Lifelog

New Twitter approach on engagement

- engage every follower who follows Lifelog acc, using personal account, by visiting their profile page and leaving a reply on their own tweet
- engage everyone who likes, replies or RTs a writing related tweet/reply from me, by visiting their profile page and leaving a reply on their own tweet

Some things I learned from doing #tweet100:

• Even when you think you’re doing good enough, you can dig deeper and do even better. Putting my craftsman pride into crafting tweets felt enriching and enjoyable.
• Timebox challenges like the 100 days series are often used to build consistency, but you can also build quality.
• Constraints can be fun - I enjoyed learning about the art of tweeting - how you can structure it, trigger emotions. engage with it, while working within the 280-character limits.
• I learned a lot about how to play the Twitter game – when and why use single tweets (which was my main approach), threads, RTs, QTs, replies, likes. There’s a lot more to these seemingly unassuming features than how 90% of users will use it. E.g. you want to QT than RT, because a QT is shareable, can be replied to, liked, and essentially bring more engagement (and thus favoured by the algorithm) than a regular RT.
• Twitter communities really take a lot of work to build a sense of belonging, on the part of the creator and to participate on the part of the member. I didn’t engage much with the #tweet100 community. Was there even one? Apparently, but it felt quite diffused throughout Twitter. Contrast with the #ship30for30 community, which was vibrant and energetic. Pretty eye-opening to observe the differences.
• Hashtags are falling out of popularity on Twitter. Nobody really uses them anymore - would communities built around hashtags have staying power in the future?

Not FOMO, but JOMO.

Not the fear of missing out, but the joy of missing out.

JOMO is feeling content with staying in and disconnecting as a form of self-care, as a way of life.

And somehow the pandemic restrictions and lockdowns made doing this easier. In fact, it has given me an extended period of focus that’s rare in the last four decades of my life. A focus that I had only experienced on meditation retreats, except that this time it’s focus on growing my indie projects, and on my family.

It’s surprising how enjoyable being this focused can feel.

After waiting for almost a year, I finally got access to @OpenAI’s GPT-3!

Can’t wait to tinker with it for Lifelog and other project ideas. Love how timely this is – just when I’m done with my #100daysofmarketing challenge. Nothing like something new and shiny to get me back into hacking.

Brainstorming potential ideas and use cases:

Lifelog
• Summarizer
• Paraphraser
• Critique
• Prompter
• Keyword extracter
• Translator

Other project ideas
• Text to website builder
• Text to UI prototypes
• Javascript code generator
• CSS library generator
• AI copywriter
• Chat bot
• Email generator
• Content ideas generator
• Ecommerce product descriptor
• Ideator
• Coding helper

What other project ideas can you think of?

How it started: Why I did #100daysofmarketing
• Goal: Find 1 repeatable distribution channel for Lifelog
• Why: I tried marketing for 2 months in Jul-Aug but had no results. My efforts were scattered. I was frustrated. So I set a 100-day challenge to improve focus and make learning more intentional, and ultimately shift my identity.
• Started on 1 Sep, ended 9 Dec 2021
• Wrote 42 posts to document my journey of #100daysofmarketing
• Logged my tasks every day on Twitter for public accountability

Metrics: Before vs after - % difference
• Twitter followers: 1137 vs 1858 - 721↑, 63%↑
• Lifelog: Added 12 new members, 3 new paid (still on free trial)
• SEO: 4k vs 6k monthly page views from 103 blog posts
• Medium followers: 184 vs 245 - 61↑, 33%
• Channels reached: 2 (Twitter, Instagram) vs 12 (add Medium, Quora, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram, Indie Hackers, Dev.to, Hashnode, Codenewbies, Hacker News)

Results
• Achieved goal of finding 1 repeatable distribution channel for Lifelog = Twitter. But realised that 1 channel is not enough, no matter how repeatable or scalable
• Tripled my publishing volume, created a new content hub for my marketing efforts
• Iterated my Twitter approach 3 times
• Got 2 viral tweets which I learned a lot from (i.e. it’s all chance)
• Rekindled my childhood passion of drawing, and started sketching for Visual Twitter

Day 100 #100daysofmarketing - IT'S. EFFING. D-DAY!

🏠LifeBlog https://golifelog.com/posts/the-breakdown-is-where-the-breakthrough-happens-1639006359109

ℹ️Quora https://qr.ae/pGqGAn

📚Medium https://medium.com/@jasonleow/every-benefit-you-get-from-writing-218465b2d113

👍FB https://www.facebook.com/106430768053361/posts/299701775392925/?d=n

💼 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonleowsg_when-stuck-go-straighten-something-up-activity-6874553138959986688-Ii-l

✍️ Posted on @catalinmpit's Daily Writing Notion doc

🐦Twitter engagement

I crossed 100 days of blogging on LifeBlog a few days ago. Some thoughts, lessons and questions gleaned from the past 100 days of writing about writing.

I wrote part 1 yesterday. This is part 2:

• Re-learning the beginner’s mind
As a community lead, I got to bring others along with me. Having to re-learn the beginner’s mindset was humbling, and kept me grounded.

