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ohmytheon · 6 years

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Can I request something angsty for Kacchako? I'm living for this ship right now and like I'm soooo here for some angst.

I know this is massively late, but I definitely never forgot about this. I’ve just been so busy with life and my big fics. However, I was struck with an idea and decided to write this. I’ve never written a character death fic, mostly because I never read this since they make me sob like a little baby. HOPEFULLY, this fulfills the prompt for you because this is angsty as hell.

Bakugou was drunk and he hated it, but there was no getting around it now. He’d known it was a bad idea the second he wrapped his hand around the first beer. He’d really known it was a bad idea when he chugged it like it was water. Four beers and two shots later, all of it resting on a near empty stomach, he was feeling the effects of the alcohol, somehow dulling his mind and making his emotions jump from one shaky pillar to the next.

He hated it.

To be honest, he didn’t drink that often. There wasn’t a lot of downtime when it came to being a hero. If he wanted to rise to the top as fast as possible, he had to put in extra hours at the agency instead of slacking off. He was twenty-four with his own agency and a wide variety of sidekicks under his belt, some of them older than him. Through trial and error, he’d managed to get in the top ten when he was twenty-three. The whole world was at his fingertips. He could accomplish everything and nothing could ever bring him down.

And then Bakugou had found himself stuck in his own agency, staring at a television, as one of his closest friends died, two hours away and completely out of his reach.

It was still hard to believe what had happened. It seemed like they would live forever – like they were invincible, especially one whose quirk specifically made him so. Bakugou struggled to remember ever seeing him scratched or bruised. Hell, he’d had one of those zero point robots fall on him in the obstacle course of their first Sports Festival and he’d survived. It hadn’t seemed like anything could break though his hard exterior, much less kill him.

But Kirishima was gone and Bakugou felt sick to his stomach, the alcohol rolling uncomfortably as his mind fell back to his friend.

It had been three weeks since Bakugou had last seen him. With the fact that they worked in different parts of the country and the hours that they worked, especially Bakugou, it was hard for them to see each other often. How many times had he turned down Kirishima’s invites to hang out? It hadn’t been from a lack of wanting – he had missed his friend – but he hadn’t had the time. He had things to do, goals to meet, people to save, villains to capture. There hadn’t been the time.

Bakugou dug his fingers into his hair and hid his face. He should’ve given it the time. He should’ve made it a priority. He should’ve called Kirishima more often, made more of an effort to see him and the others, fucking anything but this. He was proud of all that he had accomplished, but he hadn’t realized the cost until now. All the times that he’d put his hero work above anything else meant little when he just wanted to see his best friend one more time.

“Bakugou?” a timid voice asked.

Fuck. He closed his eyes and didn’t move, thinking that maybe she’d leave if he didn’t give any indication that he’d heard her. He didn’t want her here – he couldn’t take the pity or anything she might give him – but then she was as stubborn as Kirishima. She didn’t leave people in their time of need. She’d seen his pain in the way he hunched his shoulders and the misery he’d tried to drown in the empty shot glasses in front of him. She wouldn’t leave him alone, not now, just as Kirishima wouldn’t have if it had been her instead of him.

“What do you want, Round Face?” Bakugou asked, his voice raw from the burning alcohol. He hadn’t been crying, but damn if his throat wasn’t constricting like it wanted to. Maybe he had to throw up. It wouldn’t have been the first time today since he’d thrown up on the way to the funeral.

“A drink,” Uraraka replied, sitting down next to him at the bar. Bakugou peered at her from a small opening between his arms and watched as she ordered a drink and then gave a signal that told the bartender to cut him off. Irritation flashed through him, but he didn’t fight it. His stomach rolled at the thought of drinking more. She took the shot, made a face, and then set the glass down. Her face smoothed out and her shoulders slumped. “You haven’t called me that in a while. I kinda missed it.”

“You didn’t come here to wax-nostalgic about the past,” Bakugou grumbled. “What are you doing here? Come to babysit me?”

“Can’t I just have a drink or two?” Uraraka questioned, her tone a little sharp. “It’s been a long day.”

Bakugou pulled his head out of his arms and resting his chin on top of them so that he was slumped over the batop. “Didn’t peg you for the drinking when you’re sad type.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“That’s because I’m not sad,” Bakugou replied dryly.

