Lifelog

Day 13 #100daysofmarketing

• repurposing old content in new ways - new blog post https://golifelog.com/posts/writing-is-making-a-comeback-1630797028971

• x-post to Medium - https://medium.com/@jasonleow/writing-is-making-a-comeback-cc8fd52e8b79

• x-post answers to Quora - https://www.quora.com/How-do-writers-keep-themselves-motivated-and-on-track/answer/Jason-Leow-14?prompt_topic_bio=1

• x-post to FB - first ever today! https://www.facebook.com/106430768053361/posts/246457260717377/?d=n

• Twitter marketing - 14 comments, 9 RTs, 9 quote tweet, 3 og tweets

• new ideas - post on dev.to, hashnode - thanks @jeffsvic for the ideas!

Give the Twitter algorithm what it likes and it’ll like you back. Simple, but hard.

Day 12 #100daysofmarketing

• repurposing old content in new ways - new blog post https://golifelog.com/posts/discipline-vs-diligence-in-daily-writing-1631401255177

• x-post to Medium - https://medium.com/@jasonleow/writing-teaches-me-517ba47d3f2a

• x-post answers to Quora - https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-stay-motivated-to-write/answer/Jason-Leow-14?prompt_topic_bio=1

• Twitter marketing - 19 comments, 15 RTs, 6 quote tweets, 2 og tweets

There’s few phrases that had killed more dreams than communism, and that is:

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

(Okay, some caveats first: Maybe it’s fine to say that once or twice, for self-care purposes.)

If your goals and dreams are worthy and matter to you, it’s time to delete that line from your personal dictionary. Forever.

No tomorrow. Only today.

Anything worth doing is worth doing small. And poorly. And slowly.

Over and over, this lesson repeats itself on my indie hacker journey. The breakthroughs I had were always more about pivoting myself.

Your competitor is not your real competitor.

The real competition is:

• Your ego and stubbornness in face of data
• Disinterest in learning, or not learning fast enough
• Procrastination or hesitation to take a risk
• Opportunities that are distractions
• Bad working/management habits
• Self-doubt or lack of confidence

Basically, willing or unable to adapt and change when the context had changed.

Pivoting oneself over pivoting the company.

Compete against that.

I NEED TO DO THIS

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Twitter Growth Hacks by @midnightudog

🚀 50-80 Comments
🚀 5-7 Original Tweets
🚀 5 RTs
🚀 5 RT Comments

Engage and provide value

Do this daily and you will grow

https://twitter.com/midnightudog/status/1388990257165651978?s=12

I started on the ketogenic diet on 10 Sep 2019. It’s been two years.

To the uninitiated, the keto diet is form of low carb, high fat diet. We’re eating too much sugars and carbs in our modern diets, and that’s leading to a whole host of metabolic conditions like diabetes, inflammation, and obesity. Keto aims to counter that, by drastically reducing our carb intake, and training our metabolically flexible body to burning more fats.

I started on keto as a last ditch effort to heal from a series of chronic gut issues, which included surgery. And two years on, I never felt better.

Some stuff I learned along the way:

• Weight comes and goes, and comes back again
• Trust your body
• Your way of eating will evolve
• Keto is a revolutionary act

I only pray this will gain wider acceptance over time.

Need to engage MORE than I tweet!

Engagement volume is key, not tweet volume

Someone on Twitter asked me about how my past three years as a maker had been, and that got me thinking deeply about it my journey so far.

The painful truth is, despite making leaps in growth and learning, I’m still far from realising my original aspiration – to make a liveable living as an indie hacker. Currently, my goal is to get $5k monthly recurring revenue.

Between working hard versus working smart, I’d mostly went at it by being the most consistent and hard worker I can be. I’m a big believer of consistency and the compounding effects of habits. But lately I’m starting to doubt if consistent habits alone are enough for entrepreneurial success.

The short answer is, no.

The data is just not showing a net positive effect. Just have a sense that something is missing…

So I know how to design, learned how to create, learning how to market. Would these be enough to succeed? What other roles and skill stacks do I still need after this? How much longer do I need to take before I can get to the success I envisioned? How much runway do I have left to try? I’m feeling impatient.

