Social Media Advertising Tips for the Stenographic Legion & More

Occasionally I write about how, in my opinion, if I had a little more money I’d be wiping the floor with the STTI Bloc. I wanted to share a little bit about what I’ve learned over the years, and the story is easy to tell through my Meta Ad account overview.

The lifetime ad spending and impressions of Stenonymous as of February 4, 2023

So, as you can see, that overall CPM was quite high. That’s cost per thousand impressions, or cost per mille. Now that I’m a lot more experienced, I can tell you why that is.

Images can have over 20x the reach of written content. So what happens when I run an image ad?

Stenonymous determined to stop the STTI Bloc’s misinformation steamroller or end up under it.

Stenonymous reveals ad spending for 30 days prior to February 4, 2023

Stenonymous reveals huge drop in CPM after switching to image content.

So what I’ve learned is if we tell our story in pictures and artwork, we will, in all likelihood, have a much easier time of reaching people. I have to face the music. My written content is GREAT for documenting the dishonest behavior of the larger corps. It was not great for REACHING people.

So if you’re someone like a PYRP or an association, and you’re going to do social media advertising for some kind of public outreach campaign, for the love of steno, USE IMAGES.

And now you know that if you give ME money, it’s going to high-impact ads and ideas. I’ve got a few things still cooking that I can’t wait to share with you all.

You also now get to see that your donations were not wasted. Impressions are how many times the ad is on the screen. Reach is the number of unique profiles that saw an ad. Stenonymous has put stenographic media in front of half a million people with your help.

Just to drive the point home, look how different these two ad campaigns turned out. I understand how to reach the highest number of people at the lowest cost now.

Stenonymous compares the cost of image versus written advertising.

There’s an added benefit to supporting Stenonymous. I freely release data and information that makes us all stronger. This goes back to my beliefs about the world. I believe that we are all within the same realm of intelligence (some disabilities excepted) and that distributing information puts us on equal footing to make good choices. I am not like other players on the field that want to trick you for the sake of my wallet. If anything, I trick the people that make their money tricking working reporters.

As for the STTI Bloc, this is basically a war of attrition, their money versus our bodies. If you follow me on social media, you’ll know I was tracking Veritext’s digital ads versus steno ads in my feed for the holiday break. These notes confirmed my suspicion, that they were running digital ads much more often.

Stenonymous tracks digital v steno ads by Veritext December 2022

Veritext alone controls millions of dollars, at least from what we can scrape off Google.

A Google search for Veritext Revenue done by Stenonymous

My math has always been pretty simple. Look at what I’ve done with $10,000 and no previous media experience. We shifted the narrative of the field from “the shortage is impossible to solve” to “okay, that was a lie that none of the multimillion dollar corporations have defended in over a year.” There are about 20,000 – 30,000 stenographers. At a median pay of $60,000, stenographers control at least $1.2 billion annually. If they tossed me 0.2% of their income for one year, it’d be like a million dollars. Some of you have given way more than that 0.2%, so I don’t condone you shelling out of your pocket.

But this goes back to my point. We could pound on these idiots every single day for ages with that kind of money. NCRA asks you for about $300 a year. I’m asking for, more or less, $100 for one year, depending on how many people we could get behind a fundraising campaign. Granted, NCRA has expenses and programs I will never have, but I can do things that NCRA can never do. NCRA can never use its considerable market power to hound the fraudsters. There are honest antitrust concerns. Meanwhile, any attempt to bring me to court for the same reason would be laughed out of court because I’m a guy with a blog. I figured all this out in my spare time. I don’t have a Jesus complex, I just realize that we’re up against dirty players, and I’m willing to hit back way harder than they ever thought possible. Good luck hiring digital reporters while someone’s running 24/7 ads about digital being a scam.

That said, if I can’t get the money raised, maybe we could get a letter writing campaign going and flood a few media outlets with a few thousand letters about the shortage fraud. Force them to acknowledge us. Start making noise. I could see many people being hesitant to “go fund me,” but would those same people take the time to copy and paste a letter, press print, and mail it out? I think so.

Stenonymous visitors up for the first time since the massive funding campaign of 2021.

