I’m going to post one video every day for two weeks and share the results with you.
I’ve been writing a newsletter on Substack for almost 3 years now.
Notes, leaderboards, those badges that reveal how cheap you are; none of them existed that first fateful day I used Substack to send my wife and mother issue number 1 of The Recovering Line Cook.
Thanks to Substack and its features alone, I’ve managed to build a pretty decent number of subs since then, certainly for someone with zero social media following and no previous published work.
But I’ve increasingly come to feel that it’s short-sighted to rely solely on Substack to find readers as well.
Billions use social media platforms and, thanks to the algorithm-based system these platforms use now, you don’t need any followers at all to get in front of tens of thousands of people with very little effort.
Earlier this summer I started dipping my toes into the TikTok/Instagram waters to try and build awareness of me and my work. That didn’t mean only going on there, telling people that I write a newsletter and expecting results. I thought about the stories important to me and my writing and I started making videos reflecting that.
This led me to the kind of thing I’m sharing below: a simple video about a favourite Finnish food with a voiceover about the differences between an aspect of life in Finland and England.
At the time I had about 200 followers on TikTok, but that salmon video was seen over 25,000 times.
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No, I’m not suggesting even a fraction of that 25,000 will Google me, find my newsletter and pay for a subscription.
But maybe it’s a first step.
I love social media videos. I love the thoughtful, interesting ones, and I enjoy the stupid ones my old chef mates send me. I also love sitting down to Alicia Kennedy’s Monday newsletter and Michael Procopio’s beautiful memoir work he shares on Substack.
Amongst the billions of people across Instagram and TikTok, I know there are people who would be interested in my writing as well.
How I’m doing this
Subject: My newsletter has always been as much about my life as an immigrant in Finland as it is about food. The content I plan to create for social media will reflect this while showcasing my personality (besides I could never compete with the high-end food content out there).
Form: Just like good writing, you can’t assume reader/viewer attention. Though I want my video content to be true to me, I know it needs to be optimised for the platform and I’m going to edit and structure things in the way that works on these platforms
Work load: This is a red line: everything I create will be done as quick and easy as possible. I want to create videos in minutes and on my phone. I have no time to make this a drain.
I want you to learn as well
Like I said, I have been haphazardly sharing videos over the summer; a few here and there with no cadence or consistency.
My experiment is to post every day for the next two weeks. Some videos will be thoughtful and take a bit more scripting such as the salmon one above, some will be quick and easy (like day 1s post below).
I want to see what kind of audience I can build in that time, only using a little dedication and commitment that I can then build on in the future.
I will be updating this article with the daily video and the results and lessons learned. If you’re curious, check back on this post—I’ll be updating it daily. Hopefully it can help some of you guys find a following of your own and, ultimately, lead people to your writing.
Day 1
I wanted to get going fast and while shopping on Monday I saw a product I considered “peak Finland”: licorice yoghurt. Not the most hard hitting of subjects, but so far it has over 60,000 views across TT and Insta.
Followers:
TikTok: 999
Insta: 2112
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Day 2
Coming soon…