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The sorry state of social | Issue 153

Desk Notes

(Please excuse the mess…Still building dreams) ✨

I’m experimenting with a new (shorter) format because a) I respect your time and b) I need to get outside and enjoy the early days of summer. There might not be much of it in the UK. And it’s my birthday month!

1️⃣ Went to a Leading Expert talk on the Sorry State of Social Media with Brian Clark – an overview of the evolution of social media from a helpful audience-building tool (Digg and Delicious) to a dopamine-fueled distraction and time suck—with more emphasis on ‘influencers’ and attention than community and connection.

From a business perspective, it’s hard to justify spending time on social media. He’s been experimenting with LinkedIn and succeeding, but “there’s no aspect of fun on LinkedIn.” (I agree—it’s boring AF—what can we do about that?)

Some thoughts on how to fix it: Focus on building your email list and a deeper psychological understanding of your prospects. Test paid ads in other newsletters and/or write guest posts for folks in your niche. The business basics: People and relationships power everything, and that won’t change. He says he’s “lost all techno-optimism,” – noooo! BUT there will be something else—we can’t predict it.

2️⃣ Preparing for Joshi Herrmann NUJ talk on launching local news sites and growing your paid newsletter. Joshi is the founder of 

The Mill, which has just reached a six-figure reader milestone. Exciting to hear they’ve announced a major hiring round (hiring 11 staff in FIVE cities) and are expanding into Glasgow and London (making hay as the Evening Standard goes from daily to weekly). Love the ambition! Bringing deeper narrative journalism to local news. What local news to you read/need? Let me know and I’ll ask him.

3️⃣ Went to a Scaling Paid Subs Mind Meld with Lex Roman. I love her new project, Journalists Pay Themselves, for reader-funded journalists. Sharing tiny experiments and helpful resources in her newsletter and hosts free monthly meets to help folks grow their paid readership. We discussed pricing and tiers and tried to work out why anyone would pick the middle tier!? Plus, a hot-seat publication rundown is super useful. I’m hosting the next session on Monday, July 1. RSVP here. Interview with Lex coming soon!

Nika

PS It’s the Publisher Podcast & Newsletter Summit / Awards on Wednesday. Esther Kezia Thorpe shared this post on what burnout feels like and how challenging event marketing is as a part-time gig and full-time parent. They’re open to ideas re partnerships, investment, or refocusing to work smarter, not harder. The lineup is insane – last chance to grab a ticket here.

Cool Reads

▶️ 12 mind-opening highlights from the panels at the Newsletter Conference [Newsletter Circle] Great summary. Ciler says an AI notetaker is a must next time to stop the hand cramp.

▶️ An AI-powered necklace that remembers your conversations for you [Compass Wearable] Are we entering the post-smartphone era of personal devices? I might be alarmed to hear how much I talk to myself.

▶️ Tiny Marketing Actions: The Six-Week Experience [Pam Slim on Maven] Like this concept. How to execute TMAs on a daily/weekly basis to grow your business with a community of small biz owners.

▶️ Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World [Gary Vee] on the nuts and bolts of growing your business in 2024 and beyond. I’m enjoying the audiobook as he goes off-piste.

▶️ Fairytrail app redesigned for finding nomadic friends and adventures worldwide! How they’ve pivoted their business post-Covid to address the problem of loneliness as a remote worker.

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Newsletter

Working-class writer?

Journalism needs writers from all walks of life

This week, CreativePEC shared new research revealing that the number of people from working-class backgrounds in film, TV, and radio has plummeted to just 8% of the workforce, the lowest level in a decade.

Channel 4 News platformed some young creatives to talk about it. I can relate to Sam Oddie’s comments on mindset and self-belief.

Just read through the comments on X and saw this piece by Tom Walter, Journalism: Occupation of the Privileged?, which he shared ten years ago!! 

Christ, it’s depressing.

Wrote this a decade ago, and I see no change. The idea of working-class lads from former Nottinghamshire mining villages, for example, taking unpaid work experience in London is becoming laughable. The same people again and again in the media. 

I remember being in Mansfield Library (my second home) while doing my A Levels and wondering whether to bother applying for an internship at ITN News. Inner Aggie: “What’s the point? You won’t get anywhere with it, being from round here. You’re at a state school.”

But I’m a stubborn bugger, so I did apply. I didn’t get shortlisted, but you’ve got to try and keep pushing. And that’s been my mindset ever since. 

After uni, I wrote 100 letters to production companies all over the UK and finally got my first job as a runner at Maidstone Studios for £80 a week. My bedsit was £40 a week – quids in! 

Later, I won a scholarship with Emap to study magazine journalism and was over the moon. This was 2000-2001, pre-digital boom, and I knew I had to move to London to get my dream job in women’s mags. But I couldn’t afford to move there without a job and had no family to stay with.

A friend from my Maidstone days had relocated to London, and she let me crash in her spare room in Waterloo for a bit while I was on unpaid work experience at the BBC, Emap and IPC Media. I’m super grateful for that opportunity. I couldn’t have done it otherwise.

Always a side hustle. I had a Saturday job at Penhaligon’s and temped between media jobs to keep myself afloat. But even though I was working all hours I still managed to get into debt in London and spent the next decade paying that off. 

