I finally said goodbye to Instagram yesterday, actually. Not deleting my account, but I’m recognizing that my mindless scrolling has become detrimentally impactful. My grid now displays my branding for my Substack newsletter with a link in my bio directing anyone who may stumble in looking for me over here. We’ll see how it goes.
Good decision! I totally forgot to mention in my post, and it might be an important point when it comes to deleting or keeping Instagram, how I don’t actually spend any time on other social media, except for X/Twitter/whatever, and that’s for a few minutes a day to get a few news stories. So luckily (?) I have a healthy relationship. Now all my scrolling time - and lots of it - is dedicated to Substack, which is anything but mindless.
Thank you for the mention, Daniel. This dilemma is worth discussing, and is actually the subject of my upcoming post on Monday. Hopefully that will offer some more things to think about.
Splendid, I will keep an eye out for that. All perspectives are useful and interesting and people seem to be all over the place with what they're deciding.
I have a LinkedIn account 🤦🏻♀️ The only thing I ever see there are self-important recruiters posting mindless drivel all f*cking day - the very same recruiters who always claim to be so swamped with work that it is indeed impossible for them to formally reply to applicants who don't make it to the interview stages and therefore don't consider ghosting candidates rude 🙄 It's like X for wannabe corporate moguls...
I really can't stress enough how confusing I find LinkedIn. People refer to blogs there, and having an 'audience' - I thought it was just some job board. I keep getting notifications for jobs and to connect with so-and-so, and perhaps I just need to explore it to see if it's worthwhile, but...perhaps I'm better hacking away at writing, watching my debt spiral upward in the hopes of eventually making it big 😂
Honestly, of the dozens of jobs emailed to me in a week, about 1/3 are no longer vacant, another 1/3 are fakes (yes, you've got to watch out for scams there too), and most the rest completely ignore the criteria I tediously customised, so that the positions aren't suitable for me (or I'm not suitable for them, depending upon how one wants to see it)...
And, yes, there are recruiters there who earn money giving generic advice and insight in blog posts, collecting likes, hearts, laughs, and comments (although the angry comments from actual job seekers can be entertaining) while probably neglecting their real jobs (that explains why most never get back to you).
I'm not really a fan and I find it overwhelming as well.
By all means though, keep writing! Big things happen when you least expect them to 😊
I know beggars can't be choosers, but the only jobs I'm interested in for now are part-time, off-line, non-teaching jobs, which in Vienna as a non-German speaker aren't exactly easy to come by!
I know a non-German-speaker who teaches English as a foreign language on a free-lance basis in Germany for an institution called Berlitz?! It's often one-on-one with and online...
They have Berlitz here too, I might look into it. There are one or two options. Obviously online it’s easy to teach, but I spend so much time at my computer as it is writing, that I want to limit my time sitting. I also should get out more and make an attempt to be less of a hermit!
Vienna isn’t the best place for offline teaching jobs - most people here speak very good English already. But I will look.
(So many interesting jobs in the UK I’d love to apply for, but alas…)
You have a unique perspective, experience and expertise that I think could do very well on social media with the right strategy. From what I have gathered of your book, I don’t think BookTok is the target audience but I do think there is another audience on tiktok for you
Thank you for the kind words - way too kind, in fact, you're giving me too much credit. The 'right strategy' is the sticking point. I have no idea what that is! Maybe it wasn't clear on my post, but all of my so-called research was on Instagram, I've still never seen Tiktok - I think it's only from other people in public, like on transport, that I've noticed it, or when people put TikTok snippets on their Insta pages. So I might just take a blind approach and start posting without knowing how it's supposed to be done? Hell if I know!
I mean it. I've grown/consulted on various platforms for different orgs (including some *niche* stuff) and imo you could easily come up with an actionable strategy if you decided to go for it. if ever you want another perspective, you could always DM me if you wanted :)
Thanks for the mention and the tag Daniel. I was reading what you said about Instagram and I still love the platform, but if it made me feel that crap I think I'd have ditched it long ago. It's so hard to find the balance between self-promotion and ...well crying I suppose! Really interesting to see that snippet from Jennie O'Connor. As to YouTube, I have just started my business channel, when I say just started I mean created a channel but not filmed anything yet! Good luck - having a business consultant is fab, he'll see you right.
Appreciate you reading, and I hope you didn't listen to the voiceover, I think I totally mispronounced your surname 🫢.
I forgot to clarify in my post that I spend so little time on Instagram that it doesn't necessarily take up my time, but I understand what you mean when you say it made you feel like crap. I often think 'there's no way I can compete with this' (mainly because I don't want to). I've been meaning to get a YouTube channel going and I started by doing video podcasts right here on Substack, only a couple so far but with more to come. I might persist that strategy or just take my chances on TikTok. I hope my friend/consultant (well, technically he's not a consultant, but he is very savvy in this area, it's his area of expertise) can help, he'll definitely have some 'interesting' strategies. We shall see!
I didn't listen, but I can't pronounce my name so I shouldn't worry! It's my husband's name & the only reason I took it was because it was more interesting than mine, but it is a bit of a pain! Good luck with YouTube & TikTok if you make it there!
I finally said goodbye to Instagram yesterday, actually. Not deleting my account, but I’m recognizing that my mindless scrolling has become detrimentally impactful. My grid now displays my branding for my Substack newsletter with a link in my bio directing anyone who may stumble in looking for me over here. We’ll see how it goes.
