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Tag: digital marketing

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Interviews Newsletter

Bold Types…Adriana Tica 🇷🇴

  • Post author By Nika Talbot
  • Post date March 11, 2024
  • No Comments on Bold Types…Adriana Tica 🇷🇴

I’m not big on International Women’s Day (it’s every day, as far as I’m concerned) and it’s hard to get enthusiastic when nothing much changes, but we do need to keep banging on about inequality and helping each other.

So a shoutout to all the strong, kind, and supportive women in my network who lift me up and keep me going. THANK YOU. It is much appreciated.

The other day, I was asked to promote a panel in parliament that was all blokes. “Where are the women?” I asked my colleague.

“Doing all the background work for less pay as usual, probably.”

But he did flag it and asked if we should suggest a more balanced panel. The usual female speaker was ill, so it was last minute, but there are other women who could’ve stepped in. 

I posted on LinkedIn here about #IWD2024 campaigns worth supporting:

  • United Nations: Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress – show us the money! #InvestinWomen #FundFemaleFounders
  • The NUJ’s #ShowUstheMoney pay transparency campaign

And it’s Mother’s Day. First priority today: calling my lovely mum.

I did appreciate the flowers and dark chocolate waiting for me when I got back from the conference 💐 🍫

We’re off to Bella Vista for a mother-and-daughter day dinner.

Nika


Bold Types…Adriana Tica

Wine is my drink of choice. I even thought about becoming a sommelier at some point. I write about some of the gems I discover on Instagram

I really enjoyed chatting with Adriana Tica, a strategist, writer, trend forecaster, and entrepreneur known for her no-BS, zero-hacks marketing strategy. We met on LinkedIn.

She’s built not one but two businesses on her own, with absolutely minimal investment, zero paid ads, and zero PR effort. “My rise to (moderate) internet fame was “more organic” than Whole Foods.”

“Getting hooked on independence doesn’t take much.” I agree!

And now introducing biz no #3: Ideas to Power Your Future, her brilliant weekly newsletter, which she says is the best lead generation tactic she’s ever built.

Semrush named her one of the world’s top 100 Content Marketing Influencers, and Buffer said she knows a thing or two about social media.

She’s a digital nomad who loves working remotely, especially from a Mediterranean island. She also speaks six foreign languages.

I like that she’s not your typical ultra-niched strategy consultant. There’s so much pressure to narrow down and be known for one thing, but broad expertise across industries is a superpower. It gives you an edge.

One of the things the Executive loved about the conference was the “non-industry attendees.” And in the feedback survey, the members always ask for more “speakers outside of the industry.”

Worth bearing in mind when you’re pitching yourself as a speaker. Be bold, and as Cindy says, never give it away for free 😉

Super inspiring. Enjoy! (scroll down for the video 🎦)

Hi Adriana, firstly, I’d love to know where you grew up and your first job. 

I grew up in Craiova, Romania, and then moved to Bucharest for college, where I stayed. These days, I’m a digital nomad who enjoys working remotely, especially from a Mediterranean island.

My first job was waitressing when I was 16. It lasted for exactly six days; it turns out I’m not cut out for smiling at jerks 😊. In college, my first job was in ad sales—also not a good fit for the same reason: the utter lack of a poker face.

What do you do and why?

I started my business out of sheer need. It was supposed to be short-lived, with a few freelancing gigs between jobs. But those freelancing gigs took off, and before I knew it, I was making more freelancing for a couple of hours a day than my full-time job paid.

So, I stopped going to interviews and turned my freelancing gigs into a digital marketing agency in 2015. My goal has always been to create great content for our clients, not the SEO fodder you see everywhere, and I’m proud to say I have succeeded.

At the end of 2022, I launched Ideas to Power Your Future, a weekly newsletter about no-BS marketing strategy. As this newsletter and its community keep growing, I’m happy to see how many people are over hacks and quick wins and focus on building a solid foundation for their business instead. 