Uraraka didn’t respond to that. She knew that it was bullshit and he knew that she knew. It didn’t matter. Everyone had struggled today. Seeing all of his classmates, former teachers, and pro heroes bunched up in one area had been painful. Having Kirishima’s mother hug him and sob had been even worse. Bakugou hadn’t wanted to drink until that moment, but he had to forget the way he froze on the spot. He had to forget how he’d failed to properly take care of her, like Kirishima would’ve wanted. All he could do was hold her mutely while she rambled on about how much her son had respected him and that he was like family.

If he was so close to Kirishima, then why had it been so long since they’d last seen each other? They texted and called each other frequently, but Bakugou could’ve done more to see him. Hell, he’d only been able to swing by Kirishima’s for the holidays last year. What kind of friend was he?

“Red Riot is down! I repeat, Red Riot is down!”

Bakugou gripped an empty beer bottle, smoking sizzling from his palm as he readied to explode, when Uraraka put her hand over his. It had to burn her at least a little. Her palms weren’t soft like they had been in school, not after years of being a pro hero, but they weren’t built to hold explosions like his. Nonetheless, she didn’t let go, not until the smoke cleared.

“What do you need me to do?” Uraraka asked him quietly.

Leave me the hell alone. What good am I? What kind of friend can I really be when it’s obvious that I only give a shit about myself?

“Catch up,” Bakugou said instead.

Uraraka’s face hardened. “Only if you drink some water.”

Bakugou groaned and said, “Gods, you’re so fucking considerate,” but waved down the bartender to get two shots for her and a water for him. She jumped in to request a chaser. “Baby.”

“I didn’t eat much today,” Uraraka pointed out.

“I didn’t either and I’m still alive,” Bakugou shot back. She rolled her eyes, but turned to thank the bartender for the drinks. She reached for her wallet, but then Bakugou grabbed her wrist with one hand and pulled out his card with the other. It was a surprisingly deft move, considering how much alcohol he had in his system. Uraraka didn’t fight him like she normally did when he paid for her. That was one small mercy.

She took the shots a lot slower than him, drinking the chaser in between. Once she was finished, her whole body shook with a shudder. It must’ve burned her something fierce. She smacked her lips and finished off her chaser. “Ugh, that was disgusting. I haven’t drank in months.”

“Doesn’t feel very good, does it?” Bakugou drawled.

“Then why do it?” Uraraka asked.

“Because I already feel like shit,” Bakugou said, “but I want to feel worse.”

Uraraka sighed. “If you’re punishing yourself for not being there–”

“I’m not,” Bakugou interrupted. She stared at him with a little frown and disbelieving eyes. So deep and brown, like the bark on a tree. So sad too. He could tell that she’d been crying, red rimming her eyes despite her best attempts to fix it with makeup. “Really, I’m not. I was two hours away working on a murder investigation with the police. There was nothing I could do.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Uraraka asked, throwing his earlier question back in his face.

At first, Bakugou didn’t know what to say. What was he doing here? It wasn’t like him to drink himself into oblivion when he was upset or angry. Not that he’d ever felt like this before. Even when All Might had been forced to retire after saving him from the League, he’d not felt this much pain. It felt like his insides were being ripped out and put on display. It was savage and unforgiving and all he wanted to do was call Kirishima and vent to him, but he couldn’t.

“There were a lot of things that I could’ve done that I didn’t,” he settled on.

“Isn’t that what being a hero about?” Uraraka asked.

“That’s not what being a friend is about,” Bakugou countered.

Uraraka’s face softened. “Bakugou, you’re a great friend. You were his best friend, above all else.”

“I definitely didn’t act like it half the time.” He couldn’t handle the look on her face. It wasn’t pity; it was understanding, which felt worse somehow. He knew that she understood what he felt and that only made him want to hide more. Damn her. “I should’ve taken the time…”

“He knew,” Uraraka told him gently, a sad smile on her face. “You’re hard to deal with sometimes and you can be distant and push people away when you’re in your own head and your role as a hero is more than a job to you, but he knew.”

Bakugou wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe it more than anything. Come in a few weeks, maybe he would. It didn’t make things any easier. Kirishima was gone and no amount of alcohol could fill that void in his chest. It just made him feel dead inside, the alcohol having dulled all of his senses, as if that might make him closer to his friend, but instead it only made him alone and he couldn’t even manage to be pissed off about it.

