The Every Platform Experiment – Business Brain 613

Business brain, episode 613 for Casual Friday, January 10, Quitters Day, which is meant to inspire us not to quit.

Yes.

Yes, 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, a show where we inspect, dissect, and do something else with ideas so that we can learn from them and better tune our business brains each and every episode. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it? This will be Friday. Fun Casual Friday.

Fun Casual Friday. Yeah. Yeah, that's the idea.

Awesome.

Quitters Day.

That's crazy.

I thought it was an interesting thing. Well, it's not as crazy as Snuggle a Chicken day.

Yeah, that was odd, too.

Yeah. It's the second Friday in January each. And it is. The tradition of setting New Year's resolutions began some 4,000 years ago with the Babylonians. And that's kind of where this came from because. Let's see the history of Quitters Day. Oh, it was conducted by Strava, the social network for athletes, and it found that 80% of people who made a New Year's resolution tapped out by this point in January. Yeah.

That's wild.

Yep. And so they. They came up with Quitters Day to inspire us, to remind us of the quitters and inspire us not.

Not to quit. I like that. Sure.

Yeah. It's good.

Makes sense.

It does. I've been doing an experiment. I've done this occasionally over, you know, maybe once every two years. Ish. Where I'm calling it my every platform experiment. And what I'm doing is anytime I think of something to post to social media, I post it everywhere. And when I say everywhere, and I'm pulling out my phone so I don't forget where I post things. Facebook, Instagram, and threads. That's actually pretty easy because they're all the same company.

Can you post on one platform? And it pushes it out to everything. Right.

So as long as it has a.

That's.

As long as it has a picture with. Well, yeah, but it's not just, I guess for the purpose of this experiment, it is not one, but it is. It's one post, which is great. And then I post to X and I post to Blue sky and I post to Mastodon. So there's five, six, five. One, two, three, four, five, six. You're right. Yeah. You can count.

That's why my fingers right here.

That's why you do use your fingers. That's right hand number two. And the idea is. And generally what I do is it'll be a picture with some commentary. And so I copy the commentary to my clipboard. I think I could probably write a shortcut on my iPhone to do this or to at least autumn semi automate this. And I probably should, or at least I should look to see if somebody else has because that would make life easier. But the, the reason I'm doing it this time is to see where the engagement happens with my audiences on these various platforms. And I have audiences on any one of them. I have audiences of, you know, probably the lowest one would be a thousand people, maybe a little more than a thousand. So it, it's enough of an audience in each place to get some sort of a gauge of reaction. Okay. The purpose of this is so that I can make a decision as to which platform or platforms I should focus on with my posts. It doesn't mean I would stop posting on the others, but this is a little bit overwhelming to do this all the time.

Oh yeah.

You know, it's not terrible. I mean, it takes me a couple of min, but, and so I'm using. This isn't going to be the deciding metric. It's certainly not going to be the only metric, but it is an important metric to see. Like, okay, if a platform gets no interaction or engagement for me, I'm probably not going to keep posting there. Now I realize that that's counter to what you did, you know, starting about a year ago, where you had, you had no engagement on X because you had no following on X, so.

Yes, correct.

So you, you went through a process of intentionally developing a following. You picked the platform first and then grew and focused and just, you know, bullheaded persistence. I'm gonna make it happen. And, and so I may do that too. Right. I may decide. But I, I'm trying to get a feel for where my audience or audiences are because I am noticing that they have moved. I get from my tech audience from that stuff that's not happening on X at all anymore. Yeah, it's, that's all on threads, Mastodon and maybe Blue Sky. And so that was like where it was like, well, but where are they actually? And so that's why I started this.

I, I, I, yeah, there you're, you're experimenting to see that. I, I guess if all of those sites give you the analytics that you can look at to see like who.

But the analytics that matters the most for me is actual human replies, replies, likes, the, the, the things where someone took an action.

Yeah.

And I agree. Actually engaged that I don'. And maybe I. Maybe I'm doing this wrong. Like, but I don't care when it says, you know, whatever, you know, 5,000 people saw this post. Like, well, but which five.

It depends on what you're trying. It depends on you should. Because I'll tell you why.

This is why I want to have this conversation.