This is what I set out to teach my subscribers, and despite all the bro marketing out there, it resonates with my community.

What are you most excited about at work right now? 

Growing my newsletter and my consulting business. I love seeing the spark in my clients’ and subscribers’ eyes when something clicks. When they realise they don’t have to hack social media algorithms to grow their audience or sell their soul to sleazy marketing tactics.

I know everyone hates marketers – and they have good reasons to. I’m here to show there’s a better way to market your business, one that lets you sleep easily and doesn’t annoy your audience.

How do you stay on top of industry trends?

I read a lot, perhaps too much. I focus on mainstream media (The Economist, HubSpot, Forbes, and so on) and obscure blogs, newsletters, or social media accounts that border on fringe. It’s very easy to dismiss them, but they are usually trendsetters.

Piecing the information together is my favourite thing to do, along with finding correlations between seemingly unrelated industries or trends, i.e. how does the state of the economy affect the creator economy? Or is there a connection between the housing market and the travel industry? Fun questions to answer!

Tell us about your marketing process. How are you finding clients, and building your network?  

Most of my clients and subscribers come from LinkedIn and Twitter, the platforms I’m most active on. My newsletter is the trust bridge that establishes me as a credible strategist and the best lead-generation tactic I’ve ever built.

Social media is also where I find partners, friends, and networks like Lettergrowth (for newsletter cross-promos) and the Convert Kit Creator Network.

Samaria Gorge in Crete, Greece – her favourite place

How do you define success? And balance ambition and contentment?

Success is the most subjective word. For me, success means not dreading my work and being excited about the future. Every job and every business has ups and downs. But as long as there are more ups than downs, I count it as a success.

I never set out to rule the world, so I’m content with carving a small corner of the internet for myself and a business that feeds me and allows me to travel without claiming my soul in return.

How do you manage your health and prevent burnout? 

I’m afraid I don’t do enough here. I love what I do and tend to become hyper-focused on my work. Since I’ve already dealt with severe burnout once and definitely don’t want to go back there, I force myself to take breaks, exercise, and disconnect at least one day a week—even when I’d rather be working.

Can you recommend one book and one podcast for digital entrepreneurs?

Before you get to the trendy books, I recommend reading Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing. The book may be slightly dated, but it has everything you need to understand the foundations of marketing. Mastering a new trendy channel or tactic will be a breeze if you read this.

My favourite podcast is Everyone Hates Marketers by Louis Grenier. His conversations with his guests are refreshingly candid, with zero boasting and posturing.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? 

Paul Graham’s “Do the things that don’t scale first” is my guiding light. This is what you need to do in the beginning – talk to your customers and your partners, gather feedback and ideas, and mine the web for information.

And you have to do all this yourself, not by automating DMs through AI. It’s a crucial step most digital entrepreneurs miss in their chase for quick hacks.

Are you happy, and what would you change? 

Oh, that’s a loaded question! Yes, I’m happy and content overall, but there’s always room for improvement. If I were to change one thing, it would be my working hours; I need a better balance here. I’m working on it!

Who should I interview next and why? 

Hannah Szabo and Michael Scott Overholt are the smartest, most fascinating people I’ve met on LinkedIn, and I’m proud to call them friends. I think you’ll like how their businesses are built on solid principles and ethics. (I surely will! Send me your questions for Hannah and Michael).

How can readers get in touch with you?

The best way to get in touch with me is to subscribe to my newsletter, Ideas to Power Your Future. This is where I publish my best work and answer every email from my subscribers. You can also find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Resources

  • Special issue: One-year anniversary – How I grew and monetised this newsletter in the past year (what fuels the growth of her newsletter – ranked from best to worst). Read it here. 
  • Spending too much time creating content? Read this! (why repurposing and reusing are your best friends). Read it here.
  • Is the subscription economy in trouble? (tips on how to price a paid newsletter or paid community and future-proof yourself as a newsletter writer). Read it here. 