“C’mon,” Uraraka sighed, sliding off the stool, “let’s get you home.”

“You can’t drive either,” Bakugou said.

Uraraka waved her phone in the air. “That’s what cabs are for.”

Even though he didn’t really want to go home, not where his apartment was empty and stifling, he found that he didn’t want to stay here either, especially if she was leaving. He paid his tab and then dropped off his stool, slinking out of the bar after her.

It was cold as hell outside, the air chilly enough to make him grit her teeth and bury his hands in his pockets, but the alcohol in his system gave him a false sense of warmth. Next to him, Uraraka shivered and he thought to give her his jacket, but he didn’t move. When the cab pulled up, he shuffled inside and was faintly surprised when she followed and gave the driver his address. Oh, did she not trust him to go home or did she think that he shouldn’t be alone? Shouldn’t she be taking care of herself right now?

(Maybe she didn’t want to be alone either. She and Kirishima had gotten closer after school. They’d done a lot of missions, particularly rescue ones, together over the years.)

Once they reached his place, the two of them shuffled out of the cab. Bakugou stumbled a little more than he would’ve liked (which meant, he didn’t want to stumble at all), but recovered before Uraraka’s outstretched hand could catch him. He experienced the memory of her quirk being used on him, but instead of making him feel free and wanting, it made his stomach roll. Fucking alcohol. This is why he hated being drunk. It turned everything on its end.

His apartment was much more lavish than hers. It came with growing up in a household where aesthetics were part of the job. He actually really liked his place, but at this moment, he hated every inch of it. There weren’t a lot of personal touches, so he only had a few pictures. Would it have killed him to have more of his friends? Take away a few pictures and this apartment could’ve belonged to anyone. There was so little in it that suggested someone was living their best life – that they had people that they loved and loved in return.

Uraraka flicked on a light and started for his kitchen. “Do you have anything to eat? You should get something on your stomach.”

“I’m not hungry,” Bakugou told her flatly, kicking the door shut.

“Good thing I wasn’t asking if you were hungry,” Uraraka said as she dug through his fridge.

Bakugou stared at her back, thinking of all the times someone else had been in his place. She’d come here a few times, along with Kirishima, Sero, Kaminari, and Mina. It wasn’t very often though. His place was his own sanctuary. He should’ve had them over more. It didn’t make sense that he’d kept them out of it. He’d gotten better about letting people in, hadn’t he? She acted more familiar with his place than she was, perhaps in a bid to keep things calm and him under control.

No, not control. Keep him from breaking – from exploding.

Ah, but that was the issue though, wasn’t it? Because that was what he did.

It had been work, work, work for so long that Bakugou had missed out on so much. He’d missed birthdays, marriages, births even. His friends had made other steps in their lives while he had made himself stagnant in order to get to the top. Maybe the only one who could understand all that he had sacrificed was Deku, who had put half of his life on hold as well to become number one. Kirishima used to always joke that Bakugou needed to get out more. Live a little, if you will. Smell the roses.

“It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top,” Kirishima would say.

But it was. He’d done it to himself. He had goals and he couldn’t afford any distractions, even ones that were sweet and light and made him feel like he was in the clouds. Kirishima knew that too and often nagged him about it. He could take so much to the grave with him if Bakugou let him. No one knew him so well as Kirishima did. Had.

Alone. He’d made himself alone. He had stood in a crowd of friends, former classmates, heroes, old teachers, family and he had felt utterly alone. After all had been said and done, he had gone off to the bar on his own, vanishing before any of the others could try to rope him into doing something as a group. He couldn’t bear the idea of reminiscing when all he wanted to do was forget. The awful thing was that all he could do was remember. All the good times and the bad ones and the ones in between and the times that he’d missed.

He couldn’t take it. He’d fled like a fucking coward. It was only when Uraraka had appeared, bright even in the middle of her own grief, that he could admit it. He wasn’t being strong and he knew that she would say that he didn’t have to be, but then why was she here, pulling leftovers out of his fridge and humming a slow, sad song under her breath? He could see the exhaustion in her body no matter how much she tried to hide it with the pep in her step.

Was she afraid of being alone after today as much as he’d been afraid of not being able to handle being around others?

