Lifelog

Getting ahead on my content marketing tweets!

A marketing experiment in progress, with help from an ex-200wad writer Rachel Lee. She's the brains behind all the content marketing on IG! First collab ever. Learning so much from her.

https://instagram.com/golifelog

Back now to doing this! But this time what's different is that it's more intentional, not just going through the daily motion of it:

- Hunting down questions or complaints about starting a daily writing habit, and replying with my tweet thread
- Giving value, sharing feedback/ideas, riffing about writing habits of others
- Only doing this when on days when I do tweet my own content, so that it can reel in attention to my content

Want to take time now to publish my daily Lifelog posts as much as possible on Twitter. It's not an easy, direct copy and paste job. Very often I need to restructure/reorder my words differently in the tweet thread compared to the post.

Micro short form (on Twitter) works very differently from long form posts (on Lifelog). Need to write from a mobile-first, 240-char-tweet-oriented paradigm.

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1382277666955427840?s=20

https://typefully.app/

https://threadstart.io/

https://getchirrapp.com/

Learning.

That’s my answer to the title question.

I enjoy learning. I enjoy sharing my learnings from learning new stuff. I can imagine it’s probably not uncommon for the people to dislike learning...But thankfully that side of me didn’t get choked to death back in school. So I think I can do more of this when it comes to content marketing for Lifelog, or in fact, anything with regards to my indie hacking career.

Share what I learned. Show my mistakes. Vent about my struggles.

#learninpublic

Let’s see how this goes! Onwards!

Forget writing habits. Just f**king commit.

A contrarian view:
(thread)👇🏻

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1382181780078305284?s=20

Engage with target audience on Twitter 1h before and after the post, to draw attention to my account and the recent posts. Here's the steps:

Like comments from previous posts before posting again
Post your tweet/story
Engage with others for 10min before posting
Add a keyword related to your niche, to your bio
Engage after posting for 10min
Leave valuable comments on other people's content in your niche
Start conversations by reacting to their posts.
Delete ghost followers by browsing your list of followers and removing everyone that seems like a bot
Research and refresh your hashtags
Share other people's posts to your story/feed - this is a quick and valuable way to publish content
Use your insights to repurpose old content that performed well
Reply to other people's comments. If you have the answer to their question, tell them!
Update and refresh the design of your content.
Share your posts to othe rplatforms to grow
Keep posting and don't give up!

via @charlestumiottojackson
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNj2ErtAaSf/?igshid=b4wkr1equci5

Starting on my minimum viable content approach today, after weeks of research on "how to develop a daily writing habit". Tweeting out content that I might want to expand into longer blogposts to test viability:

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1381809320266883079?s=20

Why? Because I realised maybe I can't stick to the original idea of writing ONE single be-all-end-all article. It will likely end up being a couple of separate, more opinionated articles, after which I then weave into one huge "ultimate guide" kinda reference article. Which is great - gives me more content to push, and it won't be overwhelming or banking too much on one article.

Plans for now:
- Create smaller pieces of content from research/content so far, and post on Twitter to test how well received they will be
- Continue writing the 3 main blog pieces
- Continue collating feedback from remaining people
- No hurry, good things can wait, quality is key

Learnings:
It's week 4 of content marketing writing for Lifelog.

If this was coding up a feature, it would be one of the longest I ever spent. But since this is new work and I didn't have existing systems before this, I really took this long because I learning how to do it in the first place - reading, researching on process even while I was reading and researching on the topic. Setting up systems, trying to understand how to do the work. Figuring out what it means to do great work in this area to begin with.

Found The Writing Cooperative on Medium - what a treasure throve! Also James Clear wrote so much about writing habits of other authors too.

So while my impatient self is driving me crazy expecting results or even published content right now, my more rational adult self says that there’s no hurry. Good things can wait. Great content is worth the time, as much as as it needs, but not a minute more (just to keep procrastination in check).