Three years since, yet I feel like I’ve only just started. I hope the day I reach my $5k MRR goal isn’t too far.

There’s always this point along a habit formation journey that you know you had crossed, when the habit finally sticks.

I think I just crossed it for my daily marketing habit.

Weird thing is, I’d been doing marketing for a few months now. It didn’t feel like it stuck. But once I committed to #100daysofmarketing, something began to shift.

I believe what was really happening beneath it all was an identity shift. All the inner fighting, the resistance, was the old self fighting against discomfort and change. Growth always feels painful, initially.

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." ~ Kahlil Gibran

And the catalyst that brought about this identity shift was the looming challenge of doing something every day for 100 days. Only a big enough challenge could have brought about the requisite amount of discomfort and stress...

Someone reminded me today, that watching yourself grow is a beautiful sight. Taking a moment today, with this post, to be grateful for the journey and the growth.

"...writing is to draw out something. What exactly, I don’t know. But the act of writing draws it out. It’s emergent. I don’t always like what comes out every time for sure, but I like it often enough, to be interested in continuing to write daily. It’s like participating in a lottery everyday..."

Since starting on Makerlog, I did these:

• Made my first product
• Earned my first dollar from the internet
• Won the coveted #1 spot on Product Hunt for the day
• Learned how to code
• Launched my first SaaS that I coded myself
• Earned my first MRR dollar recently, on Lifelog
• Solidified my tech for good, social impact patronage work
• Had my first ever viral product
• Best thing? Made many lifetimes worth of like-minded maker friends

Wow. It’s such a nice feeling to have it all on record. Like keeping a journal during your teens, and rereading when you’re old.

“Why do you write every day?”

The interesting answer to that question is:

It depends.

It depends on which season or stage you’re in. The reasons you wrote when you started can be vastly different from the reasons you are still writing after one month, six months, or one year.

You evolve in your writing and as a writer, along the journey of daily writing.

But that said, there seems to generally be three typical seasons that someone goes through.

• How it started: The spirited phase - writing for convergence
• How it went: The slump phase - writing for emergence
• How it’s going: The stable phase - writing for divergence

What do you think? Did you experience these seasons in your daily writing journey?

• Scheduled "Good morning..." tweets till end of Sep
• RTed, commented, liked

My writing funnel version 2.0:

Primary channels -
• Lifelog for atomic writing, writing-to-think, works-in-progress.
• Twitter for short form distribution via value-packed threads, for discussion, engagement and referral loops back to Lifelog or my personal Twitter account.
• Canonical cross-posting to Medium for writers, for long form distribution. Any monies from the Partner Program will be a bonus.
• Quora for further long form distribution to frequently asked questions about writing, people who might already be warm to the idea of Lifelog.
• LinkedIn for distributing to professionals on why writing benefits their career.

Secondary channels -
• Reddit for the chance of viral distribution, but tough crowd.
• Facebook for showing off to people I know haha. ;)
• Personal blog for occasional personal long form content, like monthly, yearly goals and reviews.
• Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Telegram / Slack groups for ad-hoc sharing to niche target groups - indie writers, creators, bloggers, marketing folks, entrepreneurs, developers, makers.

For those who had done this before, what might be some things I should be aware or cautious about when doing this funnel?

Anyone distributed via TikTok before? How best can Lifelog distribute content on TikTok?

If there was just one writing hack I can have, this would be it:

Reading quality determines writing quality.

Consumption shapes production.

Input shapes output.

Use #tweet100 as a social accountability forcing function to craft one good tweet per day that you’re proud of, for 100 days straight.

"Craft something that you’re proud of."

That spoke to the craftsman in me.

I want make more high signal stuff.
Stuff I can say I crafted.
Stuff I am proud of.

I want to up my Twitter game, via a craftsmanship approach. So I’m committing to #tweet100.

100 tweets that I’m proud of, after 100 days. Can’t wait!

“Hire great writers. If you’re trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off. That’s because being a good writer is about more than writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society. Look at how much people email and text now rather than talk on the phone. Writing is today’s currency for good ideas.” - Jason Fried

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Day 5 #100daysofmarketing
• more SEO-ing - new blog post
• "build once, sell twice" - repurposing old content from 200wad in new ways, as blogpost and Twitter threads