Without thinking, Bakugou flicked the lights off and Uraraka stopped immediately, turning around to query, “Bakugou–?” But he didn’t give her the chance to finish, not when he was on her in a flash, cupping her face and digging her fingers in her hair so that strands of it fell out of her carefully done bun. There was only a second when their eyes met, the moonlight glowing in hers through the window, and he saw not fear or even surprise in them. It would’ve taken him nights lying awake to figure out what rested in her eyes in this moment.

He pressed his lips against hers, not the gentle and sweet kiss that she deserved, not the one that said how much she should be cherished. It was crushing and needy, all consuming in how much he demanded from her. There was little time for them to breathe as he kissed her and he could hear both of them gasping for air every time their lips parted a hint. He shoved her back until she was pressed against the fridge and slid one of his hands down to rest on her hip, gripping the material of her modest black dress and pulling her against him.

“Bakugou,” Uraraka breathed and he wanted to groan or growl and he couldn’t breathe. He could taste the liquor on her tongue and it made his head spin. She pressed her hands against his chest, spreading her fingertips, but was careful to keep her pinky fingers in the air. “Bakugou, stop.”

And he did, just like that. It wouldn’t have mattered how much alcohol he had or how unsettled he felt today. The moment she spoke that one word, he did as she told him.

Instead of pushing him away though, like her palms suggested, she leaned her forehead against his, both their eyes closed. Their air between their lips smelled intoxicating. “I don’t–” She gripped the front of his vest tightly as he pulled his hands away. “I can’t. Not tonight. Not like this.” He swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing, and barely nodded his head, moving hers with his. She loosened her grip, slid her arms around him, and rested her head against his chest. “I won’t let you do this alone though. It’s not right.”

Bakugou almost laughed, cold and desperate, but caught himself. She would be able to cut to the heart of his fear and it terrified him, but instead of running and doing it on his own, he wrapped his arms around her and held her against him. There were a lot of things he could say – a lot that he should have – but they would have to wait until the morning. It was piss poor timing and he felt vulnerable and spiteful and utterly worn thin, but he wasn’t alone. He took a deep breath and then let it out with a sigh. Kirishima wouldn’t have left him alone either.

You were right, Bakugou thought. I don’t have to do everything on my own.

But it would take time to accept that even further, especially without someone goading him along. He had to take the first step, the first one of many to move past this, and he would. Just maybe he didn’t have to do it alone.

#katsuki bakugou #ochako uraraka #kacchako #bnha #mha #kirishima eijirou #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bakuraka #angst #bnha fanfiction #the things of songs #major character death

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alicecpacheco · 4 years

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Outside-the-Box Sterilization Monitoring

Here is my latest article from Dental Products Report...

In the midst of stricter infection control protocols, autoclave monitoring is often overlooked. The TerraGene MiniBio and the 3M Attest can change that.

We’ve seen a lot of changes in the past 6 months. In some ways, it seems time truly flies, but with the next breath, you can hear yourself thinking, “Wait, that ‘just’ happened?”

This is a really strange time to be alive. In the short span of 6 months, we have seen our lives and our practices practically turned inside out. So many things have changed that I sometimes feel it’s almost too much to process.

A true story here: Last week, I met an acquaintance whom I had not seen since before the entire coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) catastrophe. He’s a gregarious “big” personality who just lights up any room he enters. He walked up to me and stuck out his hand. There was a brief moment where I just locked up, unsure of what to do. Then, I figured, “This is why we have hand sanitizer,” and I shook his hand. For those of you who know me, I’m a touchy-feely type, a hugger—but I hadn’t shaken a hand in more than 6 months. It felt creepy—the same kind of creepy I’d probably feel if I reached into a mouth without wearing gloves. Until I got back to my hand sanitizer, I was almost painfully aware of my right hand and what might be on it. I sure as heck didn’t get it near my face! As soon as I could, I slathered on hand sanitizer and then sat back to ponder how different this was from just March of this year.

For more than 30 years, dentistry has had an amazing infection control protocol. We have always been on the forefront of keeping our patients and our teams safe. And we ought to be doing these things. I would venture to guess that we probably perform more outpatient services that generate aerosols than any other profession in health care.

I am very proud of what we have done in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dentistry has taken huge steps in the last few months to ensure the safety of those we treat and those we employ. Just even walking into most offices now looks totally different than it did 6 months ago and that’s before you take into consideration the clinical changes we have implemented.

