#niche posts for the worst idea crowd

[lamentable-comedy]

tim batt and guy montgomery's dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “watching the fast and the furious movies in reverse order” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

guy montgomery: yeah whatever i don’t feel shit

5 minutes later: okay so what the FUCK is the chronology here??

his buddy tim batt, pacing: here's how i'd seduce the five sexiest cars in this movie

[housewarningparty]

I think it comes from a place of good intentions to combat negative stereotypes and I'm sure it's partially grounded in personal experience but the idea I see sometimes that metalheads are really just big scary-looking-but-nice teddy bear types is misleading at worst and patronizing at best. It's an alt music scene that's very concerned with and invested in its own outsider status. There's gonna be gatekeepers, there's gonna be fascists, there's gonna be violent jerks and creeps and toughguy assholes.

But there ARE a lot of really good people. In the right environment with the right crowd you get to experience a sense of community that's really warm and fulfilling and exhilarating. The thing about having niche interests is when you meet the people who love what you love the way that you love it, the connection is deep and affirming!

Posts inspired by: absolute rancid vibes from the bro-y crowd of dudes I was next to at Carcass who were making gross jokes and being obnoxious vs the group of really friendly diverse folks I spent all last night chatting to at Dark Funeral/Cattle Decapitation. It's not a reflection of either of those bands or who listens to them it's just that like any sufficiently large group of people you can't pin metalheads down to a specific Type. Pretty much all we're guaranteed to have in common is black t shirts and a love for yucky sounds.

[coolchildwizard]

Get More Followers

Creating a blog is one of the best ways to secure your position as a successful social media influencer. A blog will allow you to promote yourself to a large segment of people, create interesting content and demonstrate your expertise on the subject you chose. When you create a successful blog, you can also create a large and engaged audience. 

 The challenge is to stand out and get yourself noticed, in the large - sometimes cut-throat - crowd of the thousands of people who want exactly what you want. Creating content is a must for your influencer career, so it has to be great, unique, interesting and worth the time it takes to get to and read or look at what you have presented to the world. 

Here are four tips to help you prepare content for your blog that will get you noticed. 

Have a Narrative Structure

 We evolved telling stories while sitting around campfires. During the time before the Internet, handheld games, cell phones or movies, sitting around a cozy campfire was almost the only way stories of old were told to the younger generations. 

We are wired to want, expect and appreciate a story, it is how we have understood things for centuries and it was/is the way information was passed on. A good story can create deep emotional stakes that can make us feel as though we know and understand the writer. The more of the story you tell, the more people will fall in love with the person behind the story.  

Keep Your Audience in Mind 

 If you were in the process of developing a product as a business, then you would first do the necessary market research to make sure that there are people out there who are willing to buy your product. Think of your articles as if they are your products and make sure you've thought about who you want to read your articles. Of course, the larger your audience and the more you are connected to a particular demographic, the better your chances are of reaching a wide audience and getting shared and liked. 

Make Sure Your Articles Are Easy to Skim Over

We all know that people have very short attention spans. So, in the world of social media, the spans are even shorter - when we check Facebook it's normally a distraction, so we don't have time to sit down and read pages and pages of text. Make sure then that your articles are easy to skim through and that you use headers and bullet points so that people can quickly glance over your pieces and get drawn in. 

Know Your Topic Inside and Out

The worst thing you can do to your influencer career is hire a writer who doesn't know anything about you or what you represent and they are not familiar with your chosen topic. Even if they are considered the best writer in the world, if they are not passionate about your niche/subject matter, then they will not be able to add anything fresh to the discussion. The result will be content that is not interesting enough to bring in the number of viewers to make any of your posts viral. 

Know your topic inside out and only that way can you create and share new ideas. This is how you become a thought leader.

[trapangeles]

How to Increase TikTok Followers

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the best strategies to increase TikTok followers. In fact, nothing can substitute quality content, however, there are a few tips you can attempt to increase your engagement, visibility, and, most significantly, your follower count.

Let’s dive into the most effective tips and tricks to develop your TikTok.

1. Stop appealing to everyone.

Whenever you attempt to attraction to everybody on TikTok, the opposite occurs: you find yourself resonating with nobody.

This will likely sound counterintuitive. After all, to increase followers for your TikTok, should not you appeal to more people? In actuality, focusing on a distinct segment provides you with a larger likelihood to be seen by a pool of engaged users.

For example, fashion is a popular category on TikTok. So much so, the hashtag #fashion has over 188 billion views on the platform. If you intend to post fashion-related content, you may get lost in this competitive vertical. As an alternative, you might concentrate on a sub-niche like street fashion or mid-sized fashion, which has a fraction of the views but an extra engaged audience.

The best way to niche down is by understanding your viewers and what they want to see. Be specific. If you’re not sure, take a look at your competitors. What do they do well? What videos are the most popular? And, of course, use your purchaser personas as a compass when brainstorming video ideas.

2. Post at the right time.

Sometimes, it isn’t simply what you post but when you post. That is especially true on TikTok.

The latest survey of 300+ marketers identified the perfect and worst times to post on TikTok. Listed below are the results:

The perfect time of day: 3-6 PM and 6-9 PM

The perfect days of the week: Friday and Saturday

The worst time of day: 6-9 AM and 9-12 AM

The worst days of the week: Monday and Tuesday

Because TikTok is common with the Gen Z crowd  — and so they’re in school for a good part of the day — the morning and early afternoon “dead zone” makes sense.

Avoid posting content on TikTok during these slow hours and instead, try posting at the end of the week or on the weekend if you wish to increase TikTok followers as soon as possible.

3. Duet or Stitch top-performing videos.

TikTok gives a lot of features to collaborate with others — which is critical for getting extra eyeballs on your content. Let’s discuss two features particularly: Duet and Stitch.

The Duet feature allows you to play your video next to another user’s video. This is ideal if you want to add commentary or a humorous reaction to the original video.

The Stitch feature lets you play up to 5 seconds of someone else’s video as an intro to your own.

One of the best ways to leverage these features is by engaging with top-performing videos in your niche. You are able to do this by using the search bar and typing keywords regarding your brand. Then, as soon as you’ve got zeroed in on a video you like, tap the Stitch or Duet button and let your creativity fly.

But there’s more — you can even encourage others to Duet or Stitch your videos.

4. Take part in a challenge (or create your individual).

Challenges are notorious on TikTok, and they have the potential to skyrocket your follower count. The trick is finding the proper one for your brand. After all, some challenges fizzle out before they even get started, whereas others spread like wildfire.

When you discover a challenge you can work with, it is important to put your own spin on it. That’s how you’ll really stand out.

You can also create your individual challenge — just be sure it’s comparatively easy to do.

5. Jump on trending sounds and songs.

88% of TikTok users say the sound is crucial to TikTok expertise. Thanks to the algorithm, it’s also vital for driving extra engagement.

TikTok has an extensive library of sounds — but it is best to prioritize the ones that get numerous love from the community. It’s because the TikTok algorithm tends to favor videos that leverage trending sounds. Plus, 67% of TikTok users favor branded videos that feature widespread or trending songs.

To get started, take a look at TikTok’s Creative Center  which daily ranks the most popular sounds. You may also filter by region, which is useful in case your viewers live in a different location from you.

6. Cross-promote your TikTok.

Odds are, your audience are active on different social media besides TikTok. Because of this, it’s necessary to cross-promote your videos to different channels, such as Instagram or YouTube.

Don’t forget that Instagram’s algorithm won’t promote videos with a TikTok watermark, so you must upload the original video. YouTube, on the other hand, does not have the same restriction.

It’s also worth noting that Reels are limited to 60 seconds, whereas TikTok videos can last up to 10 minutes. So, you might have to trim your videos to adhere to Instagram’s time constraints.

To Conclude

Finally, you are only as good as the content you create. Though the following tips can increase your visibility in the short term, it’s the quality of your content that influences people to click “follow.” As a marketer, this means placing your audience on the center of your strategy and creating content that speaks to them.

Like & Listen To Our Spotify Playlist

trapLAXradio On The Air Now!

The Latest Music, Videos, News, Entertainment……

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Music Tag Music Tag Music Tag

Who was your first favourite artist? I actually spent most of my childhood mostly casually into like Disney stars and random other stuff I picked up on, because I was staunchly opposed to (and didn't know how to) illegally download music. So I was kind of casual about individual artists until my early teens really. But we'll go with the band Scissor Sisters.

Who are your current favourite artists? Taylor Swift <333 and the Beatles

Are you into musicals? Which ones?/Why not? Y E S, I love musicals. My top three are Hadestown, Great Comet and Les Mis and also I adore the musical TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, think it's a hilarious and relatable show with great music.

Are there songs you consider so special you only listen to them very rarely? Last Kiss by Taylor Swift, She Used To Be Mine from Waitress

What's your preferred way of listening to music? (time of day, medium, situation) Headphones, walking briskly around my house when I'm alone at home lmao.

What would you say is the most niche music you listen to? Probably the songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and do the Bad Lip Reading Star Wars songs count? Also Mika's 2010s music is pretty niche outside europe I think.

What's your favourite music related movie/TV show that's not a musical? Coco (2017), one of my absolute favourite Pixar movies. Just gorgeous and utilizes music so smartly.

Albums or playlists? Post-January 2020 I'm a real album girl. But I love making playlists too I just barely actually use them lol.

Favourite albums? folklore & evermore (2020), Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Bad Blood (2013), Punisher (2020)

Is there an artist you're trying to get into? All the Beatle solo careers, just taking a while with it

Whose music do you find overhyped? Rina Sawayama, honestly. She's good but I don't get what all the fuss is.

What's an underrated song? I HATE EVERYBODY is Halsey's best song, and I'm tired of pretending it's not. Also Treacherous and You Won't See Me.