I’ve literally turned screwing with fraudsters into a business. Back me and you’ll see a return. Might come off like a grift, but money is just a means to an end, and that end being us all getting back to work and not worrying about being replaced by inferior technology. But whether or not you do support me, I hope the advertising tip helped.

And just in case you don’t think I’m under the skin of these fools, check out an excerpt from an email exchange I had with Mike McDonner of Kentuckiana. He was able to recount word for word every single thing that happened during my medical episode about a year ago after I got that post about me from India taken down.

Mike McDonner from Kentuckiana feigns concern for Christopher Day in 2022, tipping us all off that the STTI Bloc reads the blog and monitors my YouTube.

Christopher Day (Stenonymous) replies to Mike McDonner (Kentuckiana)

Let me ask you this: What kind of monsters run a hit piece on someone who just had a major health crisis?

The kind that are terrified of Stenonymous.

Stenonymous Upgrades Payment System and Announces Matching Pledges!

In order to facilitate the exponential growth of the blog and payment for services I plan to provide through it, I have upgraded the payment structure to work through Stripe. Check out the new system below. Please note that to the extent you are able to justify future payments to me as a business expense, you may do so, this is all above board and reported income.

Please know that my general plans remain unchanged. I will be recovering the next few weeks and updates will likely be sparse. This blog, based on its stats, may have achieved the threshold for major systemic change. This means that regardless of what associations do or do not do, I will likely be able to begin doing things that will achieve my original goals of better reporter pay and treatment, as well as larger revenues for existing stenotype services businesses.

Yesterday, about 0.5% of this field came out in open support for me and nearly 3% of you read about my ordeal without a single negative comment. It is the love and support of my loved ones, including all of you, that will make a recovery possible. I cannot overstate how grateful I am to everyone. In the spirit of passing on the love that has been shown to me, I pledge to donate all of today’s donations equally to National Court Reporters Foundation, Paying It Forward (Allison Hall), Protect Your Record Project, Project Steno, and Open Steno. Next year, by or before February 27th, I will also match the donation made to each of the three today up to $1,000 each. If you want to see me lose $5,000 next year, or if you want to see these wonderful organizations be collectively $10,000 richer next year, help me collect $5,000 today for these amazing endeavors. If 3% of the field were to donate $30, each organization would receive over $5,000 today and an additional $1,000 next year. This is the collective power of stenographers.

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We are not alone.

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*Please note, I will have to deduct combined Stripe/WP fees of approximately 5%. About $200 was donated before I realized that, so I will eat the fee on $200. It would be too cost prohibitive to eat the fee on the thousands of dollars that may be raised from this post.

Fundraiser Results:

A little under $800 was donated. $160 has been sent to each organization. An additional $160 will be sent to each next year. Lower than I’d hoped, but not bad for an impromptu fundraiser! Thank you to all of you that made this one possible. Looking forward to going bigger.

Stenonymous to Hire Investigative Team for 2022

My strategy for helping our industry is not limited to the centralization strategy I announced before Thanksgiving. If that doesn’t happen, I’m still going to be taking money and putting it into whatever’s been calculated to give results.

Right now I’ve put out a request for a budget proposal from an investigation team to help research and present information regarding corporate connections in our industry and a few other related items. The budget proposed is $5,000. If those that have not donated see a value in having that information, I would ask for help funding it. You’ll be giving our industry more information. I intend to publish whatever the team comes up with.

If the $5,000 cannot be funded by January 2022, I will finance it from my own personal money in February 2022. I mention this so that no one feels pressure to donate. It’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of when.

The reason I’m going light on the details is simple. The private equity folks have more money than I do. I don’t want them buying my team out from under me. There’s no indication that would occur, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Majority of the money raised to date has been placed into social media campaigns. I will likely release my tax returns next year so that my audience has that information. Seems the easiest way to be accountable.

Donations can happen through:

PayPal – ChristopherDay227@gmail.com

Venmo – Christopher-Day-141

Zelle – ChristopherDay227@gmail.com or 917 685 3010.