As Technology Evangelist, I’m always on the hunt for better, more efficient, and cost-effective ways to provide better outcomes for our patients and for our practices. One phrase never fails to elevate my blood pressure: “But we’ve always done it that way.” I’m a firm believer that better ways to do things are always waiting just over the horizon. All we have to do is find them.

In the situation we currently face, a great deal of time and treasure has been put toward our protocols for infection control. Our profession has implemented massive changes in our infection control processes and systems, many of which are devoted to decreasing the odds of cross-contamination.

I’d like to discuss, though, a part of the system many of us probably haven’t looked at closely in quite some time: monitoring our autoclaves. I think this is because autoclave use often happens where and when the doctor doesn’t really see the process, and it has become just another standard task that is usually done by a delegated dental assistant.

Currently, most offices are utilizing some type of “sterilization monitoring service.” Such a service works like this:

The monitoring company sells the office a supply of spore test strips. Of each set of 2, one strip is placed into the autoclave and processed in a normal sterilization cycle, while the other strip is not run and is used as the control. Upon completion of the sterilization cycle, the strip is removed from the autoclave and then both strips, properly identified as test and control, are sent to the testing facility.

Once the strips arrive there, both are placed in an environment where the spores they contain can be grown and are monitored. If the control strip shows growth and the test strip does not, the test is considered successful and all is well. However, if both show negative growth or, even worse, both show positive growth, the test is considered a fail.

With a failed test, the dental office must be notified right away. Once notification is received, the autoclave is immediately taken out of service. A second test is run. If this test shows success, the previous test is considered an aberration and all is well. However, if a second failure occurs, something is seriously wrong with the autoclave and it requires service by qualified personnel.

This testing system works, but the real problem is the amount of time involved. If the test results are sent by mail, several days can pass between a failed test and the office’s receipt of the notification. Also, if a second test is required, at least the same amount of time is “downtime” for the autoclave until a “pass” is received back.

Now what if there was a way for the office to know the results of these tests in less than half an hour? Would you be interested? I thought you would.

Two systems—the TerraGene MiniBio and the 3M Attest—have come to market and can do just that. These systems consist of an incubator and test-tube–like devices filled with spores and growing medium that are referred to as biologic indicators (BIs). I’ve been putting both systems through some clinical trials in my practice for well over a month.

In a manner similar to the spore strip test described above, an office takes one BI and marks it as “test” and another from the same box marked as “control.” The test BI is run in a normal cycle. After the cycle, the tube should cool for 10 minutes. Then (in both brands) you break the seals on 2 tubes that mix any spores that are present with a growth medium. Next, you place both tubes, containing the control and test strips, into the incubator. The incubator then warms the BIs and monitors the tubes for fluorescence, which indicates spore growth.

If the incubator detects growth, a fairly loud beeping alarm sounds and the well that contains the failed tube is identified. On the 3M Attest, the failure is shown by a lit-up “+” sign; on the TerraGene, it’s denoted by a red LED light.

Because there is always 1 tube (the control) that will test positive, the alarm will always go off. I think this is a good feature because it lets the user know the system is indeed working.

The TerraGene MiniBio has 3 wells, so it can test 2 autoclaves and the control simultaneously. Positive and negative results are indicated by green and red LEDs, and the device also contains a tiny printer. All results are printed on a thin strip of paper that can be saved for record-keeping purposes. The device definitely has a remarkable high-tech look, and even better, it runs the test cycle in an impressive 20 minutes.

The 3M Attest has 4 wells but lacks a printer. The LED indicators are built into the device’s side. In addition to “+” and “–” for pass and fail, these LEDs also show the time left in the test. This device runs a test in 24 minutes (versus the MiniBio’s 20), so you’ll see “24…23…22…” etc, to indicate the time remaining. 3M definitely went for a ‘less is more’ esthetic with this device.

Each device also has a USB connection that allows results to be downloaded to a computer that runs software created by each company. The office can then digitally monitor and record results for safe, effective long-term record-keeping.

As for costs—which we must consider—I find both of these products to be incredibly affordable for the peace of mind they deliver. My best current information is that each incubator sells for around $600. The BI tubes cost around $4 each for the MiniBio and $5 for the Attest.