What's a thing a bunch of songs do that you love every time? Changing from major to minor or vice versa. Also implying a rhyme without actually singing the rhyme.

What song is better acoustic? mirrorball (2020) <3

What's the worst song of all time? Cotton-Eyed Joe

Do you put individual songs on repeat? If so, for how long and how often? Rarely, and when I do, I don't get past about four or five repeats. My one exception is once in 2013 I listened to Do I Wanna Know for about an hour. No idea what compelled me.

Do you make your own playlists? If so, what's your most entertaining playlist title? I do, it's a passtime. The best ones are "World's going to shit but the music's lit" and it's all ~political songs, "songs to have a breakdown to", "Paul and Taylor Share A Songwriting Kinship, OK?" and "Lennon-McCartney-Godhead", which is only songs they collaborated on a lot (I really like the word "Godhead" okay?)

Headphones or earbuds? Headphones baby. Go bulky or go home.

Do you always sing the lead vocal or do you harmonize sometimes? If you harmonize, do you ever invent your own harmony? I love coming up with new harmonies for songs. There are certain songs where I actually automatically sing the harmony I added instead!

A music confession I sing out loud while walking around outside, even in crowds sometimes. Manic pixie dream girl moment. Also I genuinely love the 2012 Les Mis movie and don't understand 80% of the hate it gets.

No pressure tagging: @monkberrymoon-delight, @harrisonbridgers, @monkberries, @muzaktomyears, @a-queen-of-the-clouds, @imaybeasleep, @mollyboughtthering, @emometalhead, @itwouldbel7, @damapajaro and anyone else that wants to join in!!! I just love music ahhhh!!!

[galadrieljones]

tagged

tagged by @a-shakespearean-in-paris. Thank you!! 💕

Relationship status: Married. Nine years in August! ^_^

Favorite color: I usually say yellow. 

Favorite food: Lately it’s just been tons and tons of fruit. I’m like 35 weeks pregnant, so I’m not super hungry, but I am ALWAYS thirsty and fruit is amazing.

Song stuck in your head: The last couple days it’s been “Neon Cross” by Jaime Wyatt. She’s really good!

Last thing you googled: Jaime Wyatt lol. I wanted to see where she was from just now. Santa Monica...meh. Lol. 

Time: 9:31am MST

Dream trip: I would like to return to the UK, do Scotland and Ireland, and maybe go back to SW England. I would also like to go to Provence. But seriously, my biggest dream trip is probably a full on road trip through the American South. My husband has never been to any southern states, and I have never been to the Smokies. So, that.

Last book you read: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Last book you enjoyed reading: See above!

Last book you hated reading: I haven’t read anything I hated since grad school. Life’s too short for hate reads. It was probably The Bostonians by Henry James. I hate that shit, had to read it for a horrible seminar with the most pretentious PhD students alive.

Last movie you saw: The Northman. I really liked it. Beautiful, insanely balls-to-the-wall. A hero’s journey. Why is Alexander Skarsgard so attractive. Idk. 

Bonus: Idk what this means! Lol. I will share a fact about my life, which is that the valley where I live experienced significant flooding this summer. A 500 year flood, in fact. Our yard flooded, our crawl space and garage flooded, too, all with river water. Luckily, our house was safe, but it’s been a pain in the ass. We have silt and debris built up in the back of our property where it touches the river, and the mosquitoes have been hell. Insurance has been a nightmare, so my husband has had to do a ton of manual labor to get the crawl space clean, and I can’t help him because it’s like a biohazard down there, and I’m majorly pregnant. So...yeah. Been a weird summer. Looking forward, oddly, to fall and winter, so our property can start to heal. 

Favorite thing to cook/bake: Fruit pies. Today, I hope to make a peach/raspberry pie for our neighbors who have been very helpful to us during the post-flood summer.

Favorite craft to do in your spare time: Baking!

Most niche dislike: I have no idea. I really dislike online subcultures that become aggressive and annoying. I hate mommy culture, trad culture, nutrition twitter, bully fandom, etc. Like just be normal, idk.

Opinion on circus(es) now and in history: I don’t like circuses or fairs. They’re too crowded and hot and it’s always a disappointment.

Do you have a sense of direction and if not what is the worst way you ever got lost: Um, I don’t have a great sense of direction lol. I have a good memory and strong visual spatial understanding, so if I’m paying attention, I can map things in my mind and remember where to go, but if I’m not paying attention, oh boy. I need GPS to get anywhere. The most lost I’ve ever felt was one time when my kids and I got off-trail on a hike in a wilderness area not far from where we live. It was winter time, and we had gone to cut down a Christmas tree. There was lots of snow. My husband got way out ahead of us, and I lost the trail in the snow, and we ended up somewhere *wrong*. I completely melted down and shouted for my husband frantically, who came and found us and was terrified we’d been like, attacked by a bear lol. I felt SO stupid, as we were barely off-course. But it all looked so different, and suddenly, I felt swallowed. I will never lose the trail again, and I always try to stay extremely alert to my surroundings now, and what they look like, when hiking.

I will tag @wrenbee @ladylike-foxes @littlelindentree @gneebee @fatale-distraction @thevikingwoman @frangipanilove @magneticmage and @shallow-gravy ^^

[probably-haven]

Hello!

So I’m the anon who asked for more Archon War Venti headcanons and I just loved it! I really like reading your headcanons cuz some of them are similar to mine but mostly are headcanons that I didn’t think of so it really is nice to read and see your thoughts about Venti!

I feel like as if I’m asking too much but could you keep doing these types of headcanons? Like it doesn’t have to be Archon War headcanons but like some headcanons about Venti’s relationship with the Ragnvindrs and Gunnhildrs. Because the first Gunnhildr was the first one who prayed to Barbatos and the first Ragnvindr was his friend who left but came back and I really wanna hear your thoughts on that!

And I’ve decided to get off anon cuz you just replied to my texts and I wasn’t expecting that so I’ve got a short confidence boost that I am completely taking advantage of! And thanks for the advice! or uhh comment? observation? I’m not entirely sure but thank you for that! I’ve heard that be said to me a few times and I have been trying to be more, uhh, assertive so thanks for that!

rfouierjkhfkecs i actually came across information on Gunnhildr and the "Red-haired warrior" yesterday when i was doing more research into the rebellion against Decarabian and I was like "wow this would be really fucking fun to research and theorize on, but its too specific/niche to include unprompted no matter how much i want to" but bestie you prompted, and im literally so happy right now because I didn't think I'd ever really get the chance to post about them!

also lmao yeah, i tend to try and reply to as much as I can, since it's a good feeling when someone does and all. but yeah, no problem! I’m glad you felt confident enough to reveal XD. 

This may be structured a bit more like analysis/theory/just citing canon things at first before it gets into a more headcanony format.

ehe i have so much free reign on this it's lovely

More Archon War Era Venti: one two three

spoilers for Venti's backstory and Diluc's(kinda, i think, just in case)

first things first, laying down some canon background because before yesterday i hadn't heard of either of them outside of that one cutscene.

the very reason Decarabian had his storm wall up in the first place was because at the time Andrius had declared war on him- and his tower, and the city of Mondstadt by extent, were basically constantly under attack by Andrius's blizzards, which since he was still alive back then, were a lot bigger and covered basically what seems to be the whole of Mondstadt outside the barrier.

This meant that people had two options. Live in the city under Decarabian's oppression, or live outside the barrier, and brave the blizzards of a warring god... which was not a good idea

but the Gunnhildr clan(not yet called that) tried- and they almost died because of it. In the midst of a blizzard, the clan chief's daughter, named Gunnhildr(which the clan would be named after later) sent out a prayer that was heard by a wandering wind spirit. And the faith of that prayer gave the spirit enough power to create a small shelter to protect them.

When her father past, she became the new leader and also a priestess. She would later lead the clan to fight Decarabian alongside four others. And basically the Gunnhildr Clan ended up as like sworn protectors of Mondstadt

-

as for the red-haired warrior, who is basically assumed to be the earliest known ancestor of the Ragnvindir clan(im gonna refer to as Ragnvindir for convenience sake, even though "Ragnvindir" is technically a different character from Vanessa's era)theres not much information on him, but heres what i have from the various wiki's

- he was a wanderer

- one of the first to use the sign of windblume to find other rebels(so he's intelligent)

- actively propped up the nameless bard so he could watch as the tower was destroyed

there's this little tidbit too from the Windblume Ode bow's description that im probably gonna talk about a considerable amount too: "Atop the ruins of the ancient tower, amidst the cheers, songs, and tears of those who had newly won their freedom. A red-haired warrior turned his back on the newborn god, hidden like a single raindrop in a tidal wave of humanity. He was first among those who passed the secret sign of Windblume, the one who wove threads of dawn throughout the long night. His name has since been lost to time, but his deeds are still remembered in song." followed later by "The fate of this clan will likely never change: they shall ever live in the darkness and bring forth the flame of dawn."

-

Now I'm going to start with the Ragnvindir(geez, why's it spelled like that tho)

My idea of his character is basically formed by a mix of Ragnvindir stereotypes and just generally analyzing text.

So what do we know about Ragnvindir's for sure? they are shady motherfuckers- or at least they rarely operate in the spotlight. also damn, these guys are more cursed than anemo vision wielders- like the only one who didn't canonically lose someone close to them was Crepus, but considering that Diluc doesn't exactly have a mom..... he probably did

so what do we know? - he was close with the nameless bard - he was intelligent - he likely operated primarily from the shadows "ever living in the darkness" - he was a wanderer - he abandoned Venti during the celebration - but his deeds were still remembered in song, so Venti and him were likely still close

now the question of the century: how will i choose to interpret "turned his back on the newborn god"? And honestly, I'm- not sure- at first i assumed he abandoned him completely- but Venti did still make sure to carry on his memory- which could just be Venti being Venti, but for the sake of sanity, this is how I'm interpreting it.