Looking back, it’s a crazy life and a route to burnout. I can see how it’s shaped me: Working with writers’ orgs and a journo union to help freelancers survive and thrive in an expensive city and messed-up media industry. Here for the little guy!

It’s good to see lots of folks commenting on this report, sharing ideas, opportunities and trying to change the status quo. Jackie Oudney has just premiered a short film on exactly this from a female perspective (semi-autobiographical). Well worth watching; link below. 

The 98% Pod has started a chain of working-class creatives to uplift wc voices. Please share if you know someone who needs a leg up with their creative career. 

Levelling up? I am positive but I agree with Celine Haddad on the levy.

As always, it comes down to money.

Read, Watch, Listen

▶️What I Am — a short film written by award-winning director Jackie Oudney 

▶️How and why to make a / now page on your site — a public declaration of your priorities | Derek Sivers 

▶️Substack is completely gutting their business right now — followers vs subscribers | Jeanna Kadlec. And Simon Owens‘ take on it

▶️Welcome to SmallStack! A brand new library for small publications | Robin Taylor

▶️Journalists Pay Themselves — how indie worker-owned outlets are making money to fund their work | Lex Roman 

Nika ✨

Thanks to Sophie Parsons for the fabulous illustration – it is me and I love it!

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I help entrepreneurs impact the world with their stories. Life is too short to play small. See my services.

▶️Newsletter Talent Directory! for creative collaborations.

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Build your Google Business Card

I’ve been tinkering around with my Google Knowledge Panel this week. I have an old one from 2007 when I wrote my first book, which is outdated now and looks a bit sparse.

Google still dominates online search results, so I’m keen to grow and improve my KP – it’s your digital business card and the first thing people see when they look you up online.

If you don’t have a Knowledge Panel, you look like a nobody. So, it’s a really good way to push yourself up the career ladder as it were, to be recognised as a leader in your field.

Jason Barnard, the Brand SERP Guy. 

I clicked on the dots next to my name and suggested an edit. I added a a short bio, but they rejected it. That info comes from the Knowledge Graph, Google’s information collection about people, places, and things.

So, back to the drawing board. I have to educate Google!

Google is actually a child, thirsty for knowledge who wants to understand the world. It doesn’t care about notability; it just wants to understand everything.

I’m working through this free guide from Kalicube (Jason’s agency specialising in KP). I’ve updated my website bio (Home/About page) and social profiles (Crunchbase, Journolink, Response Source, Haro, Muck Rack, Substack, and LinkedIn).

He says your bio needs to be clear and consistent (who you are, what you do, who you help), and preferably written in the 3rd person. I’m not keen on that; it’s too formal for me, but I’ll try it for now. I can tweak it later.

Repurpose the same bio across all your social platforms and link back your website to “create an infinite loop of self-corroboration that Google understands”. 

I checked it this morning, and it’s now updated my name and added my social profiles, but there’s no pic of me or bio, so I still have some work to do.

It could take months so I need to be patient, but at least I’ve made a start.

Thanks to Jason and team for this resource!

I enjoyed his interview with Kristina God on how to create a KP as a writer (Kristina writes on Substack and Medium), plus they touch on other stuff – how Google is explicitly looking for writers, multimedia content, the importance of visual branding (often overlooked) and whether we should let AI crawl our content (we now have that option on Substack).

If the future of search is about how we educate these smart machines, then we need to understand the knowledge algos and how they function. This is a good place to start!

Also, check the information about you on ChatGPT, etc, to make sure it’s correct. Joe Pulizzi asked it what his favourite colour is, and it said ‘purple’ when we all know it’s orange! 🚩

If you make videos, check the auto-generated captions on YouTube, as they can be inaccurate.

Here’s Jason’s website (like an encyclopaedia!) and Knowledge Panel.

Let me know how you’re growing your Knowledge Panel.

Congrats to Kristina on becoming a Substack Bestseller and getting 100 paid subscribers! 🥳  

Good Reads

▶️It’s not just you. It’s harder now to make a living as a creator. An excellent essay on how the sea has shifted when building an online business. Those who are killing it are mainly marketers selling courses about marketing. I agree; it’s very meta (more Substacks about how to succeed on Substack). I’m in this space, too, and struggling with it. Some advice on how to look forward and innovate. [Alexis Grant] 

▶️Google’s Helpful Content update – reflecting on what happened. The September ’23 HCU caused thousands of sites to lose organic (SEO) traffic from Google in a few days (there seem to be NO recoveries from this), and the March core update rolls on. Here’s Lily Ray on patterns she’s seen in her work, research, and advice for smaller indie publishers. [Lily Ray] 

▶️Time to Act. What are publishers doing now? Some industry leaders in the blogging and publishing space have joined forces to create a collective non-profit association, the Web Publishers Association, to inspire change. Tony Hill shares his thoughts on it here [Amy Aitman]  

▶️Joe Pulizzi’s new book, The Content Entrepreneur, is out in the next few weeks. I love the cover of the proof copy – very Gatsby! Direct sales only via their websites, not Amazon etc, so a bold move. I’m interested to see how the experiment goes – not sure how it differs from Content Inc. [Joe Pulizzi]