Good decision! I totally forgot to mention in my post, and it might be an important point when it comes to deleting or keeping Instagram, how I don’t actually spend any time on other social media, except for X/Twitter/whatever, and that’s for a few minutes a day to get a few news stories. So luckily (?) I have a healthy relationship. Now all my scrolling time - and lots of it - is dedicated to Substack, which is anything but mindless.
Hey Tim I just followed you over on instagram to see what that looks like. I’ve been considering doing the same.
CATTYWAMPUS is the perfect word for describing how it's going.
And I only learnt this word the other day. It does seem ideal.
Thank you for the mention, Daniel. This dilemma is worth discussing, and is actually the subject of my upcoming post on Monday. Hopefully that will offer some more things to think about.
Splendid, I will keep an eye out for that. All perspectives are useful and interesting and people seem to be all over the place with what they're deciding.
I can’t stand Facebook or insta , but only use it for personal stuff and both accounts are private, but I’m seriously thinking of deleting both !
I have a LinkedIn account 🤦🏻♀️ The only thing I ever see there are self-important recruiters posting mindless drivel all f*cking day - the very same recruiters who always claim to be so swamped with work that it is indeed impossible for them to formally reply to applicants who don't make it to the interview stages and therefore don't consider ghosting candidates rude 🙄 It's like X for wannabe corporate moguls...
I really can't stress enough how confusing I find LinkedIn. People refer to blogs there, and having an 'audience' - I thought it was just some job board. I keep getting notifications for jobs and to connect with so-and-so, and perhaps I just need to explore it to see if it's worthwhile, but...perhaps I'm better hacking away at writing, watching my debt spiral upward in the hopes of eventually making it big 😂
Honestly, of the dozens of jobs emailed to me in a week, about 1/3 are no longer vacant, another 1/3 are fakes (yes, you've got to watch out for scams there too), and most the rest completely ignore the criteria I tediously customised, so that the positions aren't suitable for me (or I'm not suitable for them, depending upon how one wants to see it)...
And, yes, there are recruiters there who earn money giving generic advice and insight in blog posts, collecting likes, hearts, laughs, and comments (although the angry comments from actual job seekers can be entertaining) while probably neglecting their real jobs (that explains why most never get back to you).
I'm not really a fan and I find it overwhelming as well.
By all means though, keep writing! Big things happen when you least expect them to 😊
I know beggars can't be choosers, but the only jobs I'm interested in for now are part-time, off-line, non-teaching jobs, which in Vienna as a non-German speaker aren't exactly easy to come by!
You're not a beggar, you're a writer 😉
I know a non-German-speaker who teaches English as a foreign language on a free-lance basis in Germany for an institution called Berlitz?! It's often one-on-one with and online...
They have Berlitz here too, I might look into it. There are one or two options. Obviously online it’s easy to teach, but I spend so much time at my computer as it is writing, that I want to limit my time sitting. I also should get out more and make an attempt to be less of a hermit!
Vienna isn’t the best place for offline teaching jobs - most people here speak very good English already. But I will look.
(So many interesting jobs in the UK I’d love to apply for, but alas…)
You have a unique perspective, experience and expertise that I think could do very well on social media with the right strategy. From what I have gathered of your book, I don’t think BookTok is the target audience but I do think there is another audience on tiktok for you
Thank you for the kind words - way too kind, in fact, you're giving me too much credit. The 'right strategy' is the sticking point. I have no idea what that is! Maybe it wasn't clear on my post, but all of my so-called research was on Instagram, I've still never seen Tiktok - I think it's only from other people in public, like on transport, that I've noticed it, or when people put TikTok snippets on their Insta pages. So I might just take a blind approach and start posting without knowing how it's supposed to be done? Hell if I know!
I mean it. I've grown/consulted on various platforms for different orgs (including some *niche* stuff) and imo you could easily come up with an actionable strategy if you decided to go for it. if ever you want another perspective, you could always DM me if you wanted :)
Thanks for the mention and the tag Daniel. I was reading what you said about Instagram and I still love the platform, but if it made me feel that crap I think I'd have ditched it long ago. It's so hard to find the balance between self-promotion and ...well crying I suppose! Really interesting to see that snippet from Jennie O'Connor. As to YouTube, I have just started my business channel, when I say just started I mean created a channel but not filmed anything yet! Good luck - having a business consultant is fab, he'll see you right.
Appreciate you reading, and I hope you didn't listen to the voiceover, I think I totally mispronounced your surname 🫢.
I forgot to clarify in my post that I spend so little time on Instagram that it doesn't necessarily take up my time, but I understand what you mean when you say it made you feel like crap. I often think 'there's no way I can compete with this' (mainly because I don't want to). I've been meaning to get a YouTube channel going and I started by doing video podcasts right here on Substack, only a couple so far but with more to come. I might persist that strategy or just take my chances on TikTok. I hope my friend/consultant (well, technically he's not a consultant, but he is very savvy in this area, it's his area of expertise) can help, he'll definitely have some 'interesting' strategies. We shall see!
I didn't listen, but I can't pronounce my name so I shouldn't worry! It's my husband's name & the only reason I took it was because it was more interesting than mine, but it is a bit of a pain! Good luck with YouTube & TikTok if you make it there!