Lifelog

Collecting more as I go:

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1378999154781773829?s=20

With coding, it’s all very visual and visceral. Code you type into your computer renders straight away. If it works, you know. If it doesn’t, you know too. Immediately. The feedback loop is short, and definitive. I can see results fast.

But marketing loops are the opposite. Yes, you can see page views, impressions and all within the first few days, but very often content is a long game. You won’t see the real effects until you hit a certain threshold quantity and quality. From what I read, it can be many months before there’s any observable effect in traffic and conversions. Content feedback loops are longer and more ambiguous, and it’s indicators are lagging. It just takes so much longer. Longer than I have patience for.

The life cycles of coding and marketing are like the life spans of fruit flies compared to tortoises.

Created a structure for all the tips - before, during, after writing
Collated links to articles, tweets too to link to them in the article

Instead of seeing marketing as a separate business activity, something I do for a product, as secondary inputs feeding into a primary product, what if I saw it as a product in itself? How then would I approach it differently?

Instead of doing “marketing”, what if I built an info product around the key topics that Lifelog covers? What would an info product based around these themes of writing, habits, goals, productivity look like? What would an info product equivalent of Lifelog look like?

Marketing a product versus marketing as a product.

Seeking comments and additional tips/ideas to the list! Please let me know:

🧘🏻‍♂️ Find your sacred hour, a time to write w/o distractions
🐣 Keep the bar low initially: 100-200 words/day
💡 Keep a stash of writing prompts, half-written drafts
📺 Input shapes output. Consume great content = produce great content
🔥 Consistency over intensity, progress over perfection
👥 Find a community. Your tribe will nudge you on bad days, amplify you on good days.
🤔Find your why, but it might only emerge after writing a while

One of the big rewiring efforts on my brain when it comes to learning marketing, is re-acquainting myself with writing for an audience.

After writing daily for myself for slightly over two years (with a short intentional break at two year mark), I’d gotten really comfortable with writing down whatever the voice in my head is saying. What you’re reading here is literally how that voice in my head talks.

BUT…writing for an audience is so different.

I can’t be true to heart and say that I’m excited about all that work. Sometimes I still daydream about finding easy shortcuts to doing this whole marketing thing.

But the short game is to play the long game, they say.

Seems like I really got my work cut out for me this month. One thing that keeps popping up in my head:

How can I learn to start enjoying writing for an audience?

“It’s almost always better to learn from peers who are 2 years ahead of you than mentors who are 20 years ahead of you. Life evolves and most insights get outdated.” ~ James Clear

I’m actually really hungry for stories of success and failure from peers who are one or two zeros ahead of me. I’m currently below $100 MRR, so looking to learn from those who are in the $100-$1000 MRR range is actually quite refreshing and immediately useful for me. Anything beyond two zeros—$10k MRR—becomes distant and un-relatable. But these stories are hard to find.

......more about just their raw experiences, the challenges faced, lessons learned, without trying to reduce to pithy one-liner statements like it’s sage truth. Or worse, abstract them into an ebook or a course that you’re selling. Because even advice from peers in the same stage can potentially be misleading, so why prop it up more than it has to? Let us make our own inferences from the raw stories.

Just all of the learning, none of the selling.

I won’t be marketing, I’m building a media company.

Specifically, things I’m doing differently in April (as compared to just riffing and sharing links on Twitter and Indie Hackers.):

Research - search key words/questions, #hashtags, topics
Content plans - content categories, scheduled content, sourcing
Analytics - metrics on all platforms to measure performance
Automation - will try as much as possible to automate, e.g. Buffer, IFTTT, Zapier

You know shit got real when you have a multi-tab spreadsheet for it! But all those things are still so new to me, I might even need to add more as I go.

You know shit just got real when your marketing:

- has a multiple tab spreadsheet
- you write content for the entire month ahead
- you create tools to source for content daily

March wins
- Lifelog: shipped @mention in comments, inline-editing for posts and comments, revamped community page, learned loads about marketing
- launched social impact patronage
- launched #pluginsforcarrd

March fails
- Acquire at least 2 new subscribers for Lifelog: acquired 1 new user but he’s not a paying subscriber
- Sell at least 2 copies of a Carrd clone template for Plugins For Carrd: Sold 1 copy, legit.
- Get at least 2 web design projects for Sweet Jams Sites: Sent out proposals for 2 but none confirmed

Revenue numbers
- Lifelog: $40/m
- Keto List: S$705 one-time
- Social impact patrons: $50/yr + $10/m

I totally missed my targets, felt like a failure. But saw some encouraging words on social media that failures are when you take zero shots on goal. Sincere shots taken but target missed are really just “mistakes” to learn from.

OK, I can live with that.

Onwards to April!