A lot of things happened to the Ragnvindir that day. He lost a friend, saw another become a god to replace the one they had conquered, and he saw his goal, his reason for being in Mondstadt, come to fruition. "see the world through my eyes" the bard had said, and the Ragnvindir had been a wanderer even before. Sure, the people had won freedom, and that was to be celebrated, but he's intelligent to recognize that people would likely see him as one of the key figures in leading the rebellion. And for him this was a solemn time, and ending to a chapter, and not being one to operate in the spotlight, the last thing he'd want is to be swept up in festivities and attention at a time like this.

It also likely didn't help that he's probably smart enough to understand the idea of "power corrupts," and seeing the wind sprite just readily accept the mantle of Archon was likely not the most comforting thing to happen in the given situation after all. But Decarabian was gone, and Andrius had ceased his blizzards, so without a word, he slipped into the crowd and left, a wanderer once more.

-

now back to Gunnhildr

she was the first to receive an anemo vision from Barbatos, no I do not take criticism on this "the power bestowed on her by Barbatos" like please, they basically said it.

It also mentions that she crowned Venti with laurels(symbol of vistory) after the battle- the book Biography of Gunnhildr additionally says "the Gunnhildr Clan will continue honoring the legacy of its ancestors and its duty to the Anemo Archon: to protect Mondstadt, the land and all who inhabit it, forever."

I really like this because it conveniently ties into my past headcanon about Venti granting visions to the people of Mondstadt and having them be the ones to erect wind barriers and defend the city in his absence.

So in the Archon War I like to imagine that the Gunnhildr clan had a lot of people who were actually granted visions and were basically in charge of protecting it from those who would attempt to ambush them.

Mondstadt essentially became known for this- the fact that the mortals within it were strong enough to fend off the force of a god without support from their own.

but regardless, Gunnhildr, as she had before, served as a priestess to Barbatos, the closest thing that Mondstadt had to a ruler, and yet she only took charge of prayer and protection.... i hate to just- equate them to their descendants- but to an extent- her role was kind of like a merge between Jean and Barbara- Except with a whole lot less structure.... i really dont want their characters to just be carbon copies of the descendants but- c'mon, the comparison was right there.

anyways besties- back to Venti so i can tie them in

The Archon War was one of the worst times for Venti in his entire life thus far. And the time immediately after Decarbian's fall, while Gunnhildr and the Ragnvindir were still alive, was the key period of time in which things could have gone very differently.

Venti is the god of freedom. That's a reoccurring theme and I think I've made that abundantly clear. But during this time, Venti was anything but free.

I've mentioned before how he would stay far from the city of Mondstadt so the shockwave of his death wouldn't reach him, should he fall.... well- Venti is new to a lot of things- godhood- humanity- war- freedom- and at this point he was trying hard to figure out how to be Mondstadt's god without becoming Decarabian, and while still being able to survive, and make sure they survived, and see the world for his friend, and carry on his friends legacy.

And this is a lot of stuff for what was once a carefree elemental being, and there were certain things that had to be done for this to happen. He couldn't just stay in Mondstadt, or he would grow weak and his people would be vulnerable to attack, but he couldn't abandon it, because despite being able to fend for themselves, there's always hat just in case. He couldn't stay in any one place outside of Mondstadt for very long or he'd be found and killed. He knew in order for Mondstadt to survive he would have to take an active role in the war, strengthen himself so he could defend Mondstadt, and thats exactly what he did.

He started by going after the less powerful gods, ones he had a chance at beating with the power he got from the Gunnhildr clan and the rest of Mond, and by wiping them out, he would grow stronger, so he kept it up- working his way up the metaphorical ladder.

but he couldn't let anyone near him either, because he knew just what would happen if he was attacked then. Were it not for Gunnhildr's prayer, the early years of the Archon War would have been without contest the loneliest time of his life, and there would be nothing he could do about it, bound by survival and his attachment to the legacy of his friend, constantly fearing for his life and going against his very nature as the god of freedom. Frankly thrust into that circumstance that early on, and having to face it alone, it's likely that Venti would have caved under the pressure and dropped his attachment to either his survival, or to his friends legacy... or just something entirely worse(isolation messes with brains) so I'm attributing the fact that he didn't do that to Gunnhildr's companionship, speaking to him and guiding him through it as he had guided her through the blizzard some time ago.

I also like to think that she's responsible for founding at least a number of the different celebrations that still happen in Mondstadt even now.

Ugh supportive warrior priestess- we stan

anyway meanwhile! we got the Ragnvindir

He hears about Venti taking part in the Archon war during his wanderings and returns to Mondstadt to check in, wary of what he might find.

Venti, who hadn't seen him since the rebellion, is elated to say the least and they do a bit of catching up because they need it

and then the conversation turns more serious, and the Ragnvindir brings up a third thing that Venti needs to hold onto- his humanity.

See, in the early years, just desperate to get a foothold on the world, Venti's first number of targets were just indiscriminately going after those he knew to be weaker than him, and the Ragnvindir points this out, saying that while it's not necessarily bad, if he keeps doing it, it won't be long until he causes his and, by extent, Mondstadt's legacy to be tainted by a reputation for slaughter, no better than any of the other bloodthirsty gods that frequented the war's fields. "Think of what the bard would do, we were both close enough to do that much"

And Venti becomes yet more caged, but recognizes that he's right, and this is another turning point, that in the coming years would keep Venti from losing himself.

also- Gunnhildr, Venti having told her about the Ragnvindir's concerns that he now shared, probably organized some kind of event (not unlike the right of part, but also, yes unlike it) that was deliberately intended and designs to serve as an excuse that Venti could chose to take to visit Mondstadt, something she know he desperately wanted to do, but wouldn't allow himself for fear of putting them in danger. But if she made it an official celebration, then it would give Venti the opportunity to visit his people again, under the guise of it being a responsibility, not having to deal with the moral implications of doing so at a time when he was already dealing with enough of those already.

Also on his travels, the Ragnvindir probably started and spread a number of rumors that could end up working in Venti's favor, not that anyone ever knew it was him of course.

basically Gunnhildr protected the people of Mondstadt and did all she could to keep everyone in as high spirits as possible, Venti included.

And as for the Ragnvindir, he took a more realistic approach, traveling and getting venti followers in far places, spreading false information about him, and just overall making sure that Venti didn't do things he'd regret.

And when they died, Venti would carry their legacy with him as well, not losing his humanity to the tide of war as he very nearly had(though he still often came close), and trying to spreading high spirits where ever he could without fail.

[scarletmanuka]

Fic Writer Interview

I was tagged by @thisbluespirit

Name:  Well, Scarlet Manuka on Tumblr is explained in my ‘about me’ page. Suffice to say it’s a kiwi thing.  My writing names are Mab Browne and Dale Gardener.  The Mab is related to a nickname I used to have in a workplace many years ago and the rest of that name and the Dale bit is just, I dunno, it sounded good at the time. My real name? Yeah, nah, no crossing the streams.

Fandoms:  I was the kind of kid who hyperfixated, so in terms of sheer love, my first fandoms were Blake’s 7, Sapphire and Steel, and The Lord of the Rings, (the book and the BBC radio play - this was the late seventies/early eighties). But I was a full-on geek, watching Star Wars and any SF that came down the pike. I also read a great deal of SF and fantasy in general. My first fandom in terms of fannish participation was Star Trek TOS. I read a friend’s zines, scraped up some cash and bought some of my own, and have two zine contributions of highly dubious quality floating around out there. 

My first slash fandom was The Professionals, a show I’d watched as a teen when it first came out.  My first writing fandom was The Sentinel, although my first internet fanfic was Blake’s 7, written under my  real name back in the day  It’s now on Hermit as by anon. I’ve written in a variety of fandoms, including Starsky and Hutch. My Elfquest enthusiasm prefigured my love of Maiden Rose, an actual manga rather than just manga influenced. Current loves are The Magnus Archives and The Expanse.  Having said that, all my fandoms are current, in the sense that I never completely abandon an interest in something that I’ve loved.

Where you post: I used to have an individual site back in the day, but it’s all on AO3 and my Dreamwidth these days.

Most popular one-shot: That would be my TS story A Modern Kind of Guy.

Most popular multi-chapter That would be my TS story Reverently and Discreetly, where I played about with the sentinel/guide bonding trope. Always a crowd pleaser.

Fic you were nervous to post: A lot of them, especially earlier in my fic writing career, when I was also a wee bit on the depressive episode side.  I had a literal mild panic attack after posting I Married a Vampire.  It was a short follow-up to a TS vampire AU that I ended up writing four stories for, and I think is actually pretty good for something I wrote at an early stage of fandom experience. TS was a fandom where there was much discussion about what good fic is that I took unnecessarily to heart back in the day, despite being mercifully ignored at worst, and getting generally positive comments at the best.  Nowadays I enjoy better mental health and have embraced the fact that I’m often a niche flavour, and simply enjoy myself.

How do you choose your titles?   With great difficulty.  Song and poetry titles are pretty common, or maybe a phrase out of the story itself.  Sometimes a title comes as part of the story concept. How Strange the Change for Maiden Rose was one of those. 

Do you outline?  Only to a bare minimum. I always have a full concept in my head for long stories in terms of key events and emotional beats and I just work through that; with short stories I sit down and see what comes out of the keyboard.  What I am more likely to write down is the good dialogue or a Big Thought that comes in the shower or when you’re doing mundane tasks. I get those down if I can because however much you tell yourself you’ll remember it, you won’t.

Complete I have 196 fics up at AO3. Some of those are drabble and ficlet compilations.

Do you take prompts?   Not generally no, although now and again I see things that generate an idea.

