Month: February 2024

ACTION IS THE BEST NOISE CANCELATION

Minimalism was a thing for me in 2009.

I loved the idea of owning “just enough.”

I also remember all the questions, the naysayers, the “yeah, buts.” A lot of people in the replies asking about the best lightweight shirt, or how many socks to own.

But there comes a time when the questions are a stall tactic.

There’s a time to do your research, sure. Buying anything for $1,000, it pays to look at some reviews and YouTube videos, but at some point, you’ve got to make a move, which then puts you on the hook.

When I hit the road as a bike nerd in 2010, I heard some naysayers on a bike forum or two (the internet was much smaller back then), but fuuuuck off, I was living my dream while you were posting comments on the internet.

Did I do everything right? Nope. Did I post some pompeous shit? Hell yeah, I did.

I did stuff and learned from it, a constant cycle of learning, figuring things out, adapting, and getting to the next challenge, writing the next chapter.

The online chatter is noise, and the noise goes away when you build up a nice strong sense of self by doing whatever the fuck it is you want to do.

STYLE

This is from Steph who makes Obsidian, from ‘Style is consistent constraint.’

Collect constraints you enjoy. Unusual constraints make things more fun. You can always change them later. This is your style, after all. It’s not a life commitment, it’s just the way you do things. For now.

Having a style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives you focus. I always pluralize tags so I never have to wonder what to name new tags.

Great example here is this video from 2yn:

THREADS DEAD, BABY

Meta says they won’t recommend political content on Threads, and that “users who post political content can check their account status to see whether they’ve posted too much of it to be eligible for recommendation.”

As Nick Heer writes at Pixel Envy:

“Does any topic which has been politicized count? Are all posts about global warming, trans rights, healthcare, and intellectual property law considered political, or just those which advocate for a particular position? If advocacy is demoted, it likely benefits the status quo and creates a conservative bias by definition.”

And while this seems aimed at accounts you don’t follow, I don’t trust Zuck and company to throttle accounts that you do follow.

SELF PROMOTION

Years ago, “self-promotion” meant posting something on a social platform, and most of your followers saw it.

It was great when it worked!

Then came algorithms, and now self-promotion feels like a constant battle.

It’s not you; it’s the system.

You can’t post just once because 90% of your audience won’t see it. This is why I’d always tell people, “Promote your new song a few times a week, at different times of day!”

But then having to post, plan, and schedule starts to feel like screaming into the void.

Oh, and then Instagram says it wants videos. Twitter removes links. Facebook and LinkedIn limit your reach when you include a link. Also, don’t say “link in bio!”

At this point, it’s not even self-promotion – it’s tap dancing, juggling, or card tricks in Times Square, along with 900 million other creative people doing the same.

SPOTIFY IS UNSTOPPABLE

From Variety:

“For the fourth quarter of 2023, (Spotify) reported revenue of €3.67 billion”

That’s $3,946,534,500 in US dollars. Oh, and they added “28 million total monthly active users overall, to reach 602 million.”

In one quarter.

And you’re still posting “check out my new song” on Twitter, or wasting your time publically shaming a company that made almost $4 BILLION in one quarter.

They’ve no shame, they’re rich. They do what they want.

The question is this: what’s our next move?

STOP LOOKING FOR FOLLOWERS AND GET SUBSCRIBERS

How will you get new followers if you’re not on social media?

Someone asked that recently.

They also said they reach about 10% of their followers on Instagram.

Think of the energy required to get 100 new followers on any social media platform. ONE HUNDRED. You need a hit, a nice mention, some serious work.

Then, when you send out your next big post to 100 new followers, just 10 of them will see it.

You now need 1,000 new followers to reach 100 of them.

What about 10 new email subscribers?

These might be people who follow you on Instagram but aren’t on the platform very often. You can DM folks who like a bunch of your posts and send them the link to subscribe.

If you sell stuff online, you can easily contact those people and ask them to subscribe to your newsletter (or add this as an opt-in during checkout).

You could probably email 10 people this week who love your work and send them the link to subscribe.

Heck, this is probably 50 people now if you do all three of those.

Maybe “just” half of those people click the link to sign up.

That’s still 25 people you can reach 100% of the time.

That’s more than twice the number of people you can reach if you get 100 new social media followers.

And it can be done in a few days, with a few emails.

Small effort, lasting results.