The biggest plus is the speed at which you get the results. Gone is the era of waiting days for them. Now, you can run a test quickly and extremely accurately in your office, anytime you would like, and have those results in less than half an hour. Again, I’ve been using both devices for more than a month and have been very impressed with the performance of both.

In a world where we are trying as hard as possible to ensure the strength of our decontamination, protection, and sterilization processes, in-house monitoring of a critical system such as this is essential. I can’t imagine going back to the “old” way.

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mediacalling · 6 years

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How to Get over Perfectionism (and Execute on Your Ideas)

As marketers, we’re all too familiar with putting off executing on an idea.

There’s always a perfectly good reason for this: the end goal hasn’t quite crystallized yet. The resources and budget need to be better thought through. The analytics systems in place don’t seem up to par. …you know how the rest goes.

The underlying problem?

We badly want to “do it right” so much that we end up not doing it at all. Perfectionism paralysis at its finest – and ironically, the higher the stakes are, the harder it hits.

At Ahrefs, we’re definitely no stranger to this. But when your marketing and content strategies trend towards conducting multiple experiments, you pick up certain ways to trick your mind into letting go a little.

We do a ton of experiments. Some succeed and some fail. What’s important is that they get done.

We’ve learned lots along the way, through trial and even more error – and now, we’d love to share some key points of our journey with you.

Ready? Let’s go.

3 social media experiments and their results

Our CMO, Tim Soulo, believes that a huge chunk of marketing ROI simply cannot be measured. And things get done a lot faster when the people up top aren’t pressuring you to predict ROI, set specific numbers to hit and track data for every step of every process.

In fact, we often do things because our gut feeling tells us it’s the right thing to do, rather than because the numbers say so. In short, we believe that it’s better to do something than not do anything at all – simply because it doesn’t seem perfect. If we have a cool idea and some spare resources, we take action…and quickly.

Let’s dive into some examples that illustrate this. We’ll be exploring the thought processes behind three Twitter marketing experiments that have varying degrees of polish to them.

1. The 1k retweet growth hacking experiment

Starting off quick and easy: in February, we attempted to get 1k re-tweets on Twitter in order to loosen up a data limitation on one of our paid subscription plans.

Here’s a little secret: we were going to loosen up the limit either way, but we also wanted to draw some attention to that fact. Hey, no harm having extra toppings on our ice cream.

In terms of measuring success? We didn’t even bother.

This is a fantastic example of doing something because it feels right, not because we expected or were aiming for a specific outcome. It could just have easily turned into a monster of an experiment – calculating the rate of visibility spread, analyzing data on the users who retweeted, attempting to measure the value of publicity generated…so on and so forth.

Instead, we decided to simply jump into it, then collectively nodded when the experiment succeeded and called it a day.

The story: Our initial, “raw” tweet collected about 100 re-tweets (Dmitry doesn’t have a large following on Twitter.) To give it a little boost, we pushed it to our users via Intercom announcement and also shared it in our private Facebook Group. This boosted the retweet count to nearly 700.

Funnily enough, at this point our counter leaped another 500 re-tweets in no time at all to total almost 1.3k; we suspect that someone lost his or her patience and purchased re-tweets on a service like Fiverr. So we gave up on our goal of 1k re-tweets and rolled out the update – we’d reached our goal of more publicity for this plan upgrade, and that’s all we needed.

(Looking at the tweet now, we’re back to 800. It looks like Twitter deleted the bot accounts and removed all retweets from these bots.)

2. The recirculation experiment

Sometime in March this year, we decided to run another experiment. Granted, this one’s actually more of a best practice, or highly-adopted technique, in social media marketing: content recirculation.

We have tons of well-researched, in-depth blog posts that we go to great lengths to create. Most remain highly relevant months after their initial publish date, but traffic soon starts to dwindle when compared with newer posts – mostly due to an increasing lack of visibility as they get pushed further down our archives.

Solution? We decided to dust off our previously underutilized Twitter account (due to lack of resources on our end) and kick off a more regular content schedule. This included lightly repurposing our existing content into catchy tweets.

We love to make things easier, so we didn’t set any hard KPIs or goals. Our followers on Twitter are a cool bunch; engaged, receptive and fun. We just wanted to highlight cool stuff that they might have missed and see how things went from there.

