Two Topics: Best Day to Post on an Author Blog, and EU GDPR

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Best Day to Post on an Author Blog, and GDPR

Today I’ll discuss two topics:

  1. Why I’ve decided to move blog posts to Wednesdays. If you publish a blog or vlog, you’ll be interested in my rationale.
  2. What I’ve done to comply with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect May 25, 2018.

The Switch to Wednesdays

A few weeks ago I conducted a survey on Twitter. I wanted to know when authors spend the most time reading blog posts—weekdays or weekends. The majority indicated weekdays.

So, I reasoned, that narrows the possibilities to five days.

Some statutory holidays fall on Mondays, others on Fridays. That makes those days part of a long weekend, and leaves Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays.

Returning from or preparing for long-weekend activities often results in hectic Tuesdays and Thursdays.

After spending a couple of hours on the internet, I discovered that other sites, although they don’t supply their reasoning, agree that Wednesdays works best for their blogs.

So starting this week, that’s when I’ll publish regular posts.

EU GDPR

The website for the European Union General Data Protection Regulation doesn’t offer much help regarding their new requirements, and the internet community is in a collective sphincter-clench:

What must we do to comply?
What happens if we don’t comply?
Can they prosecute non-European websites?
… etc.

I found an answer to the second question above. According to the GDPR official website, organizations in breach:

… can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater). This is the maximum fine that can be imposed for the most serious infringements e.g. not having sufficient customer consent to process data or violating the core of Privacy by Design concepts. There is a tiered approach to fines e.g. a company can be fined 2% for not having their records in order (article 28), not notifying the supervising authority and data subject about a breach or not conducting impact assessment. It is important to note that these rules apply to both controllers and processors — meaning ‘clouds’ will not be exempt from GDPR enforcement.

I don’t profess to know any more than the next uninformed klutz about GDPR, but I did prepare a privacy policy for KathySteinemann.com.

Will it be enough? Who knows.

A few resources that might help you create your own privacy policy:

https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/complete-wordpress-gdpr-guide/

http://bakerviewconsulting.com/2018/05/thoughts-on-gdpr-and-authors/

https://advisera.com/eugdpracademy/free-downloads/

http://blog.thomasbrand.xyz/2017/08/29/useful-gdpr-resources-assets-which-you-should-check-out/

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6 thoughts on “Two Topics: Best Day to Post on an Author Blog, and EU GDPR”

  1. Kathy, I’m currently trying a book marketing service. I emailed and asked about GDPR. Here is the information I received.

    You don’t have to worry if you don’t have an email list of readers you
    email regularly. If you do, be sure the subscribers have signed up voluntarily to your email list.

    GDPR applies to EU companies, citizens, and any other companies who do business with EU citizens. It’s about protecting the consumer by allowing them more control over their data and how it is being used.

    I just set up a blog, so anyone who has a blog naturally wants subscribers or there’s no use to post. I’m not a person who wants to deal with situations that could possibly involve me in problems. If bloggers set up a privacy policy and readers subscribe, I’d say that would be signing up voluntarily. But the way my email addy gets captured and used to scam other people, what’s to prevent the same thing from happening to a blogger?

    Someone hacked into my blog at word press, changed the email address and password, and the support person said they couldn’t do anything about it because I had a free account. They did not verify the change by emailing me to check before allowing the change. My friend and I had four years of quality content. I was heartsick. Of course, they suggested, we can help by changing the account to a .org and charge $99.00 a year for a business account.

    • Thanks for the information, Bonnie.

      “They did not verify the change by emailing me to check before allowing the change.They did not verify the change by emailing me to check before allowing the change.”

      Wow. I hope they fix that soon. Everyone should get an email asking for confirmation when their account undergoes changes like password or email modifications. I hope you have backups of your content. 🙁

      • At that time I did not have backup. Nor did my partner. Videos of all we interviewed were uploaded to youtube, so the videos are there, but that is all. I have had two computers crash with several years in between and lost my file on Angel of Mercy which was ready to publish. I was depressed for 3 months, then I had a light bulb moment. If all my critique partners were as dilatory as I was about deleting sent files, maybe I could retrieve my chapters from them. Guess what? I got all of the chapters back but two. It was a lot of work retyping it into the computer but I now have an extra hard drive I save to.

        • You have had a run of mishaps, haven’t you, Bonnie? But you proved you’re above the disasters. Great idea regarding your critique partners.

          I have two high-capacity backup drives, and I swap them on alternating days. They have saved me on several occasions.

          Best of luck with your writing!

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