In progress I have several unfinished stories languishing on my hard drive, all of them currently The Sentinel.  I don’t tend to post WIP, even though I had some good experiences with that on LJ. These days, nah.

Coming soon Maybe one of the WIPs? It’s a fic with the working title of The Non-Con Mind-Control Fic of Doom, so who knows what readers it will have.  But it’s certainly perfectly designed for me, so it’s strangely dear to my heart regardless.

Tagging Whoever wants to, truly. @sullendragon if you’re out there, and you’d like, but if you’d not like that’s fine too.

[davidmann95]

This Superman guy's pretty great, huh?

Okay. Figured I’d write this at somepoint, seems like as good a place as any to do it.

Yes: Superman is pretty great. The character’s great,the costume’s great, the cast is great, the powers are great, the scope of thekind of adventures you can tell with him is great, the mythology’s great, thepower he has to inspire on the page and in the real world is great. I’ve known that since I was…I dunno,three? Two? I’m told he was my first three-syllable word. I’m not sure what myfirst exposure would have been; Supermanthe Animated Series was airing when I was a kid, my dad had the Fleischercartoons on tape, we’d watch reruns of TheAdventures of Superman whenever they aired, I had some odd issues of Superman Adventures, I had picture bookslike The True Story of Superman, Superman: Slippery When Bad and I Hate Superman!, I even had an abridgedversion of John Byrne’s Man of Steel manyyears before I would change my tune on it. It was well past the whole nineyards of lunchboxes and Superman-themed birthday parties - mom and dad wereLois-Mom and Jimmy-Dad for a bit, who got a call one time from a teacher inpreschool that I had dramatically taken off my shirt to show the temporaryS-Shield tattoo I’d gotten on my chest. My dad ended up having to drive toevery Burger King in the area asking for any spare Superman toys because Icouldn’t stand that they had been discontinued before I could get them all andI was making life hell for everyone in the process. I couldn’t play Supermanwith other kids on the playground, because I’d demand we recreate the scriptsof adventures verbatim.

Around seven or thereabouts though,while I never developed any of the disdain towards him that so many seem tohave, I drifted away for a while towards Batman and Spider-Man. Purely bycoincidence, this is also the age I was diagnosed with Asperger’s.

It’s not something I talk about agreat deal these days. Not because of some sense of shame, to be as clear aspossible about that right upfront. It isn’t even a matter of my especiallybeing able to pass as neurotypical - take me out of my comfort zone into anynumber of common social circumstances and that illusion falls by the wayside.But I’ve carved out I feel a pretty decent niche where I’m typically fairlysatisfied and able to function at a level that meets my own standards, and as aresult it’s usually background radiation of my life, not something that comesup unbidden until a situation demands I start thinking about it again. Even when I do, thinking about it much often leaves me feeling self-conscious and self-indulgent, and convinced I’m either being stupidly self-aggrandizing or stupidly self-pitying about it.

So naturally, even once I reallystarted to get back into Superman in earnest at 13 alongsidecomics in general and he became my favorite character in earnest, there are some associations it took me awhile to make.

I’m not quite certain when Istarted to think about it, but the structure of how I thought about it I know came about thanks to @postcardsfromspace‘s (excellent) article I See Your Value Now on learningabout their own Asperger’s. I doubt it’s an association any creators for thecharacter have given any thought (aside from maybe Mark Waid, given that in an interview on Birthright he specifically noted how his idea for Martha Kentbecoming a UFO buff in response to her son was meant as a parallel to parentsof kids with autism having to become self-taught experts on the subject), andall a Google search immediately turns up is comparing a young Clark’s troubleswith his X-Ray vision in Man of Steelto sensory overload in children with autism. It’s not something that would havelikely even occurred to me if it wasn’t for that…well, that I have Asperger’s,and Superman’s a special interest, and as a default I’m always ready on somelevel to connect any input I get back to him.

Obviously, there’s Clark himself.He screams it, right? Likely just because of a general conflation of ‘nerd’traits with ‘Aspie’ traits, but it’s all there right on the surface: shy,awkward, naïve, can’t read a room to save his life, unaware of some generalsocial conventions given his penchant for drab suits, horn-rimmed glasses andfedoras well into the 21st century, either without many friends orlocked into a rigid and small social circle, by all appearances more alivebehind a screen than he ever is to anyone’s face. Even the more confident takeson him, such as in the Reeves TV show or the New 52 Action Comics, seem to lack a social grace or two, seem to grate onthe people around him. Precision-constructed by the greatest man to ever liveto be beneath the notice of his peers in every way imaginable, of course you end up with that guy.

…except even when Clark’s purely apost-Smallville construct on Superman’s part, he’s not made out of nothing, ishe? The Kansas boy who grew up reading ATale of Two Cities as a toddler and obsessively pouring over astronomytextbooks for clues can hazard a guess of what it feels like to be a nerd. Theguy who grew up on a farm who flies and can accidentally shatter steel in hisgrip is entirely familiar with how it feels to awkwardly maneuver around in acrowded city. The square who grew up in the middle of nowhere constantlygetting accused of not knowing how the world really works can probably express a little doubt over his ownself-awareness and naiveté if he absolutely has to. Clark Kent is historicallybuilt on Superman’s own worst image of himself.

(This incidentally, along withplenty of other storytelling-based reasons, is why I intensely dislikeit when Clark’s the ‘real guy’, and therefore confident and charming and on topof things; it’s Kryptonite to the ideas in play there.)

And the shyness? The sense of beingout of place? The - let’s get right to the heart of it - alien-ness?

Superman’s pretty cool. He’sfriendly; he’s understanding; he’s clever and kind and determined. He’s alsosomething of a loner who’s often surprisingly loathe to open up to people,and even once he’s married he still needs plenty of time to himself to thinkthings through. He’s someone who when he puts on the costume always engageswith the world in a very specific context: where his natural talents are mostobviously geared towards being helpful, where so long as he can pull off Sweetand Composed and make some speeches when he has to people will accept him withopen arms. Being Superman puts him in a situation where he can show his bestself, personally and socially and morally, and be accepted for his goodness ina way nerdy, quiet Clark Kent never can.

And god, does he need thatacceptance.

That’s often applied to painfullymaudlin stories of him hand-wringing over his social impact on humanity andwhether he can save all the little children of the world from cancer orwhatever, but it’s still something else that seems to be pretty consistentacross the various interpretations. Unless he’s barreling ahead with a degreeof self-confidence bordering on flat-out arrogance, he’s always worried abouthow he seems in the eyes of the world. Whether that means Red Kryptoniteexternalizing anxieties of old age or powerlessness or throwing him intodreamworlds of hate or irrelevance, or wondering whether he can justify one ofhis two identities, or pondering his alien nature, or questioning what Supermanmeans as a symbol to the world, or being flat-out replaced, or even protectinghis secret, it’s always the same question refracted through endless prisms: Can I belong here? Am I doing well enough,being useful enough, to deserve what I’ve been given? Will they find me out?Would they ever accept me if theyknew the truth?

For all the joy that comes with who he is, that’s his life too: it’s growing up inSmallville knowing there’s no one else who’ll ever know the distinct timbre ofair-pressure changes when a hummingbird slows down its wingbeat a fraction, noone he could talk about the sight of snowflakes assembling themselves out offreezing raindrops to without sounding as if he’s out of his mind, no one whocould fully empathize with having to practice normal human reactions to theworld. It’s spending half his life trying to be a normal guy among normalpeople and failing because of his own insecurities, the other half really beingable to do his best in his own element and being the person he wants to be, butnever being sure if it’s enough for those around him. It’s finally meeting other Kryptonians orsuperheroes but realizing even their own experiences diverge so sharply thatthe communication gap remains, that as a matter of circumstance he is and will alwaysremain fundamentally other in someways, no matter how deeply he connects with other people.

His relationships seem to fit the mold too - it works pretty dang well that histwo best friends are a coworker who’s simultaneously the cool dude who takeshim under his wing and the kid whouncritically looks up to him, and someone with the same ‘hobby’ who’s himselfpretty well-known for having issues opening up to people. Or that his wifefalling in love with him is framed in terms of her looking past him at his mostvulnerable and awkward and unable to fit in to see the person he actually iswhen no one else can, while a major part of his love for her is her being thekind of person who’s pushy enough to force him out of his shell and some of hismore self-defeating behaviors.

And that his worst enemy, in spite ofhis aura of smug self-regard, doesn’t seem able to relate to other people on afundamental level or manage to work with them very well when he’s not in fullcontrol of the situation, even as he needs them to accept and validate him. Lexfails because he’ll never work to bridge that gap in the same way as Superman,seeing that as a ridiculous and unrealistic imposition, and Superman as anintruder into his personal universe trying to force his unrealistic standardsof “acknowledge other people and whatthey think about things” on him while at the same time agonizingly,bafflingly succeeding where Lex fails. He’s the embodiment in that regard ofthe frustrated, shamed instinct of the isolated that you’re already great, sopeople should already love and understand you and it’s their fault for notgetting it (hence for instance how in All-Starhe overtly sees the world and the relationships that make it up in a coldly material manner where people naturally flock to only the most outwardly great aroundthem - colored by a sexist streak that’s taken on a whole new degree of toxic prominencewhen it comes to the socially awkward in the near-decade since the book’sconclusion).

(It also works that Superman’scharacter in All-Star is defined byhis disconnect from humanity, and that his big character arc is having tobecome emotionally honest enough to talk with the people who love him aboutwhat he’s going through.)

Again, clearly none of this is theintent on the part of those who’ve worked with him over the years. This is byno means the bedrock or secret key to what makes him tick; it’s at best a componentin a much larger machine. I’m sure if you dug into it enough you could find somethingproblematic in the proposition, and I won’t pretend there couldn’t becharacters closer in every sense to my own experiences.

But none of them would be Superman.

