Social Media learnings

Social media is frustrating.

6 years ago, I left Google to pursue my Paperdemon business full time. Various forms of social media including videos, image posts, live streams, and tweets have been a part of my regular day to day work. But I’ve often felt like Sisyphus trying to move a boulder up a mountain. Spending hours and hours every week creating content and posting to far too many social media accounts only to have little to no material results. Exoduces happen from older platforms, and new platforms keep popping up. When I’m finally starting to grow on one channel, an algorithm changes, and I struggle to regain momentum.

Even when I had a couple of videos go viral and get 1 million views, it didn’t actually produce meaningful results.

10K target audience views > 1 million viral views

But for the first time I actually have fucking hope.

For the first time since I started promoting the PaperDemon Art RPG and Art Community on social media, I’m finally starting to see results. And it’s not just on one platform.

In the past 3 weeks I’ve gained over 300 followers on Tiktok and 250 subscribers on Youtube. 🎉🎉🎉

To put this in perspective, it took me 6 years to get my first 1000 Youtube subscribers. It took me 3 weeks to get the next 250 subscribers.

That’s fucking nuts.

It was not luck. I had two videos in this time period get more than 10K views. Interestingly, the video that did well on Tiktok was not the same video that did well on Youtube. I’ve also had several other videos getting more than 1K views. These views have indeed translated into more signups on PaperDemon.com. I went from an average of 3 signups a day to 9 a day.

So what changed? Why am I suddenly doing better? What is it I learned or started doing differently?

I hired an expert

The first right choice I made was hiring a social media coach.

I’ve tried throughout these past several years to create quality content myself and learn on my own. None of the articles, classes, resources I consumed were enough to help me achieve meaningful results. I also tried to delegate to experts. Over the years I’ve hired four different people at different times to either assist or be responsible for my social media. Unfortunately, none of them could deliver any meaningful impact. And it cost me a lot of money.

But on tiktok I found an expert who actually has hundreds of thousands of followers who specializes in coaching artists who want to grow their businesses on social media. I reached out for my first coaching call and it blew my mind. They were super direct telling me exactly what type of content to make and what NOT to make, how to find trending content, and how to best promote Paperdemon. A lot of it was unexpected and very different from advice I had gotten before and different from what I’d observed others do. Then I got to work and made and posted the content.

I find this model of hiring a coach particularly compelling because it’s very cost effective. I can create the content myself, which is more impactful anyway, while having the right direction to help me achieve results.

I tried Tiktok

I didn’t want to do Tiktok for all the same reasons everyone else doesn’t want to do it. There’s concerns with the ethical origins of the company, addictive design of the platform, etc. And who wants to try and invest in YET ANOTHER social media platform when you’re already investing so much time in the others. Every time my friends told me to try tiktok, I told them no. But one of my friends finally talked me into it and I opened an account around July 2024.

I actually saw growth there quite quickly. I think its a platform that rewards you for quality content even if you have a low followers/subscriber count. I went from 0 – 800 followers in 9 months.

If you find a platform where you actually make progress, then the others don’t matter and you can shift your attention to the ones that work.

You can see what I’ve been making on Tiktok here.

I created mediocre content, then kept improving

“We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better.” – Walt Stanchfield.

If you’ve read any resources on social media or content marketing, you’ve probably read “content is king.” I needed to create a lot of mediocre content before I could start to create good content. I have a lot of skills as an artist but I was struggling to convey my wisdom in a way that would work well on social media. And it took me a while to get comfortable being live and in front of a camera.

But also a big struggle I had was figuring out the right type of content to make. I had done long form tutorial videos on YouTube and those tended to do better than other videos but they took a lot longer to make. For short vertical videos I tried to do art reveals and time lapses because that’s what everyone else was doing. But I didn’t have much luck there. I also experimented with other types of videos like lore, featured art from the community, and many other things people suggested to me.

