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Heyooo!

Happy Wednesday, peeps! As I write this intro on Tuesday morning, I realize the vibes might be a bit strange this week after whatever happens with the election today (if the results even come out today).

While that uncertainty is bound to make folks feel anxious, I want to remind you to take a breather and a step away from media if you’re feeling overwhelmed. Seriously, I’m writing this with the news on in the background, and I’m shocked (not really, though tbh) at the rhetoric. No matter the channel, all I hear is rage bait and fear-mongering; this would drive anyone crazy, so don’t be afraid to unplug.

With the above said, this is one of the major reasons that I decided not to pursue journalism further. For those who don’t know, when I was in college, I was obsessed with journalism and even went through an intensive program at university to train myself to be an investigative reporter.

After seeing the degradation of news coverage over my college career, I decided that journalism wasn’t for me, as it was no longer the landscape that I fell in love with, initially.

All of this is to say that the current state of “journalism” is made to get a rise out of you and keep you tuned into a specific station so they can keep getting that sweet, sweet ad revenue.

Don’t let news stations control you, and if you want to be more informed without all the fluff (a nice word for BS), you should check out today’s supporter of the Cmd+Shift+Create newsletter, 1440 Media (ya boy needs that sweet, sweet ad revenue, too).

Not only does 1440 provide solid journalism without bias, but they’re also willing to pay me for every click generated through this issue. So, if you miss actual good journalism, consider subscribing to 1440, and if you simply want to support me without giving me your hard-earned dollars, just click the link below to support. ❤️ 

Thank you to all those who click these links when I have them, it seriously makes a massive difference!

How to Handle a Flop

As creators, some of our content is bound to flop. Low views and engagement can lead to frustration, questioning your existence, and generally, bring you to the dreaded burnout.

This past week, I had a bout of flops that seemingly happened for no reason at all other than the algorithm deciding that it didn’t like these videos. When I saw that my views were barely breaking 500 views (a literal 80% drop in my normal view rate), I honestly felt like hucking my phone at the wall while cursing Father Zucc.

But instead of bringing 100 years of bad luck and Sweet Baby Ray-less BBQ to my family, I decided to do some studying on those pieces of content and, you guessed it, continue posting to appease the algorithm gods.

As mentioned in a previous issue of this newsletter, I’m back to my test of posting twice per day on Instagram to see how that plays into growth. Early results show that the algo LOVES this, and is feeding us with followers and views alike in return, so when we had a full day of flops, it stung a little bit extra.

When exploring the flops in question a bit further, I found that it was only fed to my viewers for some reason. Over 88% of the views themselves were from those who were already following, which is a far cry from the average of 80%+ of NON-follower views.

So what the F are you supposed to do when you don’t change anything that you usually do, and the algorithm doesn’t seem to give you any insights?

Well, you dig. You dig, and you reflect, Stanley Yelnats.

So what did I find when I did my deep dive, let’s jump in

1. Time of Posting
   When analyzing audience behavior, I quickly realized that these posts may have flopped because they were being posted at the wrong time (or not the time my audience is used to). To combat this potential roadblock, I have started batching content in order to post consistently at the same time of day. Not only do my posts now come out at the same time daily, but they also come out earlier than ever before. This shift seemed to have fixed the reach problem rather quickly and has actually led to us hitting new markets because of varied time zones. Where we were once missing an opportunity with the East coast time zone audience, we now post extra early to ensure we hit scroller’s feeds as they’re on their way to, or procrastinating the day at work.

2. Content Tweaks
   If you’re not tweaking your work, what’s the point of posting? Analyzing what is doing well and what is not can lead to some interesting discoveries, especially as you find footing in your niche. One thing that I noticed was that we were making a ton of original content but not utilizing the trending templates we used to during our hyper-growth phase. Well, digging back into trending audio and templates seemed to push us out of our audience as well, helping us garner viewers outside of our followers. Leveraging these trends may have shown the algorithm that we’re here to play by their rules while on their platform, so they started pushing again.

3. Engagement Right After Posting
   To be real, when studying the changes, I found that I was lacking on the engagement. Ensuring that you’re commenting back ASAP, responding to DMs, and engaging with others in your feed seems to be crucial to staying on the algos good side, and getting pushed outside of your audience. I believe that if you can show the algorithm that you’re engaged and encouraging conversation (AKA keeping users on the app), then you will be rewarded by being pushed into strangers feed's. Once I started staying on top of comments and engaging right after posting, I found that we were hitting our averages again.

4. A Wednesday Morning Update (50 mins before issue release)

   I have to drop a quick update after two more flops yesterday, again, for apparently no reason…. BUT I THINK I FOUND THE REASON! I believe that scheduling my content is killing it. After posting at the same time (unscheduled) for multiple days, as said in point one, I started seeing that growth again. Now, yesterday I had two posts scheduled, and upon their posting, they ONLY got pushed to my followers (legit almost 96%). I am going to explore this a bit more, but a current hypothesis is that scheduling is killing my reach for some reason… More to come on this note, but I wanted to give you the updates as I have these discoveries!

So, what’s my takeaway from all this? Flops are inevitable, and while they might make you want to hang up the towel and cut your losses, they can also be powerful learning tools if you’re willing to study and reflect. When views tank, it’s tempting to blame the algorithm (and okay, sometimes it really is the algorithm). But usually, with a few tweaks and keeping a finger on the pulse of your own work, you can notice the changes that may have been overlooked. And remember, consistency is everything. I’m sticking to my twice-a-day posting experiment, and while I’ve had some flops, I’m still seeing growth overall.

More to come on the two per-day posts, but in the meantime, let’s be sure to study up and make these shifts so we can have more Sweet Baby Ray BBQs and fewer flops. 👊

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Hope you enjoyed this week’s post. See you next week ✌️