Sure, it helps that I grew up withhim, and that he’s a character with enough detail and weird ideas and characterwork that I can delve into the minutia of him in a way I can’t with anyone elseto the same extent other than Batman, but beyond all that, he’s Superman. He’s TheGuy, the best, and that I can see myself in him in *any* way means more than itever could with any other character, because that makes him being a role modelmean something else.

For all I talked about how lonelyhe is above he’s still an idealist, still has friends and a job and weirdpersonal hobbies at his personal ice-cave and a way to express his highest,best self in a way that’s loved by the people around him. The way he seesthings differently can be accepted and shared even as he understands and caresfor the people around him. He’s happy. And that he can start from a place of being the onlyone of his kind and end up a good person, the best person, in part because he knows better than anyone what it isto be alone and why others matter so much? That has more weight to people, andto me, than can be expressed.

I mentioned before I’m not wildabout Clark being the exclusive true identity in part because of how much itmesses with this. I’ve also said elsewhere that while both Clark and Supermanare inseparable and true parts of his identity that can’t be denied as importantaspects of who he is, if I absolutely had to choose one as being the ‘real’ one I’dgo with Superman. And I can pick apart any number of storytelling reasons forthat, but thinking about how I relate to Superman in the way I do made merealize something else. I have to see Superman as the truest self becauseSuperman’s who he is at his best, when he’s not afraid or ashamed and can showhimself in all his alienness to everyone and be accepted for it. That’s thedream, right? I’m no Superman, but I’ve gottabelieve in him, ‘cause I’ve gotta believe in me.

I’m pretty sure some of you canrelate.

[coolchildwizard]

4 Tips for Better Influencer Blog Posts

Creating a blog is one of the best ways to secure your position as a successful social media influencer. A blog will allow you to promote yourself to a large segment of people, create interesting content and demonstrate your expertise on the subject you chose. When you create a successful blog, you can also create a large and engaged audience. 

 The challenge is to stand out and get yourself noticed, in the large - sometimes cut-throat - crowd of the thousands of people who want exactly what you want. Creating content is a must for your influencer career, so it has to be great, unique, interesting and worth the time it takes to get to and read or look at what you have presented to the world. 

Have a Narrative Structure

 We evolved telling stories while sitting around campfires. During the time before the Internet, handheld games, cell phones or movies, sitting around a cozy campfire was almost the only way stories of old were told to the younger generations. 

We are wired to want, expect and appreciate a story, it is how we have understood things for centuries and it was/is the way information was passed on. A good story can create deep emotional stakes that can make us feel as though we know and understand the writer. The more of the story you tell, the more people will fall in love with the person behind the story.  

Keep Your Audience in Mind 

 If you were in the process of developing a product as a business, then you would first do the necessary market research to make sure that there are people out there who are willing to buy your product. Think of your articles as if they are your products and make sure you've thought about who you want to read your articles. Of course, the larger your audience and the more you are connected to a particular demographic, the better your chances are of reaching a wide audience and getting shared and liked. 

Make Sure Your Articles Are Easy to Skim Over

Know Your Topic Inside and Out

The worst thing you can do to your influencer career is hire a writer who doesn't know anything about you or what you represent and they are not familiar with your chosen topic. Even if they are considered the best writer in the world, if they are not passionate about your niche/subject matter, then they will not be able to add anything fresh to the discussion. The result will be content that is not interesting enough to bring in the number of viewers to make any of your posts viral. 

Know your topic inside out and only that way can you create and share new ideas. This is how you become a thought leader.

Photos from: geralt

[getstarsona]

16 Post Ideas

Social media posts should be a mix of GIVING to your audience (tips, entertainment and joy), and also promoting yourself, your business or your Starsona products.

Here are 16 creative post ideas to get you thinking. And the beauty is these ideas can be tailored to fit just about any business or niche!

1. What inspires you? Tell your audience about a person, routine, movie, etc. that really inspires you as a person or in your business.

2. Share a tip related to your expertise. What can you teach your fans?

3. Show behind the scenes of never before shared material. People love to see real life, behind the scenes!

4. Introduce someone on your team.

5. Share a fun fact about yourself. What is something your audience would love to know?

6. Throwback Thursday! Who doesn’t love a good throwback photo? Share how far you’ve come.

7. Mention a favorite product - not one you sell, maybe an experience another Star is offering (they might share one of your), but focus on a recommendation to your crowd.

8. A day in the life. This could be a day in your life, or someone on your team or a friend.

9. Ask your audience’s opinion. You could give them options of something you are considering and see what they think! (People love to give their opinions on social media!)

10. Show your creative space. Where do you record, write, or do your thing? Show a photo or take your fans on a video tour.

11. Share the best or worst advice you’ve ever received. How did that affect you or your business?

12. Share a funny or viral video. Who doesn’t love some JOY in their social media feed?

13. Share a fan photo. If someone has posted a great photo with you, or from one of your shows - repost their photo and give them a shoutout!

14. Thank your audience! You could give a heartfelt shoutout to the fans who have followed you along the journey.

15. Let your audience into your process. Are you working on a new song? Sing a few bars for them. New recipe? Talk about where you are in the process.

16. And of course - promote your Starsona experiences!

 If you’re focusing on putting up posts your audience resonates with, and really trying to GIVE value to them - then they’ll gladly purchase your Starsona experiences when you promote them!

Keep this list of ideas handy, and easily create a social media page full of great content!

[lgdays]

NOTES FROM THE EARLY DAYS (PART IV)

BUILDING AN AUDIENCE

Now that I had a couple of screenshots and concepts, it was time to share what I had been doing, and see if there was any interest in a non-fantasy modern-day RPG. In this article I’ll be sharing some numbers hopefully to serve as a reference point, as these numbers are usually not made public.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V (in process)

The first step was to start a devlog. I decided to use tumblr instead of Wordpress or my own domain, so people could easily find those posts and engage with them. It’s important to note that people are less likely to use those Share buttons than to simply like/reblog within the platform.

Starting a Devlog

It’s common to hear people wondering when is the best time to start posting about their projects. In my opinion, the earlier you start posting, the more time you’ll have to build up an audience, so the earlier the better. In fact, showing your projects at their early stages will allow you to get feedback at a pertinent time.

The first post I made was an introduction to the story and the characters, with some concepts and really early screenshots. All of the art I posted there ended up being replaced in the end, though, like the in-game menu below:

Now, even though I said you should start as soon as possible, there are still some recommendations. When you start developing, it’s easy to overpromise, but try to make sure you’ll be able to develop the main features you’ll use to promote the game, otherwise you are off to a bad start.

Reception of the First Public Announcement

In all honesty, I had very low expectations, I hoped I would get at least 10 likes and no hate mail. I panicked wondering if I should  really publish it as it is. As it was my first post, even if people hated it, I wasn’t risking too much. If anything, I could always make a better post later.

Contrary to my expectations, within the first day people where liking and sharing the post. Within the first 10 days, there were already over a hundred notes, and some people even took the time to leave some really nice comments. Frankly, the game wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t posted those screenshots online back then.

Spreading the Word

After the reception on tumblr, I had enough confidence to post about it on more sites. The ones that made a difference were the following sites:

TIG Source: This is one of the most popular forums for indiedevs. Popular indie games like Papers, Please, Owlboy, Rain World and even FEZ had their own threads there during development. TIG Source also has a Screenshot Thread.

RPG Maker forums: As far as I’m aware, every game engine has its own forum, so it’s a good idea to start there. In the case of RPG Maker, they have their own rules about the content required to make your own thread, so it’s easier to write an introduction using that as a guide.

IndieDB: As the name suggest, this is a database for indie games. It allows you to create a devlog, upload a presskit, and make announcements that will be displayed on the frontpage for a couple of hours. A lot of journalists (and bots) browse the frontpage, so it’s a good place to post if you hope to appear in the media.

Reddit (/r/gamedev & /r/rpgmaker): Both subreddits have their own Screenshot Saturday threads. Posting as early as the thread is up is your best bet, as these threads tend to get crowded. There are also genre specific subreddits that are good for big updates.

Now, while the 4 sites listed above are a good place to start, it’s important to keep in mind most of the people who browse the sites above are developers or people who work/want to work in the industry.

From all of these sites, TIG Source was the one were Long Gone Days got more reach. Within the next days, composers, sound designers, voice actors and publishers were reaching out to be part of the project. Soon after, the game got its very own first article on Siliconera: “Long Gone Days, An RPG With A Story 12 Years In The Making” by Chris Priestman.

Reaching Potential Players

Unless your game is targeted towards a really obscure niche, your best bet is to use the most popular social media platforms. I initially used Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, so these are the ones I’ll be comparing.

1) Tumblr

On Tumblr the follower growth was quick. Without much effort, posting once per week, and relying mostly on 3 tags (#gamedev, #pixelart, #rpgmaker), within the first months there were on average 300 new followers monthly, and then it got on an average of 90~150 new followers per month. We also found a lot of loyal fans here, and there’s a big sense of community for story-driven games. By the first semester I was reaching about 1,500 followers here.

I noticed that posting videos or static images on tumblr didn’t go too well. GIFs on the other hand always resulted in at least 100 notes.

2) Twitter

On Twitter, contrary to my expectations, the follower growth was a bit slower. It takes more effort, as you need to tweet more often and you only have 140 characters to get your point across, but there’s a wider audience you can reach. The first months were slow, with a growth of 100~150 new followers per month, and mostly by using tags like #screenshotsaturday, #gamedev and #pixelart. By the first semester I was barely reaching the first thousand followers.

After reaching the first thousand though, the growth was way faster, and nowadays it’s the fastest growing platform Long Gone Days is on. Since numbers on Twitter are public, they affect how people see you.