How am I doing?

I love hearing from you, and I’m always looking for feedback. Is there anything you’d like to see more of or less of? Which bits of the newsletter do you enjoy the most?

Hit reply and say hello – or email me: nika@nikatalbot.io.

Join the Newsletter Talent Network! Directory for collabs – online and local: Go here.

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  • Tags Adriana Tica, Business, content marketing, creator economy, digital marketing, entrepreneurship, Interviews, Marketing, newsletters, writing

Categories
Newsletter

Retiring projects

  • Post author By Nika Talbot
  • Post date February 25, 2024
  • No Comments on Retiring projects
Hastings at 4 pm yesterday 🌈
Hastings at 4 pm yesterday 🌈

🧩 Q&A with Johanna Renoth, founder of Bye, Social Media! Plus resources for building a biz on your own terms.

I was sad to hear Johanna Renoth is retiring Bye, Social Media! 

She’s had a great ride – and it’s time for a change, she says in her latest post. “Over the course of the past two years of writing this newsletter, I’ve enjoyed connecting with you in the inbox tremendously!…

“At the same time, I struggled with building a brand online. Doing so frequently felt at odds with what I enjoy: exploring ideas and creativity.”

I relate. Building a brand solo is hard, especially if you aren’t visible on social media. Just heard Jenny Blake talking about this and how she’s pausing her pods for a bit to figure out what her broader business wants to become.

Switching context and juggling the maker’s and manager’s schedules is also challenging – Paul Graham’s essay. I’m using my time in units of half a day when I can.

I really admire what Johanna’s built – a strong premise and a reminder to have fun, experiment, and be playful. There’s no solopreneur manual on the internet to follow – “it’s for you to make this digital, marketing, and business world your own.”

She’s keeping the blog on Beehiiv alive to continue to be a resource for those who want to build a biz on their own terms and create an intentional relationship with social media. 

Good luck with whatever you create next, Johanna – and thank you for connecting. I enjoyed our chat – here it is (still one of my most viewed pages, so you’re on to something!!)

interview with johanna renoth

What’s key is choosing the platforms you enjoy that add value – for me, that’s Substack, LinkedIn and Reddit, as they are more conversational and text-based – and then scheduling proper work time to use them.

On Reddit, I’ve helped folks with their Substacks, shared my Newsletter Talent Directory, and met a developer building a similar resource who was keen to collaborate.

I shared my panic after getting heart palpitations with NMN supplements (I thought I was having a heart attack – much too high a dose!), and I’m very grateful to Redditors for reassurance and an explanation. It helps you feel less alone.

This week, LinkedIn has brought me:

  • A free 1:1 call with a high-performance success coach  
  • An invitation to join a free programme of support, networking and mentorship locally to help me grow my biz
  • A new book about newsletters
  • An illustrator who can teach me how to draw (I want to add sketches/doodles to this newsletter)
  • A new client and a testimonial
  • Ideas, inspo and links. I get excited about sharing other people’s stuff – it brings me energy and hope.

Approach it like a dating app – be intentional and get it offline as soon as possible. I offer a free 1:1 intro call because I care about and value connection and relationships. Feel free to book in here if we haven’t spoken yet.

Make use of the digital tools we have available to us. This week, I’ve been testing Sendible for social media scheduling (thanks to Adriana Tica for the recommendation – interview coming soon). I came off Hootsuite as it’s gone all corporate and is far too expensive for soloists.

Enjoying it so far – nice dashboard and a content calendar for inspo. It’s saving me time as I’m not scrolling sites natively and getting distracted by my feed. It also prompts you to re-schedule posts – a reminder to repurpose your content as not everybody sees it. Make your content work harder for you!

Happy writing ✍️

Nika 🙂

PS I’ve had enough of this bloody rain! I got wet on every run this week, and my joints don’t like it. Thanks to Kate Arnold for making me laugh.

