Re: Hustle
Mar. 12th, 2021 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI need to devote more time to maintaining a presence on social media, but it’s difficult.
I hate how quickly social media moves. I think Tumblr is fairly unique in that it’s possible for any given post to have a very long tail. I still get hundreds of notes every day, often on on things I posted years ago, but Tumblr is useless.
Instagram is neat in its own way, but it requires a level of engagement I’m not comfortable with. Instagram’s algorithm privileges accounts that post daily “stories” (temporary posts that don’t appear on your feed and usually disappear after 24 hours unless you curate them) and biweekly “reels” (videos of exactly 15 or 30 seconds) using an in-app editing system that is, to put it mildly, horrible. I tried to keep a schedule of doing both of these things for a few months, but it was exhausting and I hated it. I’m probably not going to be Instagram famous anytime soon.
Twitter is useful in a number of ways, but the problem with Twitter is that the life of any given tweet is usually only two or three hours long. If you don’t post your content at the right time for the right person to see it, then it’s dead. Sometimes people will retweet their own tweets, but this only really works for celebrity accounts (otherwise, people will see you retweet yourself and mute or unfollow you). What this means is that you can tweet about a big project that took weeks to complete, and it might get maybe ten likes and one retweet if the timing is off. It’s disheartening.
In order to use Twitter, then, you have to play by the rules of the platform and produce “interesting” content that doesn’t require energy to produce or consume in order to build a base of followers that’s large enough to widen your window of opportunity.
The problem is that I don’t know what’s “interesting.”
Like, does anyone want to hear about the uxorilocal marriage customs of the Heian period? Does anyone want to know about the super spicy romance novels Natsuo Kirino wrote before she started publishing crime fiction? Does anyone want to hear about how the developers of The Wind Waker originally programmed Link’s “wind waker” to be a theremin before Miyamoto vetoed it?
I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m not really an “interesting” person.
I hate how quickly social media moves. I think Tumblr is fairly unique in that it’s possible for any given post to have a very long tail. I still get hundreds of notes every day, often on on things I posted years ago, but Tumblr is useless.
Instagram is neat in its own way, but it requires a level of engagement I’m not comfortable with. Instagram’s algorithm privileges accounts that post daily “stories” (temporary posts that don’t appear on your feed and usually disappear after 24 hours unless you curate them) and biweekly “reels” (videos of exactly 15 or 30 seconds) using an in-app editing system that is, to put it mildly, horrible. I tried to keep a schedule of doing both of these things for a few months, but it was exhausting and I hated it. I’m probably not going to be Instagram famous anytime soon.
Twitter is useful in a number of ways, but the problem with Twitter is that the life of any given tweet is usually only two or three hours long. If you don’t post your content at the right time for the right person to see it, then it’s dead. Sometimes people will retweet their own tweets, but this only really works for celebrity accounts (otherwise, people will see you retweet yourself and mute or unfollow you). What this means is that you can tweet about a big project that took weeks to complete, and it might get maybe ten likes and one retweet if the timing is off. It’s disheartening.
In order to use Twitter, then, you have to play by the rules of the platform and produce “interesting” content that doesn’t require energy to produce or consume in order to build a base of followers that’s large enough to widen your window of opportunity.
The problem is that I don’t know what’s “interesting.”
Like, does anyone want to hear about the uxorilocal marriage customs of the Heian period? Does anyone want to know about the super spicy romance novels Natsuo Kirino wrote before she started publishing crime fiction? Does anyone want to hear about how the developers of The Wind Waker originally programmed Link’s “wind waker” to be a theremin before Miyamoto vetoed it?
I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m not really an “interesting” person.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-13 09:42 pm (UTC)Ugh, I also very much need to do this. The problem for me is that going beyond randomly posting/retweeting stuff when I actually feel like it seems like such a waste of time and energy that could've been spent reading or writing or playing video games or reading a more interesting person's Twitter.
I DO! I DO!!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-17 06:10 pm (UTC)S A M E.
I remember reading a book-length social media guide back in 2018 that said you should schedule yourself to spend at least two hours a day engaging with the social media platform where you present the bulk of your work, and I was like, "Wow I guess I'll just have to die in obscurity then."
I think my goal is to get to the level of critical mass where all I have to do is jump onto Twitter once a week to post new work and signal boost my friends.
Until then I'm just going to have to do my best to reblog nice artwork of plants while trying not to cry and complain too much.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-18 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-19 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-19 08:35 pm (UTC)Also I want to know about all those things you listed at the end....