3) Facebook

On Facebook, during the first few months, it would have felt like a ghost town if it wasn’t for my friends (thanks ♥!). Checking some Facebook pages of popular indie games in development, things were pretty similar, unless they used the “share+like+comment to win/vote” tactic. By the first semester I was barely reaching the first 800 followers.

Something that really helped me reach more people was to talk about the game on Facebook groups (mostly gamedev or engine oriented groups). I haven’t yet used promoted posts, as those should be saved for big announcements, but I’ll do my best to share the results if we do.

There are of course a lot more things you can do to improve your reach, like taking into consideration the time and day of the week you post, the amount of words you use, using GIFs instead of videos or static images, but I can expand on that on another post if there’s enough interest.

Conclusions

Before I started releasing info about the project online, I expected to see the worst, but I was overwhelmed with the support that we got. There were a few hateful comments as well, but they unknowingly gave us tons of useful feedback.

This goes without saying, but avoid getting into fights and be open to critiques. You don’t have to do everything the way some people want it to be, but they might be able to tell you the things your friends are afraid to say.

Releasing something that took you months or even years of effort is really overwhelming, it makes you feel exposed and vulnerable. Showing others your progress as you go really helps to reduce the emotional stress you could have once you release the completed piece.

With all of the feedback I got during the first few month, I had less worries on my mind, and it even motivated me to work even faster so I could share more stuff. Now all I had to worry about was the next big milestone: Releasing the demo.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V (in process)

The next part of the series will be about the release of the demo (what do to before, during and after).

[bigyack-com]

Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism

The first time I met A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, I tried to hire him.That was back in the heady days of digital media in 2014, and I was at BuzzFeed News, one of a handful of start-ups preparing to sweep aside dying legacy outlets like the Times.Times stock was still sputtering, and the company had sold off everything but its furniture to keep paying for journalism.Mr. Sulzberger, then the heir apparent to lead the Times, politely declined my offer. And today, after eight years as BuzzFeed editor in chief, I find myself in his employ as the new media columnist.I’m stepping into the space opened a decade ago by David Carr, the late columnist who chronicled an explosion of new online outlets. My focus will probably be the opposite: The consolidation of everything from movies to news, as the media industry gets hollowed out by the same rich-get-richer, winner-take-all forces that have reshaped businesses from airlines to pharmaceuticals.And the story of consolidation in media is a story about the Times itself.The gulf between the Times and the rest of the industry is vast and keeps growing: The company now has more digital subscribers than The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the 250 local Gannett papers combined, according to the most recent data. And the Times employs 1,700 journalists — a huge number in an industry where total employment nationally has fallen to somewhere between 20,000 and 38,000.The Times so dominates the news business that it has absorbed many of the people who once threatened it: The former top editors of Gawker, Recode, and Quartz are all at the Times, as are many of the reporters who first made Politico a must-read in Washington.I spent my whole career competing against the Times, so coming to work here feels a bit like giving in. And I worry that the success of the Times is crowding out the competition.“The New York Times is going to basically be a monopoly,’’ predicted Jim VandeHei, the founder of Axios, which started in 2016 with plans to sell digital subscriptions but has yet to do so. “The Times will get bigger and the niche will get nichier, and nothing else will survive.”Janice Min, the editor who created Us Weekly and reinvented The Hollywood Reporter, said the Times’s broadening content mix poses a formidable obstacle for other digital subscription businesses.“Because we’re talking about the publishing business, it’s all still kind of sad, but in this parallel universe people talk about The New York Times in the way people in Hollywood talk about Netflix,” Ms. Min said. “It’s the tail that wags the dog, and it’s also the dog.”The rise of the Times from wounded giant to reigning colossus has been as breathtaking as that of any start-up. As recently as 2014, print advertising was collapsing and the idea that subscribers would pay enough to support the company’s expensive global news gathering seemed like a pipe dream.“We sold off every bit of the company we could sell off to hold our journalism investment as flat as humanly possible,’’ Mr. Sulzberger, who became publisher in 2018, told me in an interview last week. “All the smart people in media thought it was crazy, all our shareholders thought it was financially irresponsible.’’Just a few years later, amid a deepening crisis in American journalism, and a sustained attack from the president of the United States, Times stock has rebounded to nearly triple what it was in 2014 and the newsroom has added 400 employees. The starting salary for most reporters is $104,600.The paper is now quietly shopping for dominance in an adjacent industry: audio. The Times is in exclusive talks to acquire Serial Productions, the breakthrough podcast studio that has attracted more than 300 million downloads.The purchase requires deep pockets: Serial was for sale at a valuation of about $75 million, according to two people who were briefed on the deal, though The Times is expected to pay significantly less. (The Wall Street Journal first reported last month that Serial was for sale.)The deal, along with The Daily, the popular weekday podcast at The Times, could form the basis for an ambitious new paid product — like the company’s Cooking and Crossword apps — that executives believe could become the HBO of podcasts.When I spoke to Mr. Sulzberger last week, I was reminded of other figures in this digital economy who have experienced success at dizzying scale and speed, and still cannot believe it when you mention the word “monopoly.’’He sees plenty of competition for the Times — he cited cable news, though its own future is uncertain. What’s more, he says, Americans will buy more than one news subscription. He believes The Times is not dominating the market so much as creating one.“What I actually think you’re seeing is not a winner take all dynamic — what you’re actually seeing is a rising tide lifts all boats dynamism,” said Mr. Sulzberger (who no doubt would have flourished in that midlevel product job I offered him).His optimism is shared, at least publicly, by the small handful of news organizations that are scraping by on local subscriptions.“The Times has shown the rest of the industry a path to some success,” said Brian McGrory, editor of The Boston Globe, which has attracted more than 100,000 digital subscribers.Times executives say they are also looking for a way to help out their weaker cousins, given the threat that the collapse of local journalism poses to democracy.“But as they say in the airplanes, put your own oxygen mask on first before you start to help others,” said Mark Thompson, the newspaper’s chief executive.Because the Times now overshadows so much of the industry, the cultural and ideological battles that used to break out between news organizations — like whether to say that President Trump lied — now play out inside The Times.And The Times has swallowed so much of what was once called new media that the paper can read as an uneasy competition of dueling traditions: The Style section is a more polished Gawker, while the opinion pages reflect the best and worst of The Atlantic’s provocations. The magazine publishes bold arguments about race and American history, and the campaign coverage channels Politico’s scoopy aggression.I’m proud to be leaving BuzzFeed News as one of a handful of strong, independent newsrooms still standing amid the rubble of consolidation. But I miss the wide open moment 10 years ago, when we were among a wave of new players reimagining what news meant.My job as columnist here will be an exciting and uncomfortable one — covering this new media age from inside one of its titans (though I hope you’ll tell me if I ever get too far inside).And I hope that earlier era of innovation didn’t exist merely to create a farm team and some lessons for the newspaper equivalent of the 1927 Yankees.“The moat is so wide now that I can’t see anyone getting into it,” Josh Tyrangiel, former senior vice president of news at Vice who is now producing television and documentaries, said in an interview. “There’s no new thing coming. And the editor of Buzzfeed News, who was probably the chief insurgent, is now writing this column for you at The New York Times.” Read the full article

[nothingneverforever]

Yesterday (2019)

When I’d just seen the trailers and promo stuff for Yesterday, there was some great excitement in me. I loved The Beatles years ago, I mean, I really really loved them, I’ve got about 15 books on them, borrowed my mom’s credit card to shop online for DVDs of all their original movies when I was 14, etc etc, so Yesterday’s premise added up and seemed to look like something I’d enjoy: Danny Boyle, mysterious ultra-niche alternate reality in an otherwise utterly regular world, some kind of deadpan irony about the whole situation…

Then it came and went in cinemas and I never got down to seeing it. So I watched instead this film review by DazzReviews on Youtube, titled “Yesterday Missed A MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY (SPOILERS)”.  It’s a short and simple analysis of key weaknesses of the film, being that its actual contents greatly pale in comparison to its great potential. Even without watching the film, I understood Dazz’s gripe because even seeing snippets of the film bored me. It is such a unique, and almost cute idea afterall: a blackout causing selective loss of memory in every single individual in this world (save for 3, later to be discussed) where post-blackout, The Beatles and other cultural/social phenomenon do not and have never existed. Our protagonist, who pre-blackout was a struggling singer/songwriter, then decides to release Beatles songs from his memory as his own, thus gaining global popularity and attracting immense adoration. It’s not novel, perhaps reminiscent of time-travel narratives idk, but it’s still fun right?  

Yet even after watching this review video and understanding the film’s flaws and being able to imagine how disappointing the film would have been, watching it in full for myself was still an upsetting experience. Google tells me that Yesterday is of the ‘Drama/Fantasy’ genre, which gives me a good starting point for my critique: how utterly un-fantastical it is.

Our protagonist Jack Malik is LITERALLY the most vanilla, ungrateful, boring, not-alive, nothing-at-all, annoying, pathetically male (in terms of tantrum-throwing and ingratitude) character I have ever seen. None of this is hyperbolic, his character literally sucks so freakin much omfg, absolutely devoid of any redeeming or even remotely INTERESTING qualities at all. In fact save for maybe one scene (which I will talk about below), I don’t think there was another single second in the entire film where we saw him smiling. This is not to say that he’s portrayed as especially tortured or depressed in demeanor, merely to indicate his absolute dearth of warmth and personality.