5 Things 

CJ Chilvers’ new book, Principles for Newsletters, condenses the most important lessons he’s learned from 37 years of newsletter publishing into 49 short principles. I read this last night with a glass of vino – smart and succinct.

The most important thing that determines our health | Dr Ellen Langer x Rich Roll – on how you can harness mindfulness to take control of your health. Her classes must be such fun. I’ve watched this twice – it’s that good. 

Neal.fun made a museum of the internet – explore artefacts from the early internet – “a collection of everything I made when I’m bored during lecture.” Discover who sent the first spam email (DYK the term ‘spam’ was inspired by a Monty Python sketch?)

How long does it take to find (or generate…) an image to go with your posts? Er, quite a while and I often end up buying one. Drawing could be faster and more fun. Turn your scribbles into professional illustrations – even if you think you can’t draw.

My dream writer’s studio. Bringing the outside in. Walk past 1700 poets to get to your desk – with a 180-degree view of nature. Full of distractions but the right kind of distractions. Isn’t this fabulous? 


Thanks for reading. If you have topic ideas or want to suggest a guest, please get in touch: nika@nikatalbot.io. I’d love to hear from you.

  • Newsletter Talent Directory! Add your deets here for collabs
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  • Tags creator economy, digital marketing, entrepreneurship, Johanna Renoth, Marketing, newsletters, Social media, writing

Categories
Interviews Newsletter

Twitter and Threads 🧵

  • Post author By niccitalbot
  • Post date July 11, 2023
  • No Comments on Twitter and Threads 🧵

ALSO: An interview on marketing without social media | #121

Have you left Twitter for Threads yet? 😉 I played for a couple of hours on launch day.

Instagram has over 2bn monthly active users, which explains why Threads has exceeded 70m sign-ups in less than 48 hours.

Very smart move letting you port your existing audience over (stop, think. Do you actually want to!?). The worst thing about joining a new social network is starting from scratch with zero followers. 

Initial thoughts – it’s fast, clean, light, good UI. I like the simplicity – no fancy features yet, fun for now. Good vibes – it feels like Twitter c2008. It is the first-week flurry and novelty factor, but people seem to be enjoying it.  

I’m not loving the data grab. 

Threads collect the same data as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. From Znet: “Threads collects users’ physical addresses, health and fitness data, and sensitive info like biometric and ethnic data. Twitter does not collect these types of data.” 

It’s unavailable in the EU for now – privacy nightmare, but people are finding ways around it – a tip here from Jens Joseph Mannanal, co-founder of Passionfroot.

Future versions will integrate with ActivityPub, a decentralised social networking protocol, so you could potentially take your content elsewhere. The friendly fediverse as it’s called – interoperability is where the industry is heading. 

Early days, but I think it’s worth your time, especially if you used to enjoy Instagram.

All this talk about strategies to win on Threads already. Ugh. Chill, keep it light, and reconnect with long-lost friends! Mine will be tiny threads as I hate typing on my phone. There’s no desktop version yet. 

LinkedIn is still my main social platform, and I’m trying something new over there – themed weeks focusing on specific topics. So, this week it’s ‘newsletters’, and how to market yourself off-socials. Timely!

Meta has chosen a name that the Germans can’t pronounce very easily, which seems bizarre in their quest for world domination.

Expect to see even more puns on the platform. Stitch is a serious contender.

At least it’s not Threadz… 🙀

Listen to a special episode of the Hard Fork podcast with the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, on why the company now wants to take on Twitter.


Interview: Johanna Renoth, founder of Bye, Social Media!

“Say Bye to Elon and Mark!”

Johanna Renoth is the founder of Bye, Social Media!, an agency for marketing without social media. She helps small businesses, creators, and solopreneurs thrive away from the algorithms.

In this interview, she shares her insights into moving her marketing off all social media, how her PhD on social media inspired her to make the move, and what she’s learnt in the past year of pursuing this avenue. 