Turns out, plenty of these tweets were really well-received:

Initially, we were simply aiming to see if there were any changes in the number of people who liked, retweeted or replied to our tweets. Then a peek at our Twitter analytics a week later showed these trends:

Above: red lines mark when we began the experiment. Engagement rate, link clicks, retweets and likes all showed a noticeable upward trend.

Pretty cool, we thought! The charts instantly confirmed what we were hoping to see: a definite boost in overall engagement and link clicks.

We’ll probably pop into Google Analytics in a couple of months’ time to confirm that our blog is indeed seeing increased traffic from Twitter. But in the meantime – success, and on to other things!

The custom Twitter header experiment

Now for a more complicated example – we went into this one with more planning in place.

A header image is the first thing you see at the top of any Twitter profile: 1500 x 500 pixels’ worth of it, to be exact.

Given their prime position and reach potential, we were seeing companies invest efforts into making custom twitter backgrounds for every occasion, from event announcements to highlighting important news, to more targeted offers and call-to-actions.

Here are a couple of examples:

It got us wondering – just how effective are these header images? Do many people see them? And if they do, do they actually act on them? Most of all: since creating cool images can be costly in terms of resources, does it make sense to start investing in them?

Experiment time!

The concept was simple: use our Twitter header image to announce a flash giveaway, then monitor responses and engagement levels. We kept the mechanics easy. The first 10 people to send in an email with the message we specified would be granted a free month’s worth of access to Ahrefs.

We had ~19.3k followers at the time and were excited to see how this would translate into entries for our giveaway. Before we began, we checked where the Twitter header could be seen from:

Results page upon searching for “ahrefs” in Twitter’s search bar;

Ahrefs’ Twitter profile page;

On hover of a direct mention (@ahrefs) or on Ahrefs’ name on Twitter timeline (not applicable on mobile devices)

Pretty promising, right? We also came up with a couple of potential cons to the experiment:

A single person could abuse this pretty easily by sending in multiple entries to get many accounts;

Or, a person could spread the word to others through other (non-Twitter header) channels, effectively defeating the purpose of the experiment.

What we learned

We ran the header image on January 16th and reached our 10th entry on January 24th, over a week later.

Here’s the breakdown:

Overall, the response was curiously slow for an instant win giveaway like the one we were running. In fact, although we were hitting an average of ~45k impressions per day, we only saw our very first entry two full days after launching.

The lukewarm response continued until there was a spike in entries on the 24th. After some digging, we discovered two big occurrences on that day:

1. We experienced a power outage for a period of time. People were coming to our Twitter profile to send us direct messages and tweets asking about the downtime. Presumably, many spotted our header image along the way – one existing user sent in an entry;

2. Ahrefs picked up a direct mention and article plug from the @growthhackers Twitter account with 187k+ followers. We can assume that some of their followers decided to follow Ahrefs on Twitter (or visit our profile to learn more about us) after reading the article. These people would have been exposed to our Twitter header and we suspect this is the main reason why we had an influx of entries.

Going by the trend seen in the final spike in entries, we can conclude that new leads are probably generated from our content marketing efforts: Twitter users enjoy an article, decide to follow us on Twitter, see our header and decide to write in for a free account.

On the other hand, entries from existing Ahrefs users are likely a result of users visiting our profile to either tweet at us or send us direct messages – whether to lodge a complaint or ask a question. While on our profile, they may have come across the header and had a “why not?” moment.

In other words, without big external factors, our presence on Twitter seems to do an equally good job of engaging both new leads and existing users.

The conclusion

Overall, the response to our giveaway was poor until some ‘special circumstances’ occurred.

Our takeaway: customizing multiple high-quality header images and expecting huge results is out of the question. But considering that header images can be designed pretty quickly or outsourced for cheap, even a really low conversion rate might justify the cost of creation in order to complement an existing marketing strategy.

In short, we decided that investing our efforts in customized banners is a pretty low-priority effort. It may produce some results, but they aren’t likely to be exceptional. Experiment concluded!

Over to You

I hope the contrast in these stories help to highlight what we’ve learned:

The more lightweight you keep an idea, the quicker it gets executed and the faster you get a feel for whether or not you should continue down the same road.

Remember:

Keep things simple! Run experiments for the sake of learning, even if you haven’t quite nailed down how to best track results.

The more effort you put into the planning and analytics stages, the more resources you’ll need to execute. It will always be “cheaper” to just throw things at the wall.