My coach suggested I do tutorials instead and they perform consistently better than anything else I make. I wasn’t making those because for some reason I thought tutorials would only work for long form, not short form. And another creator in a similar space to me said tutorials don’t work as lead gens. But it turns out once again I got bad advice.

And it makes sense why I’d do better with tutorials. I’ve been making digital art for 25 years and I feel very comfortable teaching and have prior experience doing it. I kind of have a natural talent for it. And it’s high value content for my target audience.

Short form videos are the most effective way right now for me to communicate to my audience and provide quality and meaningful content. And the fact I can create and post in one day makes me more likely to finish. I still have a draft for a long form video that I’ve been working on for four months that I haven’t finished yet.

Writing my video hook/title first before writing the script helps a lot with SEO. Having the tools to know what content is trending helped, too.

i think the biggest mistake I made is I was trying to copy the content that I was seeing. I figured these other people are successful with this type of content so I should make the same content. But that didn’t work at all. My coach had a much better idea for an effective content strategy.

another thing different I’m doing is promoting the game much better in every video. Either after the intro hook or at the very end. I’ve also done some videos showing the UI. Those havent done as well but may do better after I make some website upgrades. I still have more types of content I want to experiment with.

The order of operations

  1. Research trending topics, ideally evergreen, that are relevant to my target audience. TikTok creator insights or Tubebuddy for Youtube
  2. Choose a topic to target, then write the title or hook stuffed with target topics/keywords
  3. Write a script
  4. Record
  5. Edit (ideally using a good phone app, not a desktop app)
  6. Post
  7. Repost older videos that performed poorly but were good quality with tweaks to hook, intro, outro, etc.

I’m no longer doing a content calendar. This was something I used to do but it’s not working for me at the moment.

I find that I often come up with ideas that sound great in the moment and the ideas just pile up in a graveyard and never get executed because another idea came along or my perfectionism got in the way. Currently it works best for me if I act on the idea when I have it and finish it (or mostly finish it) same day or next day and post within 24 hours.

Mental wellness

I’ve read from multiple sources over the years that the key to being successful on social media is to be “my authentic self” but actually executing on that has been a challenge for me.

A big problem was my mindset. I couldn’t show up authentically because I was too anxious and afraid to do so. Self confidence has been a struggle for me for all of my life. And unfortunately, that lack of confidence was showing through in my videos.

Earlier this year I made some big changes in my personal life and I restarted my Miracle Morning self care routine. These changes helped me do a complete 180 on my self confidence and mindset. Visualization through journaling has been the most effective technique I’ve been using. Most days I journal using prompts related to healing, manifesting, self confidence, and visualizing the future.

This primes me to have the confidence to show up in my videos.

Investing the Time

Another huge factor was the time commitment. To do quality short form videos it takes me anywhere from 3 to 8 hours total to do SEO topic research, draft a script, record, edit, and post (and repost to other socials). Art tutorials are on the longer end. And if I recall correctly, this 23K views video took me a whole day. I’m currently posting 3 per week but my goal is to work my way up to one per day per my coach’s recommendations. Realistically I can only do that if I figure out a way to make content faster or effectively reuse old content.

Because of my family responsibilities, I struggled to find the time to dedicate to this alongside my other time sensitive responsibilities. I was providing part time childcare for my son and also had frequent interruptions throughout the day for family obligations. I now have reliable child care Monday through Friday, I’ve recently found myself with a lot more time to work and dedicate to the business and keep up with the demanding social media schedule.

And the more content I create, the faster I can fail and the more I learn.

I’ll keep going and see where this leads.

I have more I could say on the topic but I’ve got to get back to manifesting. If you find this interesting, let me know and I’ll write more.

I’m pregnant!

My life is about to change.

I’m currently 25 weeks pregnant. Baby is due at end of January. I’m very excited to become a mama!

My husband, Mike, hasn’t quite wrapped his head around it yet. But I know once he holds his little boy he’ll go into full on dad mode.