Meanwhile, it becomes clear as the boring film progresses boringly that Yesterday is in fact nothing more than a love story. The cute Beatles twist is merely a device to show us how Jack and his “love interest” Ellie (inverted commas cos their love sucks omfg I cant imagine that ANYONE viewing it is convinced) were in fact meant to be, with Jack’s momentary superstardom existing to show him that all he ever wanted was his old life, the one with Ellie (even though they were never together because THEY ARENT EVEN MEANT TO BE IN THE FIRST PLACE OKAY….). But, just as Jack’s character itself is flawed and awfully written, our female protagonist Ellie is SOOOOOO early 2000s. Just think of the most typical stock supportive, sweet, pretty, unfailingly kind and patient female whose presence is taken for granted etc etc… So her stock sweetie pie female character coupled with the most unbelievably charmless and unlikable male character make for the most unshippable couple you could possibly imagine. We are supposed to be charmed by her obvious-to-everyone-except-him love for Jack, supposed to have our heartstrings tugged by the singular scene of teenage schoolgirl her standing by the wings of the stage with hearts in her eyes while teenage schoolboy him sings a most soulless rendition of Wonderwall but it literally does absolutely nothing. The means has not met the end! This is a grossly uninspiring love story and there is no fantasy whatsoever!!

Honestly how is this even a Danny Boyle product? But then again… Zhang Yimou, boasting the incredibly genius Raise the Red Lantern (1992) on his resume, also did The Great Wall (2016) so I guess even heroes have the right to bleed or even the best fall down sometimes or something. OMG WAIT  I just googled the film again and not only is it directed by Danny Boyle but also written by Richard Curtis LOL wtfffffffffff okay this is the worst film ever seriously

Early on just after the global blackout thing, before Jack becomes the huge superstar that he does after his music (“his” music) is released into the world, when he first decides to use the songs of The Beatles, he is cajoled by his parents into performing for them in their humble living room. (by the way his parents are played by Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal who I have LITERALLY seen in about 1000 British TV shows and movies by now… idk maybe Yesterday was intended as a semi-ensemble cast film? Since there are other “appearances” by other known faces… ok whatever.) I guess this scene of him, superstar-to-be, sitting down at his piano in the claustrophobic living room with his parents exaggerating their domestic inclinations and comforts (by holding their cups of tea and settling themselves into their sofa-chairs etc) is meant to be comedic, we’re meant to laugh at how his parents have no idea the genius that is about to be released unto the stratosphere embodied by their all-great son Jack Malik, and it’s a predictable scene: his parents get disturbed by the bell and other things in the first 10 seconds of his performance, so Jack has to begin Let It Be 4 times over and never gets past a few lines… and okay, it’s funny because they are treating Jack’s “performance” as such because he has never before produced anything worthy of actual attention and has never performed in any manner that has demanded any respect given that he was an absolutely mediocre singer, but the scene is ruined by how Jack was written to have to react. Instead of taking it in his stride and recognizing that his parents are taking it so lightly because they have no idea how big the song is going to be because they have had no reason to expect anything great of him before, Jack throws a big fucking tantrum and asks why they cannot and have not respected the greatest song to ever be written etc etc… and okay, maybe this was intentional because we are to infer that Jack’s reaction is a projection of his own insecurities about releasing entirely unoriginal songs as his own, perhaps he has doubts about whether they would do as well as they did when The Beatles themselves released them, perhaps he has doubts that he is the right person to do this at all, anxieties and fears about being able to get away with it all… Sure, but I don’t want to give the writers the benefit of this doubt. If I were to watch the scene with my eyes and ears and not my brain, all I’d see is a dumbass manchild with a temper and ego problem incapable of accepting responsibility for the decisions he’s made, plus being unnecessarily cruel and disrespectful to his simple parents who want only to support him, if superficially. Basically, he’s dumb and the worst protagonist you’d want for a romcom.

But let it not be said that I am an extremist with my views: there was one sub-plot that showed promise and that made me think perhaps there was more to this film than the nothingness it had conveyed hitherto. When Jack played in Moscow, as an opening act for Ed Sheeran, we saw the haunting face of a large man in the crowd, carrying a knowing look in his eyes. It gave us a great sense of unease, seeing his concerned face contrasted with the throng of pretty girls screaming their hearts out (you know, à la “Moscow girls make me sing and shout”). Then later we see an English lady (played by the iconic amazing Sarah Lancashire who I know and love so so much from Happy Valley), who like the Russian man, carries the same speculation in her sharp eyes, as she sees Jack manically making his way through Liverpool, visiting key landmarks like Eleanor Rigby’s grave, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane etc because, as she says to him later, “you cant write songs about places you’ve never been to”. So anyway, this odd pairing make up the only 2 other known humans in the world who for unexplained reasons also remember the existence of The Beatles, and thus recognize that Jack’s positioning of the entire Beatles discography as his own original work to be fraudulent.

So we as audiences who hardly care for this dumbass Jack but have still held on to some hope that the film would bring us some element of surprise and karma for this annoying fraud (whose singing voice by the way is literally the most forgettable ever), we would have loved nothing more than for Jack to face the sound of music (as Mother Mary comes to him). But instead of, I dunno, chopping his head off or outing him to the world, the mysterious duo thank him for bringing their much beloved Beatles songs back into the world, the whole who has forgotten them. They thank him for doing justice to the memory of the greatest band of all time, and together the duo and Jack dance and cheer in a side room minutes before Jack goes out to perform for the biggest crowd he’s ever played to. It’s just…  lame and not even a satisfying easy way out. Oh remember above when i said there was literally only about one scene of Jack smiling, this was it. And he only smiled because obviously he was relieved at not having his secret revealed to the world by these two..... ughhh WE DONT WANT TO SEE YOU HAPPY!! WE HATE U!!

Okay haha I shall end this as I do all my other ‘reviews’… by saying that I’m lazy already and cant really be bothered to continue but shall conclude by proclaiming that this film sucked… not in a remotely camp or quiet or interesting manner either. It was just boring and bad and of great disrespect to the music of The Beatles.

 -------------------

Omg I have just attempted to read some actual reviews of this film and some actually think it’s ‘charming’ and ‘surprisingly moving’ and that the leads have ‘chemistry’………….. that’s literally the fakest thing I’ve ever heard lol bye bye!

[seomiamiseo]

Finding Ideas for a Video Series or Podcast - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by PhilNottingham

Video and podcasts are only growing in popularity, proving to be an engaging way to reach your audience and find ways to talk about your industry or product. But it's a crowded market out there, and finding a good idea is only half the battle. Join video marketing extraordinaire Phil Nottingham from Wistia as he explores how we can both uncover great ideas for a podcast or video series and follow through on them in this week's episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Phil Nottingham, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going to talk about how to come up with a great idea for your video series or podcast. I think a lot of businesses out there understand that there's just this great opportunity now to do a longer form series, a show in podcast or video form, but really struggle with that moment of finding what kind of idea could take them to the next level and help them stand out.

1. Audience

I think the most common error that businesses make is to start with the worst idea in the world, which is interviewing our customers about how they use our product. I'm sure many of you have accidentally fallen down this trap, where you've thought, "Ah, maybe that will be a good idea." But the thing is even if you're Ferrari or Christian Louboutin or the most desirable product in the world, it's never going to be interesting for someone to sit there and just listen to your customers talking about your product.

The problem is that your customers are not a unique group of people, aside from the fact that they use your product. Usually there isn't anything else that brings them together. For this kind of content, for a video series and podcast to really stand out and to grow in terms of their audience, we need to harness word of mouth. Word of mouth doesn't grow through the way we often think about audience growth in marketing.

Many of us, particularly in the performance marketing space, are used to thinking about funnels. So we get more and more traffic into the funnel, get more people in there, and ultimately some of them convert. But the way word of mouth works is that a small group of people start communicating to another group of people who start communicating to another group of people. You have these ever-expanding circles of communication that ultimately allow you to grow your audience.

How to find a niche audience

But that means you need to start with a group of people who are talking to one another. Invariably, your customers are not talking to each other as a kind of rule of thumb. So what you need to do is find a group of people, an audience who are talking to each other, and that really means a subculture, a community, or maybe an interest group. So find your group of customers and work out what is a subset of customers, what kind of community, wider culture they're part of, a group of people who you could actually speak to.

The way you might find this is using things like Reddit. If there's a subculture, there's going to be a subreddit. A tool like SparkToro will allow you to discover other topics that your customer base might be interested in. Slack communities can be a great source of this. Blogs, there's often any sort of topic or a niche audience have a blog. Hashtags as well on social media and perhaps meetup groups as well.

So spend some time finding who this audience is for your show, a real group of people who are communicating with one another and who ultimately are someone who you could speak to in a meaningful way. 

2. Insight

Once you've got your audience, you then need to think about the insight. What the insight is, is this gap between desire and outcome. So what you normally find is that when you're speaking to groups of people, they will have something they want to achieve, but there is a barrier in the way of them doing it.

This might be something to do with tools or hardware/software. It could be just to do with professional experience. It could be to do with emotional problems. It could be anything really. So you need to kind of discover what that might be. The essential way to do that is just through good, old-fashioned talking to people. 

Focus groups, 

Surveys, 

Social media interactions, 

Conversations, 

Data that you have from search, like using Google Search Console, 

Internal site search, 

Search volume 

That kind of thing might tell you exactly what sort of topics, what problems people are having that they really try to solve in this interest group.

Solve for the barrier

So what we need to do is find this particular little nugget of wisdom, this gold that's going to give us the insight that allows us to come up with a really good idea to try and solve this barrier, whatever that might be, that makes a difference between desire and outcome for this audience. Once we've got that, you might see a show idea starting to emerge. So let's take a couple of examples.

A few examples

Let's assume that we are working for like a DIY supplies company. Maybe we're doing just sort of piping. We will discover that a subset of our customers are plumbers, and there's a community there of plumbing professionals. Now what might we find about plumbers? Well, maybe it's true that all plumbers are kind of really into cars, and one of the challenges they have is making sure that their car or their van is up to the job for their work.

Okay, so we now have an interesting insight there, that there's something to do with improving cars that we could hook up for plumbers. Or let's say we are doing a furniture company and we're creating furniture for people. We might discover that a subset of our audience are actually amateur carpenters who really love wooden furniture. Their desire is to become professional.