Put cool ideas on hold if you don’t have the resources available at the time. You never know when you can work on them, or if an alternative execution method will spring to mind.

I’d love to hear your thoughts – how do you strike a balance between shipping experiments while avoiding getting mired down by the technicalities involved? How long do you keep tracking your results, and how do you use this information moving forward? Are there any other tips, tricks or hacks you’d like to share?

How to Get over Perfectionism (and Execute on Your Ideas) posted first on http://getfblikeblog.blogspot.com

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mariemary1 · 6 years

Text

How to Get over Perfectionism (and Execute on Your Ideas)

As marketers, we’re all too familiar with putting off executing on an idea.

The underlying problem?

We badly want to “do it right” so much that we end up not doing it at all. Perfectionism paralysis at its finest – and ironically, the higher the stakes are, the harder it hits.

We do a ton of experiments. Some succeed and some fail. What’s important is that they get done.

We’ve learned lots along the way, through trial and even more error – and now, we’d love to share some key points of our journey with you.

Ready? Let’s go.

3 social media experiments and their results

Let’s dive into some examples that illustrate this. We’ll be exploring the thought processes behind three Twitter marketing experiments that have varying degrees of polish to them.

1. The 1k retweet growth hacking experiment

Starting off quick and easy: in February, we attempted to get 1k re-tweets on Twitter in order to loosen up a data limitation on one of our paid subscription plans.

Here’s a little secret: we were going to loosen up the limit either way, but we also wanted to draw some attention to that fact. Hey, no harm having extra toppings on our ice cream.

In terms of measuring success? We didn’t even bother.

Instead, we decided to simply jump into it, then collectively nodded when the experiment succeeded and called it a day.

(Looking at the tweet now, we’re back to 800. It looks like Twitter deleted the bot accounts and removed all retweets from these bots.)

2. The recirculation experiment

Turns out, plenty of these tweets were really well-received:

Above: red lines mark when we began the experiment. Engagement rate, link clicks, retweets and likes all showed a noticeable upward trend.

Pretty cool, we thought! The charts instantly confirmed what we were hoping to see: a definite boost in overall engagement and link clicks.

The custom Twitter header experiment

Now for a more complicated example – we went into this one with more planning in place.

A header image is the first thing you see at the top of any Twitter profile: 1500 x 500 pixels’ worth of it, to be exact.

Here are a couple of examples:

Experiment time!

We had ~19.3k followers at the time and were excited to see how this would translate into entries for our giveaway. Before we began, we checked where the Twitter header could be seen from:

Results page upon searching for “ahrefs” in Twitter’s search bar;

Ahrefs’ Twitter profile page;

On hover of a direct mention (@ahrefs) or on Ahrefs’ name on Twitter timeline (not applicable on mobile devices)

Pretty promising, right? We also came up with a couple of potential cons to the experiment:

A single person could abuse this pretty easily by sending in multiple entries to get many accounts;

Or, a person could spread the word to others through other (non-Twitter header) channels, effectively defeating the purpose of the experiment.

What we learned

We ran the header image on January 16th and reached our 10th entry on January 24th, over a week later.

Here’s the breakdown:

The lukewarm response continued until there was a spike in entries on the 24th. After some digging, we discovered two big occurrences on that day:

In other words, without big external factors, our presence on Twitter seems to do an equally good job of engaging both new leads and existing users.

The conclusion

Overall, the response to our giveaway was poor until some ‘special circumstances’ occurred.

In short, we decided that investing our efforts in customized banners is a pretty low-priority effort. It may produce some results, but they aren’t likely to be exceptional. Experiment concluded!

Over to You

I hope the contrast in these stories help to highlight what we’ve learned:

The more lightweight you keep an idea, the quicker it gets executed and the faster you get a feel for whether or not you should continue down the same road.

Remember:

Keep things simple! Run experiments for the sake of learning, even if you haven’t quite nailed down how to best track results.

The more effort you put into the planning and analytics stages, the more resources you’ll need to execute. It will always be “cheaper” to just throw things at the wall.

Put cool ideas on hold if you don’t have the resources available at the time. You never know when you can work on them, or if an alternative execution method will spring to mind.

Thank How to Get over Perfectionism (and Execute on Your Ideas) for first publishing this post.

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