Week Notes // 22nd January
In the spirit of full disclosure, I think it’s important to say that I have little to no motivation to write a weeknote this week. I’d rather be sat on my sofa watching Dune than be sat at my kitchen table writing this. However, in the grand scheme of things, I know that i’ll regret not doing this. And sometimes discipline requires that we do things we don’t want to. That we pursue the greater good that a habit brings in the long term even if it doesn’t make us happy in the short term.
It’s been a busy week. I’ve spent too long at a computer screen. Hence, I’d rather be somewhere else right now.
Part of my reticence is that the initial impact of writing these was that there was a flurry of ideas for proper writing. Currently, this isn’t the case. So maybe, a re-think is in order.
Anway. A busy week as I say, so some highlights:
Newsletter testing began this week. Our test this week was to remove all ‘third party’ promotion - essentially posting links organically on mastodon, twitter and Linkedin - to see what our baseline is. Analytics in substack suggested that email was the biggest driver of reach. However, numbers for this issue are down. By a significant amount. Linkedin promotion in particular seems crucial at cutting through with new readers and those readers in turn contribute significantly to views both directly and indirectly, if not new subs. Linkedin numbers are trending downward, despite both us of having more and more followers. Hypothesis that we want to test over next few weeks are aimed at teasing apart how the Linkedin algorithm works, the types of content and formats that it promotes and penalises. Overarchingly it would appear it hates links and URLs which are taking people off platform (shock).
Saw clients a number of times this week. A big workshop on Tuesday was both fun to participate in and successful in terms of the progress we made ahead of subsequent workshops happening in the next couple of weeks. Attended lunch for a client’s product launch on Thursday.
Attended a workshop at Faber and Faber entitled ‘Start to Write’. Found it an intense but rewarding experience. And have learnt some foundational techniques that might help me get going. Some advice which has stuck was that ‘no one is going to give you permission, you have to do it’. Obvious, perhaps. But useful.
Finished reading Yellowface. Enjoyed it alot. Dead easy. A nice paletter cleanser after To Paradise. Now onto Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.
Traitors finale this week. It’s a great show and a great format. It’s scheduled in a way which encourages people to watch it together. I’m pleased the second series worked as well as the first. I had concerns it could. It felt like there was a number of options available to the producers: make the tasks and ‘the house’ more intense, cast with more extreme ‘characters’ or hope that it’s good enough to survive in a largely consistent way to last year. I think the tweaks that they made worked, but broadly, it was the same show. Good stuff all round. Another example of ‘the good will out’. Make shows that are good enough and people will watch ‘live’ or ‘as live’. Part of the issue is an oversupply of stuff. Give people too much choice or too many options and of course they’ll timeshift.
Need to secure a babsitter for The Zone of Interest.
Next week looks like more of the same. Prep for workshops in Barcelona in two weeks time. New briefs arriving. More newsletter testing. Need to find some time to write some stuff that is starting to take shape in note form.
