Monday, November 13, 2023
Interesting analysis on using social media to drive traffic by Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day (one of my favorite newsletters). A couple of highlights:
- Threads is driving the most traffic. He thinks that’s just a bait-and-switch by Meta but is happy to ride it out while the fun lasts. I agree on both counts.
- He creates one-minute videos talking about what he’s written and posts them to various places.
- He takes a screenshot of one good paragraph and posts to X, Threads, etc. Taylor Lorenz at the Washington Post and Casey Newton of Platformer seem to do the same.
- Like me, he doesn’t have a lot of patience with posting in each place in its native format. To me, that’s too much like work. Like filling out expense reports.
Also:
… my main takeaway from these early days living out in the wilderness of the new internet is that everything is a big mess right now and you can kind of go and do whatever you want wherever you want. Which is, obviously, a little scary for folks who haven’t used their browser’s URL bar in a while, but four of the biggest platforms are all showing the same recycled video content and the smaller social networks that aren’t are, well, just social networks. Which means platforms don’t really matter anymore. We’re in a moment of possibility and, sure, I wish I could just write my little emails and call it a day, but exploring the web and figuring out what works for me isn’t the worst thing in the world either.
The video idea is intriguing. And the audio could run as a podcast, too! On the other hand, I go weeks now where all the work I’m doing is marketing writing, which I’m still figuring out how to promote—much of that doesn’t have my byline. Nearly ALL of it, actually. How do I promote that kind of thing? And yet, some of my favorite podcasts come out on an intermittent schedule.