What’s the search intent of my customers? What key words do they use?
- writing, writing prompts, creative writing, “how to improve writing skills”, “how to start writing”, “how to start writing a book”, “smart goals”

What might be some questions my customers always ask on search engines?
- how daily writing benefits you (tangible, intangible benefits in focus, productivity, creativity, health, mental wellness)
- how to keep a writing habit - tips, hacks, techniques
- how to form good habits, like writing
- why building a streak is useful for habits
- how public accountability helps you in achieving goals
- how to find your tribe and how a tribe helps you
- how to break bad habits, like in writing
- having rituals/routines to help creativity/writing
- how to get ideas in general, and then specifically on getting ideas for writing

What’s my stance on content sharing?
- Add value directly by relevant, useful content
- Share process/journey if relevant
- Subtle branding
- Don’t dump links
- Don’t be annoying or hard sell
- Tailor content to fit each platform (research how it’s done for each)
- Flywheel folks back to one source (a Twitter thread, or blog post)
- Play long term games with long term people

What’s my content strategy? What’s my marketing flywheel?
- Write quality content
- Publish consistently
- Create once publish everywhere
- SEO
- Collab with others to amplify

What categories of content should I post? A better question: what would my customers find valuable?
- Useful/practical/relevant tips to motivate/get better at writing/goals/etc
- Featured goal from the community
- Featured community member
- Reposts from members
- Motivational quotes
- Questions (ala IH style on Twitter)
- Reposts from elsewhere/other accounts

How often should I post content? Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly?
- Blog - at least once weekly
- On IG, Twitter - Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat

Which channels should I prioritise? Which ones should I experiment with?
Priority: Blog, Twitter, Indie Hackers, Other blogs

Experiments: IG, Hacker News, Reddit, Facebook ads, Twitter ads

I definitely crossed a threshold on sleep management in the past month or so. Yawning a lot less in the day, feeling less fatigue, more alertness. So that’s good!

But my sleep quality scores on the Sleep Cycle app remain around 70%, and often dips to 60%s on nights where I woke up to pee or sleep late. Average score now for all time is 66%. I want to get my scores up to at least 80% consistently.

What else can I do?

* Increase asleep time
* Increase time in bed
* Get smart light bulb for gentler waking
* Limit power naps

More exercise in the day?
Better wind-down ritual in the night?
Using ear plugs?

Where do creators of all kinds hang out? Not strictly writers/authors, but anymore who creates but blogs/published words daily/often:

Product Hunt - launches
Twitter - #ship30for30, writing habit, #100wordsaday, followers of James Clear/#atomichabits, @david_perell @neil_strauss @IAmMarkManson
Indie Hackers groups - Deals, Goal Setters, Indie Publishing, Self-development,
Facebook groups - Atomic Habits Limitless Life, MentalChai, SaaS Growth Hacks
Google search - organic search keywords like writing, writing prompts, creative writing, “how to improve writing skills”, “how to start writing”, “how to start writing a book”
Instagram - writing communities
Reddit? - bujo (bullet journal), writing
Hacker News, Dev.to, Medium?
Newsletter emailing lists - writing newsletters
Product directories - Product Hunt, Betalist, Product Startups, SaaS directory, any Nuxt or Vue directories

Anything else?

What job are they hiring Lifelog to do? (see Jobs To Be Done framework)
* Attract opportunity (career/biz)
* Achieve success
* Grow as a person

...and they do that by (high level goals/behaviour change):
- Writing more
- Publishing in public more frequently
- Get better at writing
- Clarity of goals
- Imagining plans and future
- Achieve progress
- Journaling

Learning marketing now is like rewiring my brain:

Preference for ignore-everything deep focus vs marketing all the time
Introvert vs having to talk about myself and my product
Hating marketing because of annoying, hard selling salesmen/charlatans

Hot take: Why should I tweet and just be known for ONE thing? Because we’re after all, complex human beings with a diversity of interests. I’d rather engage on that messy, multi-layered authenticity than repeat myself all the time, about just one thing. That’s just being naggy.

I care about being expressive and authentic, rather than being consistent and convenient. More importantly, I care about engaging you and knowing you on that level.

Don’t give me the signal, I want all the noise.

...while writing down a marketing brief - just learning points along the way, and decisions about who/what/where/when/why for marketing Lifelog

Who exactly is Lifelog for?

Writing about your goals everyday is not an easy sell because it’s rare and unconventional. Even amongst the Lifeloggers who have years of streaks, we don’t do that everyday. Me included. We write about a whole bunch of other stuff too, besides our goals. There’s the writing aspect to Lifelog, the more creative expression of it. And there’s the part that’s more concrete and utilitarian, about goal-setting, productivity, success, self-improvement.

Lifelog seems to be situated at the intersection of two social circles – the “writing” tribe vs “goals” tribe.

"People who excel tend to obsess over the details. People who struggle also tend to obsess over the details. The difference is what details they focus on. Minutiae vs polish. Most things don’t matter—but when it does, you want to get the details right." - James Clear

I hope I’m mostly in the former group, and if not, I certainly aspire to be. I want to focus attention on details that matter. Pragmatic polish, not meaningless minutiae. And I want to excel and succeed because of it.

I want to do work that delights others through such polish. The little delights, like the animated notification bell in Lifelog. I made so many features for Lifelog, but guess what, that tiny bell with the red dot is my favourite thing. Meaningful, pleasurable, yet practical, utilitarian. A worthwhile investment on your attention.

Imagine: all these words that you wrote on Lifelog. They’re just sitting there, like dormant seeds, awaiting that opportune season of rain and sunlight. The potential of an entire forest, all captured in one seed. One post. One day, all these words from your digital garden might come to your aid like you’d never imagine.

Just writing that last paragraph out fills me with optimism and excitement. And a moment’s teasing taste, of that infinite patience.

Rachel's volunteering/collaborating to help me with IG marketing - exciting! We're creating a content strategy for Lifelog's presence on IG - will be interesting to see how a visual medium plays with a text medium that is Lifelog.