Food for thought here – enjoying your marketing is important.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree with a lot of what Johanna says, but social media is a gift and we’re lucky to have it.

I don’t take it for granted – it is a great time to be a creator. We can share ideas and connect with others for free.

If I stop enjoying it, I’ll stop doing it.

READ JOHANNA’S STORY

Things to Read, Listen, Watch  

The Write to Roam | Ethan Brooks. An inside look at how 6 & 7-figure writers make money, and on their own terms (via the Copyblogger podcast). 

Chenell Basilio | Build In Public podcast on what newsletter creators are doing differently to grow to 50K subscribers. “Find the thing that feels like torture to others and a gift to you. And do that thing!”

Josh Spector studied the home pages of 10 smart creative entrepreneurs. They have a LOT in common. Here are six approaches you can borrow from them for your own site (via For The Interested).

– Just keep going 🙂

Nika


Classifieds 

Trible offers a no-code platform that lets experts, coaches, and content creators easily build their own branded websites and mobile apps to deliver & monetise courses, content, community memberships, and coaching services. Get started here. 

Get smarter with expat money. Our friends are publishing Money Abroad, an excellent resource for expats to learn about building wealth while living abroad.

Money Abroad shares fresh tips about money & wealth that you can learn in under 10 minutes. Plus, it’s free. Sign up here!

📣 Want to see your ad here? Go here

✍️ Want to write a guest post? Submit here

☕️ Tip Jar | LinkedIn

  • Tags content marketing, digital marketing, entrepreneurship, newsletters, Social media, Threads, Twitter, writing

Categories
Newsletter

How to grow your newsletter in ’23

  • Post author By niccitalbot
  • Post date January 22, 2023
  • No Comments on How to grow your newsletter in ’23
Dark Freshness by Kandinsky

Explode from 100-10k subscribers in 2023!

I did a masterclass in newsletter growth this week (want to get mine to 10k members this year).

An overview of the top six channels you’ll need to use from Sparkloop – their tools, of course – Upscribe recommendations and their Partner Network. Louis shared some helpful growth tips too (he’s working on newsletter growth all day, every day so knows his stuff!) You can watch it here.

Interesting to hear him say the old tools and techniques for email marketing don’t work anymore – what are these?

Masterclass #2: Roadmap to 1M+ Subscribers is on Weds 25 Jan – you can register here.

Overall, a productive hour (great questions, love this community). I’m excited to try some new things this year.

My goals for ‘23 – getting to 10k subscribers (+ £10k monthly income overall) and I want to develop my paid product and promote it better – haven’t pushed it. I’ve struggled with time (client work) and differentiation. Nobody wants more of the same, so it needs to be an entirely different product, not a paid newsletter.

Names and positioning are important in terms of perceived value.

Josh Spector sent me some helpful tips, and I’ve bought his newsletter course. Questions coming over for your podcast – thanks, Josh!

So I’ve called the paid product Do One Thing – a behind-the-scenes look at how I do something specific to grow my newsletter and business. A deep dive into my creative process and my first solopreneur six-figure year.

It’s about doing one thing well and doing less – newsletters are a huge time commitment, and if you bring in something new, you need to let something go, so part of my strategy is saying no to things. Focus and consistency.

Here’s a good book on the art of subtraction and the untapped science of less.

You can sign up for Do One Thing here. I hope to build this into a helpful resource and community.

I’ll also invite you to set up a free 1-1 call with me to find out what you’re working on and how I can help. This will help shape my strategy and any products I create.

Cool tools for newsletters

Swapstack – drive growth with newsletter sponsorship at scale. Collect tips, run affiliate deals, or sell ads

The Newsletter Booster and Newsletter Tips Collection | Josh Spector

Growth groups on Facebook, ugh, but they’re really good. And everyone’s there. Bookmark them, then you don’t have to use Facebook – Newsletter Nerds (1.9k), Newsletter Creators (4.7k), Substack Writers (3.6k)

Not Another Newsletter and 30 Ideas to Improve Your Newsletter This Year | Dan Oshinsky, Inbox Collective

Substack Course – by Casey Botticello. Foundational topics, tips, and strategies to accelerate your growth on the platform

If you’re writing a newsletter, send me the link so I can check it out and share it. Substack’s new Recommendations tool is awesome – I’m getting daily subscribers.