Allison Hall — $20 to Sponsor a Student in Need

A large group of professional reporters came together one year ago under the leadership of court reporter Allison Hall to collect money for students in need. Together, these court reporters helped send a record-breaking number of stenographic students to the NCRA convention and continue to supply newcomers to our profession with all sorts of assistance, including donating stenotypes and tuition assistance. It’s a joy for me to be a part of the group and signal boost it at every opportunity. I have written about, theoretically, how easily court reporters can eclipse the spending of just about any entity in our industry. Allison pretty much kicks my ass by taking that from theory and turning it into cold, hard reality. Fewer than 400 reporters raised over $31,500 for students, an average donation of about $84. To get another solid year of funding, Allison’s asking for less than a third of that.

1,300 people in the group. If everyone had $20 to spare, $26,000 would be available for students.

In a single day after Allison’s call for funding, the group collected over $3,000 toward supporting students. If you want to become a part of breaking down the financial barriers that stop students from getting into our field and living their dreams, reach out to Allison today or donate via the means listed below:

Venmo: Allison-Hall-89

PayPal: allie441@gmail.com

Google Pay: allie441@gmail.com.

Make sure to put PAYING IT FORWARD in the payment note so that that money goes where it should. Even if you don’t have the money today, sharing this with your fellow reporters is a great way to support a better and brighter tomorrow for our students.

A big thank you to Allison Hall, Traci Mertens, Sandy Rodrigue Narup, and every donor that made this possible!

NCRA 2.0 May 2019 Survey

Truly, NCRA has continued its commitment to being inclusionary and making changes to benefit all stenographers and members. Today we got an email that asked us to share our thoughts. That means you, reader, can participate in shaping the discussion for the field. You can be pretty sure that your words are going to reach somebody. Feel free to discuss it here, but before you do, go answer up, because your feelings matter, and the NCRA has taken an important step in letting you know that by asking. I encourage everyone, from the people that I am regularly in correspondence with to my anonymous readers to check in with your ideas for the future and how to make an NCRA that you want to be a part of.

And here are my own answers, to the extent they may be helpful or act as a beginning for bigger, better ideas.

What’s your GREAT idea?

“Most of our fights are won or lost at the state level. NCRA has historically taken on a supportive role and/or a federal, national approach. It is probably time to put at least some focus on states, particularly the big four identified by Ducker, Illinois, California, New York, Texas. Ducker said over 50 percent of court reporting was out of those states. If we lose in any of the four, it’s over. I understand there is a committee for this type of thing now, but it will take some more press to get this knowledge to the members that have left / stopped renewing. As a very sad example, a friend of mine formerly worked with the Workers Comp Board of New York, which was gutted by electronic recording. When that person called NCRA, that person was told something along the lines of it’s a state matter and that NCRA is federal — of course, that was the NCRA then and not today’s NCRA 2.0 — but today that means one fewer member for NCRA. We can’t change the past. We can make the future better.”

How can YOU help?

“I can write. I can research. Perhaps one avenue to go down is to build a strong case for federal educational grants, see what Congress has passed in relation to other industries and begin building a strong case for stenographic education funding. NCRA has been efficient at this type of federal lobbying before and that can continue.”

Other IDEAS?

“1. Perhaps a reworking of the bylaws is in order. Leadership in NCRA is limited to Registered members, but this ends up being more exclusionary than other methods. The unfortunate truth is that there may be qualified leaders among your participating members. We had this issue in New York. In our case it was that retired and educator stenographers could not join the board. We voted on it twice, and both times, members stepped up and said if they want to lead, have them lead.

2. Inclusionary leadership. There are infinite ideas in the world. Perhaps it would be beneficial to NCRA’s image to come out with two or three big ideas that are being discussed, and either formally vote or informally poll members to see which is most important to them. I wouldn’t bind the board to the vote, but it’d probably make people, even the people that cannot donate time or effort in other ways, feel they have a voice. And to those that “lose” the vote, you can tell them this issue is still on our radar. You matter. Ultimately, memberships are selling the organization, and with regard to sales, feelings matter.

3. If the time and data is available, make an effort to reach out to those who have not renewed. Perhaps talk to them about their beliefs or why they left. Thank them, encourage them to give NCRA 2.0 a try, and make a note of common themes. For example, if you found that 25 percent of non renewals were for a specific organizational reason, wouldn’t it be worth addressing?”

