The Review - 26/08/2022

This week

• My social media experiment - what have I been trying this week

• A marketing legend you need to follow on Twitter

• A YouTube channel that will inspire you to take action

• A potential side hustle

Firstly, my photo of the week

This is Sennen Cove in Cornwall, England. It is my favourite place in the whole world. Located about 3 miles from Lands End, it has a golden sandy beach, amazing surf and great fish and chips.

So this week, as we head back from our holidays, this is the picture that takes me back. Enjoy.

Social media update

I find social media absolutely fascinating. There are many platforms now to choose from and it seems each platform has its own purpose for the user. LinkedIn for more formal business audiences, Twitter to make connections and start conversations in the moment, YouTube for longer form video and TiKTok for more short form video formats.

Mastering all these would take an age so I’ve chosen Twitter as my starting point. My aim being to build an engaged following who might find my content useful who might also be interested in reading my longer form blog.

I am nearly two weeks into this experiment so it’s very early days but here are my results so far and what I’ve been trying.

The growth rates are obviously very high because I’ve gone from doing nothing on Twitter to quite a lot but the tweet impressions, profile costs and followers is interesting.

This view shows me I’m doing relatively well at gaining impressions and profile visits but probably not converting these into followers. It is probably the case that many of these people see I’ve only got 75 followers and see me as a newbie and move on. It will be interesting to see how I can get over this hurdle in the coming weeks.

The next view shows how the number of impressions (people who have seen my tweets) has evolved over the last two weeks. The three days where there was a spike was when I commented on someone else’s popular post and gained a serious number of eyeballs. However, these people where probably just scrolling through and not engaging with my account.

In the last week, after some careful YouTube watching of tips on growing your YouTube channel I’ve been implementing a few strategies:

• Posting regularly and consistently - the algorithm seems to like consistency. I’m under no illusions, posting regularly for two weeks isn’t really going to get me noticed. It will be the long term application of this rule that will get results.

• Threads - threads are a string of posts that form a type of Twitter style blog. These allow you to circumvent the Twitter limit on characters and post something a little more long form. I’m looking to post 2-3 threads per week.

• Quote Retweet a post from a contributor with a bigger following - this is a little bit of a long shot but if it comes off you can gain a number of followers. By retweeting a post and then adding you own take it and adding some value you may get a mention or retweet from the original creator. You have to add value though. I’m aiming for one or two a day of these.

To post regularly, you don’t want to be on Twitter all day! I have other things to do. So I’m using Tweethunter to schedule my posts. This programme allows you to plan your tweets in bulk and have a couple of days of tweets ready to go out. Magic.

Follow me at @MJPrior_

Someone you need to follow on Twitter - Rory Sutherland

Rory is a marketing legend. When you listen to him talk you realise he is just that little bit different from the rest of us. He sees what we see but he’s able to dig into the human thought process behind what he sees and so is able to provide insights into how humans behave.

His insights are gold dust for anyone working in a commercial environment. I challenge you to not find something of interest in his Twitter feed.

He is a collector too. His feed is full of excellent references to work he has curated. A specific one here for those of you who work in data. An insightful article on the pitfalls of relying just on the metrics. Beware the unintended consequences.

A YouTube channel to subscribe to - Ali Abdaal

Ali describes himself as a former doctor turned entrepreneur. Across his videos he uses an engaging style to deliver different ways you can improve your life. He covers strategies for improving your productivity, apps that could help you day to day as well as reviews of products, books and articles.

Ali’s recent video inspired me to create this newsletter.

App review - Field Agent could be a small side hustle for you

Field agent is your chance to make a small amount of money on the side from checking prices and displays of certain products in your local stores. Missions appear on the app for which you then accept, take photos, record videos and carry out reviews before uploading them to the app.

The app is free to download and to sign up to. To be honest, I was sceptical about whether any missions would appear near me. So I downloaded the app and a few hours later this appeared:

So it does work. I’ve yet to accept a mission. I wasn’t in a position to get to Watford! Give it a go and let me know what you think.

Thank you

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