Or as my favourite author James Clear said:

"A simple rule for life and work: Don’t rush, but don’t wait. Thoughtful action."

Thoughtful writing. Thoughtful execution.

What useful delusions do you hold on to?

Some useful delusions I hold on to:

Entrepreneurship works - you’ll never know for sure if your business idea would work, but at risk of being wrong and wasting time, effort or money, we do it anyway. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

The future will be better than the present - future forward optimism...If the future isn’t worth living towards, then what is? The delusion that the future will always turn out better motivates me to strive harder towards that future I want.

Call it useful delusions. Or radical optimism.

If it works for you, it works.

It’s uncanny how this time round on my second 100 day streak, I’m again doing new things with my writings. Again, not knowing what to write. Struggling. Experimenting. Again, trying to push my writing to the next level. Hopefully fun will come next, as if did before. Fingers crossed that I will find my deeper why to this new way of writing.

I’m talking about writing content for marketing Lifelog.

It’s been a humbling experience, to learn anew again how to write, for a different audience. After writing daily for years I thought myself as a writer. But man do I feel like a newbie all over again now.

Full circle. There and back again.

Yet, not the same person I was then. Optimistic from lessons past that I will find a way, my way, through this new jungle.

"5k working for yourself or 10k working for a company?"

My answer would be, obviously: 5k working for myself.

Because of the potential for unlimited upside, limited downside. There’s no salary ceiling when you work for yourself. The sky’s the limit, if done well. That 5k you start with could overtake the 10k from the company real fast if you’re good at the entrepreneurship thing. The worse thing that could happen is seldom total ruin. If you fail, you can always find a job again.

Ultimately, I guess people do this self-employment and entrepreneurship thing for reasons that’s not really just about money. It’s the autonomy and freedom they relish. Just as I do.

Oftentimes, that alone is a worthwhile tradeoff for the apparent unstable income and the other downsides.

Money is not about the money.

Sent 1st draft to a few Lifeloggers for feedback on:

- structure
- writing style
- storytelling
- tone of voice
- typos etc
- if it’s compelling for target audience

Financial freedom to me is… the speed and ease in which I can say NO to:

who I work with
what I work on
when I work, if even
how much I work
where I live/work
which social cause I want to give to

Clocking in at 3700 words now for the best damned article on the internet about "how to start a daily writing habit"...

“I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerise myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” ~ Haruki Murakami, via Daily Rituals

Initially I stopped meeting people outside for work or catching up, out of fear of infection. But after a while, I didn’t even want to meet anyone anymore, other than for the most essential purposes. Even though the restrictions had since been lifted. I felt bad for my friends. I wondered if I am turning into some reclusive hermit living in a cave with his family.

Now I know. I was mesmerised.

Transfixed into the routine, I occupied a mindspace that was all focused on two things – my family and my work. When I’m not caring for the bay, I was tumbling deep into the rabbit hole of coding, indie hacking, making. That was all I wanted to do. That was all I still want to do, now.

Around 23-30min read time. That feels like a lot to read already... 🤔

Got inspiration for intro and outro paragraphs
Added new ideas to article

I’d been slaving over a piece of content for Lifelog. I wanted to write the best damned article on the internet about how to develop a daily writing habit.

But the interesting part is writing advice for others also ended up being advice for myself. Taking my own advice, I started doing brain dumps of points I want to make in the post. I stopped editing in mid-flight and shifted it to be done last, since writing and editing are fundamentally different brain work. So it seems, even now after writing for years, I can still learn new tricks to get better. It made me realised that even though getting better at writing isn’t one of my main goals, doing some level of intentional practice is still a good thing.

Damn… Funny how I only came to this after more than two years of writing. And when writing out advice for others.

If we all took our own advice, the self-help industry would be out of business.

Fleshed out each point more, explain/clarified it
Added little examples and quotes from famous writers/creators
Started thinking about intro - this is important, how do I make them stay on to read the rest of the article? Thinking about using metaphors like organising a house party for your writing.