Veritext Scholarships

So we’ve got a bit of good news here. Veritext announced on May 20, 2019 that it was expanding its scholarship program. Now, obviously, this information is directly from the company. We can’t say for sure what’s happening in Minnesota, Washington, or elsewhere, but let’s be cautiously optimistic and assume this news is one hundred percent true for a moment.

It’s a good start. We’ve got to support these companies taking on the funding of education. There’s been a strong wave of stenographer activism since the big push for digital began, and this may be a tacit admission that steno is here to stay. Nothing but praise for Veritext today. Now, more than ever, is a great time for all companies to get out there and tell the field about their efforts in steno education. We are starving for good news! But, of course, we would be abdicating our moral responsibilities if we didn’t offer some suggestions.

Schools, reach out to the company and see if you can join their program. It never hurts to make a contact.

Veritext, according to the Ducker Report, the big four states for reporting are California, New York, Illinois, and Texas. Some of the largest shortage cries come from at least three of those states. It would be most helpful to our field if you would expand scholarships to those locations when possible.

Also Veritext, if you continue to support rolling out the digital stuff alongside the stenography scholarships, it’s going to be assumed that the scholarships are hedging your bets and the digital is your real investment. This probably isn’t the public perception that you want your stenographers walking into your depositions with. On the flip side, if stenography becomes the primary focus, stenographers will be more loyal and less likely to poach clients. As an accountant once explained, it’s just how the world works.

Some will be skeptical because Veritext was formerly making a major push for digital by asking attorneys to amend their notices to allow it. Anecdotally, as recently as May 20, commentators online were stating that Veritext was attempting to send a videographer only to a dep. We shouldn’t forget that. We need to continue to make everybody aware that some companies are taking an active role in supplanting stenographic reporting. But if this is a sign that there can be a pivot and a turning point in the right direction, we look forward to heaping on more praise, letting the past be the past, and seeing stenographers remain the guardians of the record well into the future.

Associations and Why You Matter

The other day on Facebook I came across some rather honest remarks about the upcoming NYSCRA social. They said hey, Diamond Reporting has been depressing our rates for a while, how are we supposed to feel with their names on this event?

Let’s just say we have touched on the fact that sponsors of events do not control the event. The working reporter controls the NYSCRA leadership, and when you sign up as a member you become a part of the decision-making process.

This blog is all about the working reporter. By the time I’m done with it, I’ll have figured out how to organize the dozens of posts a bit better and the 200 or so monthly readers will have an easier time finding information. That said, it’s time to talk less about Stenonymous and more about you.

You matter. I did the math on it. Think of anything you want to legislate in New York. Stenographers in the courts? Bring back the Workers Comp stenographers? Copy protection since courts often rule our transcripts are not copyright protected? This is all done with funding, representation, and grassroots action. Lobbying is expensive and can cost 5,000 to 50,000 a month. In a six-month New York legislative session that might be 30,000 to 300,000 dollars a year. Seems impossible, right? But let’s use some easy numbers. There are 1,300 reporters on the NYSCRA Facebook page. If 500 of those reporters (38 percent) donated 100 bucks a year, which is less than the $165 annual membership, NYSCRA would have a lobbying war chest of 50,000 a year cash. In only two years, NYSCRA would have the cash for a $100,000 lobbying campaign. What could we do with a biannual lobbying campaign of 100k? Even assuming we fail half of all campaigns for ten years, that’s 2 or 3 successful campaigns. Between playing political Powerball and grassroots action, we have a serious shot at making a difference. For a C-note a year and a letter or two when there’s a campaign on, January to June, you’re looking at bolstering your field, securing your job, and protecting all of your fellow stenographers.

And I’m not saying 100 a year is easy to give up. I’ve given up thousands of dollars in membership fees and donations to organizations over the years. I’ve felt the sting of putting down money I didn’t necessarily have. I felt the pain when the Workers Comp campaigns failed. It cost a lot of good people their job and made those that kept the job miserable. I know a lot of you reading felt what I felt. I know a lot of you reading had to do more than feel it. Some of you had to live it. But there are two options: Suffer through the defeats so that we might see victory, or put our heads in the sand and wait for the next big thing to come around and threaten our jobs.

There’s a lot to say for the human factor. Machines don’t vote. Politicians will side with stenographers when they learn how many stenographers they represent. But the bottom line is we have to put together resources to educate them. To do that, you matter.