Weekly Update #003

Hello all,

The good news is that, this week, things have gone back to a regular schedule. The bad news is that, since it's same old same old, I don't really have too much to write here.

The main thing I have been thinking of this week, I suppose, is how to approach content on various different platforms. Preferably you want to post widely and consistently, but at the same time you don't want to post anything that's going to take too much time or lead to a detraction (e.g. posting too often and saturating people's timelines). You kind of figure this out on a case-by-case basis. For example, given my growth rate on Wordpress, Substack, Quora, and Pinterest, I'd say these are channels I have down pat. Twitter and Instagram, on the other hand, I have been trying and failing to figure out for years.

This leads me to this week, where something interesting happened. On happenstance, I decided to use my second Youtube channel (which contains content a bit too "casual" for LinkedIn, so I will not be posting it here ;) ) to throw up some quick videos and highlights I had made that I wanted to have saved somewhere. Usually I would just keep these on a private Google Drive, but I thought it might be fun to convert them into YouTube videos since they were nothing personal and I figured other people might get some enjoyment out of them too.

After I posted the first video, I forgot about it and went to edit the second. When I came back, however, I noticed something interesting -- the video had gotten a ton of views in a very short time. I uploaded the second video, which was the same editing structure but completely different content from the first. This one, too, got a ton of views. Baffled, I made my third -- this time designing it for a public audience, just in case -- and published it. What ended up happening is that all 3 got a thousand views in a span of three days. This was bizarre, speaking that it was a channel I never advertised, and all other videos had 10 views maximum.

Clearly, I had instigated the YT algorithm in some way, but I wasn't sure how. Then, after some thinking, I had realized something I never thought of before. Remember the four "successful" social media channels I mentioned? All four of them contain one pattern: it's all content made for me, not for other people. The Wordpress contains ideas I find interesting, the Substack are updates for me to keep track of, the Quora is for me to think about questions relevant to my field, and the Pinterest is for me to save art pieces to come back to later. For this second YT channel, up until this point, I hadn't made content for me. I made content I thought OTHER people would enjoy. Then, the second I flipped the script (threw on videos for my own purpose), it suddenly blew up.

To be fair, I am not saying I found the secret to internet influencer clout success. Otherwise, I would be driving a Lambo, eating fruit bowls, and would absolutely not be posting on LinkedIn or IndieHackers. But perhaps its a sign that things I find interesting are more likely to be interesting to other people, rather than if I just guessed what other people wanted.