization will have read it and you will be unaware of how they draw the conclusions they do and that is never a good idea, right?

And if you have made it this far down this article then a further thanks on the part of Margo and me as ultimately, it is with the support you have provided Pyalla Technologies these past 14 years that has provided us with all the encouragement we need to keep going for another decade, perhaps more.