But maybe the barrier is they don't have the skills or the experience or the belief that they could actually do that with their lives and their career. So we see these sort of very personal problems that we can start to emerge an idea for a show that we might have. 

3. Format

So once we've got that, we can then take inspiration from existing TV and media. I think the mistake that a lot of us make is thinking about the format that we might be doing with a show in a very broad sense.

Don't think about the format in a broad sense — get specific

So like we're doing an interview show. We're doing a talk show. We're doing a documentary. We're doing a talent show. Whatever it might be. But actually, if we think about the great history of TV and radio the last hundred years or so, all these really smart formats have emerged. So within talk show, there's "Inside the Actors Studio," a very sort of serious, long, in-depth interview with one person about their practice.

There's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," which has got lots of kind of set pieces and sketches and things that intermingle with the interview. There's "Ellen," where multiple people are interviewed in one show. If we think about documentaries, there's like fly-on-the-wall stuff, just run and gun with a camera, like "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." Carrying on the food thing, there's "Chef's Table," where it's very planned and meticulously shot and is an exposé of one particular chef.

Or something like "Ugly Delicious," which is a bit more like a kind of exploratory piece of documentary, where there's kind of one protagonist going around the world and they piece it together at the end. So you can think about all these different formats and try to find an idea that maybe has been done before in TV in some format and find your way through that. 

A few more examples

So let's think about our plumber example. Plumbers who love cars, well, we could do "Pimp My Ride for Tradesmen."

That's an interesting idea for a talk. Or let's say we're going after like amateur carpenters who would love to be professional. We could easily do "American Idol for Lumberjacks or Carpenters." So we can start to see this idea emerge. Or let's take a kind of B2B example. Maybe we are a marketing agency, as I'm sure many of you are. If you're a marketing agency, maybe you know that some of your customers are in startups, and there's this startup community.

One of the real problems that startups have is getting their product ready for market. So you could kind of think, well, the barrier is getting the product ready for market. We could then do "Queer Eye for Product Teams and Startups,"and we'll bring in five specialists in different areas to kind of get their product ready and sort of iron out the details and make sure they're ready to go to market and support marketing.

So you can start to see by having a clear niche audience and an insight into the problems that they're having, then pulling together a whole list of different show ideas how you can bring together an idea for a potential, interesting TV show, video series, or podcast that could really make your business stand out. But remember that great ideas are kind of 10 a penny, and the really hard thing is finding the right one and making sure that it works for you.

So spend a lot of time coming up with lots and lots of different executions, trying them out, doing kind of little pilots before you work out and commit to the idea that works for you. The most important thing is to keep going and keep trying and teasing out those ideas rather than just settling on the first thing that comes to mind, because usually it's not going to be the right answer. So I hope that was very useful, and we will see you again on another episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[theh0ustonplacestobe]

Finding Ideas for a Video Series or Podcast – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by PhilNottingham

Video and podcasts are only growing in popularity, proving to be an engaging way to reach your audience and find ways to talk about your industry or product. But it’s a crowded market out there, and finding a good idea is only half the battle. Join video marketing extraordinaire Phil Nottingham from Wistia as he explores how we can both uncover great ideas for a podcast or video series and follow through on them in this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Phil Nottingham, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going to talk about how to come up with a great idea for your video series or podcast. I think a lot of businesses out there understand that there’s just this great opportunity now to do a longer form series, a show in podcast or video form, but really struggle with that moment of finding what kind of idea could take them to the next level and help them stand out.

1. Audience

I think the most common error that businesses make is to start with the worst idea in the world, which is interviewing our customers about how they use our product. I’m sure many of you have accidentally fallen down this trap, where you’ve thought, “Ah, maybe that will be a good idea.” But the thing is even if you’re Ferrari or Christian Louboutin or the most desirable product in the world, it’s never going to be interesting for someone to sit there and just listen to your customers talking about your product.

The problem is that your customers are not a unique group of people, aside from the fact that they use your product. Usually there isn’t anything else that brings them together. For this kind of content, for a video series and podcast to really stand out and to grow in terms of their audience, we need to harness word of mouth. Word of mouth doesn’t grow through the way we often think about audience growth in marketing.

Many of us, particularly in the performance marketing space, are used to thinking about funnels. So we get more and more traffic into the funnel, get more people in there, and ultimately some of them convert. But the way word of mouth works is that a small group of people start communicating to another group of people who start communicating to another group of people. You have these ever-expanding circles of communication that ultimately allow you to grow your audience.

How to find a niche audience

But that means you need to start with a group of people who are talking to one another. Invariably, your customers are not talking to each other as a kind of rule of thumb. So what you need to do is find a group of people, an audience who are talking to each other, and that really means a subculture, a community, or maybe an interest group. So find your group of customers and work out what is a subset of customers, what kind of community, wider culture they’re part of, a group of people who you could actually speak to.

The way you might find this is using things like Reddit. If there’s a subculture, there’s going to be a subreddit. A tool like SparkToro will allow you to discover other topics that your customer base might be interested in. Slack communities can be a great source of this. Blogs, there’s often any sort of topic or a niche audience have a blog. Hashtags as well on social media and perhaps meetup groups as well.

So spend some time finding who this audience is for your show, a real group of people who are communicating with one another and who ultimately are someone who you could speak to in a meaningful way. 

2. Insight

Once you’ve got your audience, you then need to think about the insight. What the insight is, is this gap between desire and outcome. So what you normally find is that when you’re speaking to groups of people, they will have something they want to achieve, but there is a barrier in the way of them doing it.

This might be something to do with tools or hardware/software. It could be just to do with professional experience. It could be to do with emotional problems. It could be anything really. So you need to kind of discover what that might be. The essential way to do that is just through good, old-fashioned talking to people. 

Focus groups, 

Surveys, 

Social media interactions, 

Conversations, 

Data that you have from search, like using Google Search Console, 

Internal site search, 

Search volume 

That kind of thing might tell you exactly what sort of topics, what problems people are having that they really try to solve in this interest group.

Solve for the barrier

So what we need to do is find this particular little nugget of wisdom, this gold that’s going to give us the insight that allows us to come up with a really good idea to try and solve this barrier, whatever that might be, that makes a difference between desire and outcome for this audience. Once we’ve got that, you might see a show idea starting to emerge. So let’s take a couple of examples.

A few examples

Let’s assume that we are working for like a DIY supplies company. Maybe we’re doing just sort of piping. We will discover that a subset of our customers are plumbers, and there’s a community there of plumbing professionals. Now what might we find about plumbers? Well, maybe it’s true that all plumbers are kind of really into cars, and one of the challenges they have is making sure that their car or their van is up to the job for their work.

Okay, so we now have an interesting insight there, that there’s something to do with improving cars that we could hook up for plumbers. Or let’s say we are doing a furniture company and we’re creating furniture for people. We might discover that a subset of our audience are actually amateur carpenters who really love wooden furniture. Their desire is to become professional.

But maybe the barrier is they don’t have the skills or the experience or the belief that they could actually do that with their lives and their career. So we see these sort of very personal problems that we can start to emerge an idea for a show that we might have. 

3. Format

So once we’ve got that, we can then take inspiration from existing TV and media. I think the mistake that a lot of us make is thinking about the format that we might be doing with a show in a very broad sense.

Don’t think about the format in a broad sense — get specific

So like we’re doing an interview show. We’re doing a talk show. We’re doing a documentary. We’re doing a talent show. Whatever it might be. But actually, if we think about the great history of TV and radio the last hundred years or so, all these really smart formats have emerged. So within talk show, there’s “Inside the Actors Studio,” a very sort of serious, long, in-depth interview with one person about their practice.

There’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” which has got lots of kind of set pieces and sketches and things that intermingle with the interview. There’s “Ellen,” where multiple people are interviewed in one show. If we think about documentaries, there’s like fly-on-the-wall stuff, just run and gun with a camera, like “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” Carrying on the food thing, there’s “Chef’s Table,” where it’s very planned and meticulously shot and is an exposé of one particular chef.

Or something like “Ugly Delicious,” which is a bit more like a kind of exploratory piece of documentary, where there’s kind of one protagonist going around the world and they piece it together at the end. So you can think about all these different formats and try to find an idea that maybe has been done before in TV in some format and find your way through that. 

A few more examples

So let’s think about our plumber example. Plumbers who love cars, well, we could do “Pimp My Ride for Tradesmen.”

That’s an interesting idea for a talk. Or let’s say we’re going after like amateur carpenters who would love to be professional. We could easily do “American Idol for Lumberjacks or Carpenters.” So we can start to see this idea emerge. Or let’s take a kind of B2B example. Maybe we are a marketing agency, as I’m sure many of you are. If you’re a marketing agency, maybe you know that some of your customers are in startups, and there’s this startup community.

One of the real problems that startups have is getting their product ready for market. So you could kind of think, well, the barrier is getting the product ready for market. We could then do “Queer Eye for Product Teams and Startups,”and we’ll bring in five specialists in different areas to kind of get their product ready and sort of iron out the details and make sure they’re ready to go to market and support marketing.

So you can start to see by having a clear niche audience and an insight into the problems that they’re having, then pulling together a whole list of different show ideas how you can bring together an idea for a potential, interesting TV show, video series, or podcast that could really make your business stand out. But remember that great ideas are kind of 10 a penny, and the really hard thing is finding the right one and making sure that it works for you.

So spend a lot of time coming up with lots and lots of different executions, trying them out, doing kind of little pilots before you work out and commit to the idea that works for you. The most important thing is to keep going and keep trying and teasing out those ideas rather than just settling on the first thing that comes to mind, because usually it’s not going to be the right answer. So I hope that was very useful, and we will see you again on another episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!