It depends on what you're trying to achieve and the way it. If you have a thousand followers and you. Your post got viewed 800 times, that really, you know, means that only your followers saw that and not even all of them.

Right.

So if you're trying to grow beyond and attract new people to your feed, you have to get beyond the thousand I get.

Okay. Okay.

Yep. So. So you. The views. That's the reason the views are important to understand of the. There's a mix like you that we call them. You know, there's 80% value posting 20% other stuff, fun things, interesting things, you know, that kind of stuff. And what I have found is that sometimes the 20% drives a tremendous amount of traffic. I had 1.9 million views on a discussion about why Goofy Beef Tenderloin. Right. A couple weeks ago.

Right.

Does that add the type of follower that I want? No, but it lifts every other post I have up. So views do count that way. But you're. You're right that the engagement is everything. The replies, the comments, all that kind of stuff. And I like the idea of spreading it out and, and seeing, you know, which works better. I think that's. I think you're. You're on the right track.

Okay. So I. The thing you talked about here with the intentional growth and looking, you know, the, you know, having a formula and doing the 8020 thing, that's my plan for after I decide which platform.

Which one.

Right. So this is great. This is more. You're right. It. This is really speaking only to my existing audiences in these places. And it's to see are you still here.

Yes. I love that.

Right.

And you're right that it. There is a shift. Different people go to different platforms. There's some smaller ones. And, and the. You. You. You get a different value out of a specific platform that you make the demographics very different than on LinkedIn.

Yes.

X, you know, threads or Blue Sky. Very different. So you're. You're being intentional that I'm just trying.

To figure out people that have already decided to follow me.

Yep.

Are. Where are you now? Because I know you were like on X at one point because that was really the only place I had a following. And now I get far more engagement out of Facebook than X.

Yes.

But it's like. But Facebook's different than like X and Threads and Blue sky and Mastodon. And so I'm really trying to figure out which of those is the right place for me. And maybe different and different subjects go different places.

Absolutely, absolutely.

But I'm only going to focus on growing one at a time.

Yeah. That is what I was going to get at. I do believe that if you want to have. If you really want to build something and measure it and turn it into something, whether it's a business or whatever, just following creative. Whatever you're doing, it is better to master one at a time.

Yeah.

Because it's it number one. It takes a lot of time. No doubt about it. I mean, I've posted 21,840 times in the last less than a year. Wow. In January I had 541 followers and now I have 33,168. Okay. Yep. So. But I found an audience on X. Right. People wanted to talk about the stuff I was interested in talking about right now. There's definitely like, if you were in the crypto space, it's dead. It's actually lowers you in the algorithm if you're talking about crypto now. Because it just got. Yeah, it's. You'll see people will write the word crypto, but they replace the Y with a number or something so the algorithms like doesn't say, you know, see that kind of stuff. So.

Yep.

So it. And I know I'm good friends with another creator that he had a crypto account with 100,000 followers that he just turned off because it stopped working. And he built a brand new account from zero on up because he's like, well, that's not where the engagement is, which is similar to what you're doing is like where did. Where are the people that want to interact with.

Yeah. So I'm. So I'm running a. I'm running a litmus test really. And then I'm going to focus my. And I. I could have told you this part going in, but it's certainly proving out I am going to need to have a presence on multiple networks because I need, you know, one place for this type of content, the entrepreneur business content. I'm pretty sure that's going to be X. I need one place for the tech content and I'm not sure where that is yet. I'm not sure if that's going to be threads. I think long term it will be threads. I don't know if it's threads today it Mastodon. But yeah. So anyway, I gotta solve that. And then there's the music stuff and like there's zero question in my mind that Instagram is absolutely the right place for that.

Makes sense.

That's where artists are, that's where creatives are. And so it's like, okay, but that's a lot of work. So I can't grow all of them simultaneously. I don't have, I don't want to.

You need an assistant, Dave?

Oh, I have one. Oh yeah.

So my assistant takes my content from X and pushes it over to LinkedIn.

Okay.