I’d also love your recommended reads on creativity, culture and tech – making a list.

The other thing that’s really helped me is having an accountability buddy – thank you, Marianne Lehnis for reaching out. We’re at a similar stage with our businesses and she’s local so we can co-work and go for walks (Wealth Walks are something else I want to get going!)

Writing a newsletter can be a lonely venture, and our little chats have kept me sane. It’s worth reaching out to someone in a similar niche to see how you can help each other.

Keep moving!

Nika


5 Things

Why I Create Annual Themes | Trevor McKendrick on the benefits of doing brand advertising for the values you want to live. My theme for 2023 is ‘Keep moving!’ hence the sign off.

Makers + Mavericks Off Grid 2023 – a one-day event from the gods of content creation | Hiut Denim. 100 people max (it’s a small barn). Love their newsletter and it’s built their community. See the M+M 2022 list here.

33 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer | James Altucher on the most important writing (and communication) advice he ever got, No coffee, no creativity…👌

The Common Path to Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom & Fulfillment | John Lee Dumas. Loving the energy in his daily podcast – 30-mins is the sweet spot. An inspiring read on quitting everything and six-figure podcasting.

The House of Beautiful Business – a global platform that connects over 25k members who want to get more out of business and out of life. You can now join for FREE! Next Open House is tomorrow, Mon 23 Jan – Dispatch from Davos | WEF.

Playlist of the week

Corsage the movie

Best film I’ve seen lately and very of the moment. Imagine being told you’re officially old at 40 and it’s all downhill from here.

Mesmerising.


Feedback, questions, ideas? Hit reply or email me: nika@nikatalbot.io

Enjoy reading this? Why not buy me a Negroni?🍹

  • Tags creative entrepreneurs, creator economy, digital marketing, email marketing, entrepreneurial journalism, growth, newsletters, solopreneurs, substack, writing

Categories
Newsletter

What if a robot could write your copy?

  • Post author By niccitalbot
  • Post date September 27, 2021
  • No Comments on What if a robot could write your copy?
Jarvis AI review

– The Shift: A weekly-ish newsletter about our work-from-anywhere future and making money online.

– Get your free subscription to The Shift, a weekly letter about our working from anywhere world—and how to make money on it.

– Learn from industry experts as they share their stories, tools, and resources for building a location-independent business.

Jarvis AI

That was written by AI – not bad, eh? 

I gave it a few words about my newsletter as a prompt – and it wrote that in seconds.

Jarvis is the latest AI writing assistant I’ve come across – thanks to Marianne Lehnis, who suggested it. These tools have been around for a while, but the new AI GPT-3 based writers go a step further and help you write long-form copy – ad copy, sales pitches, emails, product descriptions, social media and more. 

I’ve used it for client work and content pieces, and it’s a very cool tool. Fun to use: it’s made me laugh, surprised me, given me ideas, and saved me time. I’m trialling Boss Mode (the most advanced package💲) and have barely scratched the surface (53 templates, recipes, commands, long-form content), but it’s given me a sense of how powerful it is. 

I asked Jarvis to rewrite my bio:

I am a woman of many hats. I am the author of Remote: Office Not Required and Chief Tingler at Tingler Inc.

I’m Nicci. I write about remote work and building an online business. My favourite thing to do is go on adventures, make friends with animals, and take long walks in nature.

Spot on, Jarvis!! 

Open AI’s GPT-3 is described by Marketing Brew as ‘kind of a big deal’ – among the most advanced language models in existence.