Yes we’re having a boy!

What was finding out like?

Finding out I was pregnant was a shock. We started trying in January but given my age and my anxiety, I was pessimistic and expected it to take a long while before I’d get pregnant. A few months later, my period was a week late so I took a pregnancy test. I was fully expecting that the test would be negative and I’d just get my period late, which happens quite a bit for me.

But there was a big fat “pregnant” reading on the digital display staring right back in my face. I screamed! Mike ran into the bathroom to see if I was ok and see what was wrong. I jumped for joy and showed him the positive test!

His reaction? “Oh boy!” like in a nervous sort of way. He wants to become a dad but at the same time, change is really hard for him and he especially has a hard time visualizing what change is like. Once change is thrust upon him, he adapts.

What has the pregnancy been like so far?

First trimester I was super tired all the time. I had like 2 weeks straight where I couldn’t work. I was lucky to make it out of bed and to the couch. I was quite surprised by this and didn’t realize first trimester was so tiring. I don’t know how other pregnant moms can work in that first trimester and how they keep it a secret from their co-workers and manager. Thankfully I am my own boss so I didn’t have to tell anyone I didn’t want to.

I did have morning sickness but it wasn’t bad enough to cause me to vomit, thankfully. But I definitely was nauseous a lot and ended up losing 5 pounds.

Thankfully my energy returned in the second trimester and I’ve been able to get a lot of work done preparing for baby. We’ve got the nursery painted and starting putting together the nursery furniture (Mike did most of the work).

Tiredness is starting to return again. I have a day here and there where I just take long naps and get almost nothing done. Sometimes when this happens I freak out and have a meltdown. I think this is happening because I know I only have so many weeks left to get work done on the business. I have a lot of goals I’m trying to tackle before I take my leave.

Heartburn has also started becoming a daily thing.

I ended up going off of my anxiety medication early in the pregnancy because the meds have a negative impact on the baby that I didn’t want to risk. I had a couple weeks of anxiety after going off of it but somehow recovered. I’m very thankful that my anxiety hasn’t been that bad. I know a lot of expectant moms have anxiety over the baby and whether it’s ok and developing well. But all my tests have gone well, no sign of issues. Baby is healthy! Yay!

My mood was kind of all over the place in first trimester but has leveled off in second. I still have my meltdowns but they aren’t frequent.

I suspect the reason I’m feeling so good is because my lovely kitty, Diamond, keeps me company and brings me a lot of happiness. And because I’m just really excited to be a mother. Especially when I feel my little guy kick or move around, I just smile and feel so happy.

My most recent symptom has been hunger. I eat two breakfasts now and have to snack a lot. I get really strong urges to eat big meals and I get cravings for random things. Usually carb heavy stuff. Earlier in the pregnancy I was craving cheeseburgers.

I feel a little weird being older and just starting my family now. There’s lots of people my age with kids in their teens. I got a late start. But hopefully our choice to delay having children will allow us to provide better for our children and for ourselves financially.

Balancing work?

I plan to take 3 months off from PaperDemon while caring for baby but I wont be able to take a complete break. I’ll likely still need to do checkins with my team to make sure things are still moving, as well as handling financial matters like processing orders and paying bills and payroll.

But I will take a complete break from website development. This makes sense because if I deploy new code while having limited availability, I might trigger instability on the site that wont get fixed for a long while. So it’s safer to just have a code freeze by December and have it last until I get back to full time.

After three months of baby leave, the plan is to get child care. But that plan may have to change if the pandemic is still ongoing. It also just might be hard to leave my little guy with a stranger at that young of an age so we’ll see. I may be able to get some help from family.

It’s going to be hard because I really want to keep working. I love working on my business. But I also really want to focus on baby. We’ll see how it goes!

