The Review - 15/09/2022

Welcome to this weeks update. It’s great to have you and I hope you enjoy reading it. This week:

• 1. Expanding this blog

• 2. Podcast recommendation - another great interview with Simon Sinek

• 3. Can journaling help with your mental health?

• 4. Gaining momentum on Twitter

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1. Expanding this blog

Blogging has the potential to cover a range of topics at different levels of detail. To this end I’m planning to expand this blog beyond the weekly update and cover some specific topics in detail. Over the years I’ve gained experience that I think you will find useful or you might know someone who would find it useful. But of course I’m still learning and making mistakes that I’d like to share too.

I have already made a start with two articles covering the following topics.

How to create a data strategy

How to make a success of hybrid meetings 

I’d love to tailor the next blog to what you’d like to read about. Please have a bash at this poll and pick a topic.

2. Podcast: The advice young people need to hear

For regular readers of this update you will know how much of a fan of Simon Sinek I am. I’d really recommend his latest podcast with Steven Bartlett.

In this episode they go deeper into what it means to build a good work culture. Always engaging, Simon Sinek never shys away from answering honestly. Steven is once again on top form, really making Simon think. One to listen to in stages given the length. One for your next run maybe.

Can journaling help with your mental health?

I’ve recently started keeping a journal. But why?

I’ve always suffered from anxiety to some extent. Usually it would be work related which always feels silly when you look back but in the moment it is really quite scary. In the last year it has also been mostly news related.

So I’ve researched ways of alleviating this anxiety. I will try anything! Journaling came up as a really good way of getting your thoughts down on paper and out of your brain. It seems to give the brain a way or ordering and processing thoughts.

A week in, and it’s really working. I’m using an app called Day One. It has a good template to add your thoughts each day and stores them in a calendar format for you to return to. I simply open the app on my iPad and start writing whatever comes into my head. A pure flow of consciousness. Give it a go and let me know what you think.

4. Social update - gaining momentum on Twitter

Wow, this week has been really interesting. I’ve had a little less time to create tweets so I’ve tried to go for quality rather than quantity and it seems to be working. Incredibly, I’ve added 30 followers since last week. These have come from two sources:

• From following more accounts and gaining “follow backs”

• Commenting on fresh posts from big accounts.

Of the two, the second has yielded more followers than the first.

I’m not 100% happy with just gaining followers by following other people. This doesn’t feel a sustainable strategy but I’ve justified it to myself for now as it gets the ball rolling with people following me and increasing the chance of one of them retweeting or liking one of my posts. So at this stage in the plan, I think that’s ok.

In terms of impressions, it’s been an ok week but it’s important to remember there was one post last week that went viral. This week has been consistent.

In addition to Twitter I’m aiming for one LinkedIn post per week. This feels about right at the moment. I seem to get more engagement on LinkedIn than Twitter. This is probably because I’ve got 741 followers so that channel is far ahead of where I am on Twitter. However, I don’t want to be seen to be spamming people. Especially given that many of these people are work colleagues!

Watching the impressions of a post on LinkedIn it is fascinating to get a feel for how the algorithm works. A post seems to have a life of about two days. On the third day, the impressions die away considerably. On the chart below you can see the impressions from one post and it’s impact lasting beyond that first day. Again, this is an argument not to post too much on LinkedIn given that a single post can work really hard for you.

Thank you for reading.

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