• The streak as a forcing function
Having to write more and write differently for an audience took it to the next level, forcing new mistakes and failures, catalysing new growth which I would have otherwise never bothered with had I stayed with my personal writing.

• Audience writing 101
I had always wrote only for myself and for my goals. But through the blog, I have to write for others. I got to think like the reader, walk in the shoes of budding daily writers. These are new reflexes, and useful ones for my overall marketing skill stack!

• Making connections to other writers & creators
I ended up connecting and making friends, joining new communities.

• Looking ahead, a new content hub
I repurposed my old writings in this new blog. Now I have a new archive to repurpose writings from. Yet I don’t feel like I got it nailed down despite 100 days. It’s been 100 days of blogging and marketing. Yet I feel like I’ve only just begun.

Onwards!

I crossed 100 days of blogging on LifeBlog a few days ago. Some thoughts, lessons and questions gleaned from the past 100 days of writing about writing:

• Writer’s block is when I’m fighting what I’m writing
• Write once, publish twice
• Idea pipelines don’t work for me
• Write what I want to know, not what I know
• Data-driven writing is the way to go

I wanted to do 10 lessons from 100 days, but ran out of steam and time. May be continued…

Day 99 #100daysofmarketing - T minus 1 days!

🏠LifeBlog https://golifelog.com/posts/just-write-is-bad-advice-1638918475621

ℹ️Quora https://qr.ae/pGqRJR

📚Medium https://medium.com/@jasonleow/cognitive-biases-that-creators-writers-should-look-out-for-43fbc516cd4d

👍FB https://www.facebook.com/106430768053361/posts/299019558794480/?d=n

💼 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonleowsg_your-mood-is-a-room-you-enter-to-write-activity-6874129711849639936-WRp4

✍️ Posted on @catalinmpit's Daily Writing Notion doc

🐦Twitter engagement

Here’s some of my favourite hacks:

• Use the canonical link in your posts to link the SEO juice back to your blog or website.
• Create a post that’s a collection of your tops posts, pinned at the top of your profile. That way people can scan and discover other posts easily rather than scroll all the way down in chronological order.
• Your profile banner is like your landing page, your marketing funnel. Write a clear tagline and use the right visual to convey what you’re about in 3 seconds. The job of your profile banner is to get readers to scroll down to read the first article.
• Actually write alt text for your images - images with alt text are great for people who are visually impaired to ‘read’ your post through using screen reader software. Alt text improves web accessibility, which improves your SEO juice. I even add my URL to the alt text to see if it helps with back-links.
• How to get 100 followers through Medium communities (so that you can apply for Medium Partnership Program). Search for articles “Get 100 followers on Medium”. Go the the article. Clap, comment, highlight and follow. Politely ask for follow. The Medium community is helpful and will often do.
• Images are almost a necessity now for every article. Use Unsplash, Pexels for free-for-commercial-use images. I crop these images into longish, horizontal banner format because with the usual 4:3 rectangular format, you often have to scroll down 2-3 times to start reading - no point creating a barrier to reading more than it has to.
• Remember to use the analytics for data-driven writing. See what works better, and double down on the topics/formats that work.

Day 97 #100daysofmarketing - T minus 3 days!

🏠LifeBlog https://golifelog.com/posts/effortless-writing-1638746921155

ℹ️Quora https://qr.ae/pGl60j

📚Medium https://medium.com/@jasonleow/never-set-another-goal-without-first-appreciating-pearsons-law-a0d14e419c1d

👍FB https://www.facebook.com/106430768053361/posts/297926318903804/?d=n

💼 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonleowsg_non-negotiable-boundaries-an-extreme-but-activity-6873443646520332288-g6jW

✍️ Posted on @catalinmpit's Daily Writing Notion doc

🐦Twitter engagement

What does your inner voice sound like?

They say your inner voice is the voice that your parents used on you.

Somewhat true. But it can change. My inner voice used to be just a stern, paternalistic coach.

But these days, I’m now adding more voices. I’ve been trying to convene a board meeting instead - the coach is still there, but there’s also a nurturing and motherly guide, a grounded and realistic pragmatist, and a trickster god.

It’s not perfect. Sometimes other voices take over and become dominant for a while. The best is always when the different voices work in unison, not in conflict. A single dominant voice usually bring poorer outcomes.

But it’s a start to better inner conversations.

In anything new you do, going from zero to one is the hardest part of the journey.

Getting your first user to try your MVP - difficult.
Writing your first few lines of code ever – challenging.
Going from $0 to earning your first $1 from the internet – hardest.

Most of us think we need BIG motivation to start, in order to climb over that high wall blocking you from reaching “one”. In one grand (but impossible) leap.

We all know how hard it is to muster up that amount of motivation from the get-go… that’s why most don’t even start.

Starting laughably small is how we get motivation to begin with.

We actually shouldn’t try to go from 0 to 1, but 0 to 0.01 first. Then 0.01 to 0.02. And as we do that, our motivation grows in tandem.

That’s how we can go from zero to one.