One Week Left Of My Internship

Life is good. Work is hard. It’s almost the end of summer and the end of my internship. This has been my first real experience with a real full time job. It feels great to be moving out of the school phase of my life and into the working phase but at the same time I feel a little depressed about it. Not because I’ll miss school. Far from it. I am getting sick of school! But I’ve found that having a full time job that mostly involves sitting on your butt in front of a computer all day can be quite draining. I’m often so tired by the end of the day that what free time I do have, I don’t want to spend on the computer. Which means my personal projects like ZMT and PaperDemon.com don’t get as much attention as they used to.

I still have one last year of school left. I will be working part time during the school year.

I can’t take on anything new. From now on, anyone who approaches me about any sort of project, whether it be a flash project, art request, website design, I will just have to say no. For the first time in my life I’m saying ‘no.’ I have this problem where I get really excited about projects and say ‘yes’ to every opportunity that comes at me, whether or not I have the time for it. Now I don’t even have as much time for the project that matters to me most, PaperDemon.com.

In other news, I’ve finally got my hands on some real music software. I bought Reason. I’m still trying to get the hang of it though. It’s not the most user-friendly program out there. But I’ve signed up for a workshop being held next weekend. So as soon as I get the hang of this program I can start posting more of my music.

 

Week 1 @ Google

I’ve finished my first week at Google. It seemed to go by so fast. They had a lot of new hires this week so my equipment still isn’t all available yet. But luckily I got enough of it to get started on some actual work by Friday.

I made my first submit to the Google server on Friday! That means I made my first change to a web page on the Google server. It was just a small change on the about page for Gmail. All I did was change the languages from 38 to 40 and add Hebrew and Arabic to the language list. But I feel pretty special about it. I also got to work on my first icon. I also have a meeting for my first real project on Monday :D!

I really like the atmosphere at Google. By the end of my first week I was feeling really comfortable. I no longer feel nervous or anxious. My co-workers are really nice and have been a big help in getting me up to speed on how to use the Google file systems and learning the procedures. There’s a lot of documentation I’ve had to go through and read. I sort of felt like I was cramming for a final :lol:. It’s been a challenge though because a lot of it is centralized around Unix and I only just started learning Unix a month ago.

Anyway, I just really love it there. I like the people, the food, the equipment, and the work. I just know this is going to be the best summer of my life.

 

Day 1 @ Google

Rule number one about Fight Club, don’t talk about Fight Club!

That’s pretty much how it is at Google. I can’t tell you anything about what’s going on there. That’s just how it is.

I’m very tired. I didn’t really do any work today but it was hectic running all over the place to do orientations, setting up stuff, etc.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go shower and collapse on my bed

 

I’m Working at Google this Summer!

On Tuesday I start my new internship at Google. I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to meet the other interns and learn what life is like as a Googler.

I am really proud to be working at Google. My manager is the guy who does all of the Google holiday logos! Can you believe that?! That is AWESOME. I’m looking forward to working with him and learning the secrets of the Google doodles. Every time I think about the fact that I’ll be working at Google I pinch myself just to make sure I’m not dreaming.

Another Google intern sent me a link to this cool site called Gintern.net that displays all the Google intern blogs.

Anyway, the art section of my blog site is FINALLY done.

There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to learning this summer. I’m told I’ll be making a lot of icons and such. I don’t see myself as a really great icon designer so I’ll get a lot of practice and learn all the tricks. I’m hoping to take what I learn at Google and apply it to PaperDemon.com to make it easier for members to post their artwork and such. I’m also looking forward to trying out the hardware. I hear they use Tablet PCs for drawing and I’ve never drawn on one before. If I like it, I may buy one for myself. It will be nice to have a little computer to use as my sketchbook. I will be able to do watercolor without carrying around a paint set! I like painting digitally better than painting traditionally anyway.

Another thing I think I will buy is that Reason software for making digital music. The music programs I have now are so crappy. That is part of the reason why I haven’t posted any new music in the music section of my site for a long time. I’m waiting to get some better software with a better piano sound font.

Google gives free meals every day for employees and I’m hoping I don’t gain any weight.