Large language models are powerful machine learning algorithms with one key job description: identifying large-scale patterns in text. The models use those patterns to “parrot” human-like language. And they quietly underpin services like Google Search—used by billions of people worldwide—and predictive text software, such as Grammarly.

Emerging Tech Brew’s Hayden Field.

The goal is to humanise AI and help you write smarter, faster – and get over Blank Page Syndrome. The better you describe what you want to write, the higher quality content Jarvis will help produce.

Super useful for content marketers, digital agencies, and anyone who needs to generate a lot of content. The long-form option (Pro + Boss Mode) is a game-changer – interesting to see on Facebook that people are using it to write books.

It won’t steal your writing job. You get well written generic copy, the first draft as a base to tweak from. It’s not for complex articles, fact-checking or emotional aspects. This post by Danny Veiga, a digital marketer, was written by Jarvis – he told Marketing Brew Jarvis wrote about 80% of it, with 20% fact-checking. 

I see it as part of my writing toolkit. It’s helped me generate ideas, perspective, given me a creative boost and saved me time. Jarvis is a workhorse! 100% remote and 24/7 *shoulders drop*. Forget the threat – embrace the tech and use it to sell your services and promote yourself – 5 x your content in minutes! Read this now! 

Jarvis has over 30,000 users from companies including Shopify, Google, Canva, Zillow, Airbnb, Stripe, lots of positive reviews, and an active Facebook community. Learning in public – good to see them flagging issues and solutions, responsive to feedback and improving the product.

You can sign up for a free five-day trial here (Nicci on steroids – gives me a few more credits to play with) – I promise not to send you five newsletters next week 🤖

Have you tried Jarvis or any other AI writing tools? I use Grammarly Pro, but this is in a different league.


🔗🖐5 Things  

💸Twitter Tips – their latest experiment now lets you tip anyone with cash or crypto (via mobile). Twitter seems to have gone mad introducing new features to try and get up to speed with other networks – rolling stuff out to see what sticks – at least they’re experimenting in public. But if the content is freely available, where’s the incentive for users to pay? Good overview by TechCrunch.

🎙Burnout and exhaustion while working in content – you’re not alone (Content Rookie). I love this podcast. Interesting chat with Jane Ruffino and Candi Williams on setting boundaries at work and moving the conversation from productivity to burnout. How scale (scarcity mindset) shouldn’t drive a company over growth and community (abundance mindset). ‘We shouldn’t have to constantly perform ambition to do well.’ There’s a pressure to upskill – especially in an emerging field like UX.

👩‍💻Letting go of perfection – I wrote a piece for The Portfolio Collective on the rise of perfectionism as a cultural issue and how we can keep it in check – some strategies that have helped me. One of the members, Zarir ‘Zed’ Vakil said: “One tip I use for avoiding toxic perfectionism is being outcome-focused and always taking action. This avoids procrastination and rumination.”

🕵🏻‍♀️Reinvigorate your career by taking the right kind of risk – inspiring piece by Whitney Johnson on taking smart risks. Exploring underserved areas of your industry and crafting a new role for yourself, staying in your current job and inventing a new product or service or switching industries. Finding the gap – what no one else is doing – and creating opportunities – businesses don’t disrupt, people do.

📕Free book! Collaborate: Bring people together around digital projects by Ellen de Vries (Gather Content). Content is about people and collaboration – how to think about the work you do as a collaborator in your day-to-day life – and some practical activities to test out. How to work with others online efficiently – this will be helpful to anyone in digital, not just content people. Via the excellent & new Working in Content.


The future of work is now

Let’s build it. The Shift is your guide to running a small but mighty business. Start living and working on your own terms. Supercharge your solo work🚀

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  • Tags AI, artificial intelligence, digital marketing

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    The Shift

    Join the Shift – letters on culture, tech and creative work, from a GenXy writer who walks.

    Made with ❤️ in St Leonards.

    © 2025 Nika Talbot

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