And, and, and then she manages. We have a linked. A newsletter on LinkedIn, so she manages that and I'll. And then she'll alert me if a comment that I should get involved in or something like that. But so that helps me a lot. And I had no, no followers on LinkedIn. And about four months ago I got, she started taking that over and now I have like 1500. But okay, one of those followers. What can I, what value can I add to them? And vice versa. What am I trying to do? And I'm learning on LinkedIn there's lots of aspirational entrepreneurs, business owners that work for corporations that would like to lead a charmed life. And so as you, as I discuss these things, it's a. Yeah, it's a. What is the value proposition along the entire chain because the more value you can add to, to their lives, the. That law of reciprocity.

Yes, of course.

And you know, it's like, I'm not always, I don't want to always sell. I'm not selling. I'm just talking about stuff. But like we do here what we've done and things we've learned. But eventually there becomes a group of people that do want your time and would like to hire you to do, to coach them or to give them some information.

Yes.

Buy some curriculum. And it's great. I love it. It's super rewarding. I never thought I would, you know, productize my knowledge like this, but it's cool.

Well, let me, let me ask you, Let me ask you this. I sound like Clarence Carter, but I'm.

Not going to ask you the question.

He was going to ask long. I realize right now the bulk of your following and therefore the bulk of the valuable following for you is on X. And of course that makes sense because you spent a year.

Yeah.

Focusing on X long term, do you think LinkedIn is more valuable for that type of content than X.

Not right now, but that I don't mean.

That's what I mean long, long term.

I, I meant the, the type. To your point, the audience for what I'm talking about seems to be heavy on X. Now out of that 31,33,000 followers about are verified. And that is a different level of commitment. Right. That is somebody who's paying to be there. That is the, that's a loyal.

That's an X.com loyalty program, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right. And, and it allow. It's just a different.

Yeah.

Demographic. You know, you're always looking for people versus an anonymous account. You know, I don't want to say it has more value in some ways, but it doesn't mean that they're not valuable. But I will expand out to Instagram and other platforms but not until I know I'm not ready because I don't have the backend system in place to handle it yet.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Probably when I get to 100,000 followers maybe okay. Then it'll be time to jump over and I'll have more infrastructure, maybe have another person or two to help me is because it's a. These. Once you get up, it's a lot of time. I mean you can burn your whole day up here and it's awesome meeting new people, connecting with. I mean it's, it's mind blowing the connections that you will make on these platforms and I never really understood the true value. And I credit you, Dave, for pushing me to get back involved in X. You were like. Because I was like, no, it's full of garbage and this. And you're like, no, no, you're using it wrong. And I tell people that now all the time too. It's like, wait, that's right. The algorithm is giving you what you're looking at.

What it is giving you what you told it you wanted.

Yes, yes. And so if I once I kind of grasp that a little bit better and I started focusing on small business and entrepreneurship and this and that, it changed everything.

I recommend. I know you did this, but I recommend everyone create a sock puppet account. A fake, fake account's the wrong thing. You should have.

I like three.

Yeah, but create those and experiment with the algorithm with those and you will see very, very quickly.

Dramatic.

If you pick like, okay, all I'm going to talk about on this thing is politics and you will get inundated with this stuff.

Yes.

And then you pick. Okay, well on this one, all I'm going to talk about is knitting. And suddenly that's it. Like you would think that X is the knitting network and it's not. Right. You know, but they give you what you want.

Yes. And understanding that if, you know, if you want to connect with other people, whether you're trying to find vendors, suppliers or clients and customers, use that to your advantage.

Yes.

You know, get into the flow of conversation, whether it's on LinkedIn or X or whoever it is that connects you with people in just a very different way. Whether it's. You can do it on Reddit, but the fastest way to grow your account is by replying to other posts. If you're under a thousand followers, no one's going to see your post. It just doesn't happen. They don't promote it as much how it works. But finding what you do is find larger accounts that talk about what you're there for, turn on notifications for those accounts so you get notified when, when they post something and get up there and leave a valuable comment as quick as you can. Then you'll be in the flow of conversation and people will start talking to you about your comment and your reply and that. And those people will start following you.

Yes.

Yeah, it's cool. It's, it's great. And I, you know, keep us posted on your experiment here because I'm interested in how you manage and, you know, what, what the metric is that tells you one is more successful than the other. Because I believe. And I'll predict, we'll do a prediction here. You'll get different measurements of different, you know, from each platform. That'll, it'll be hard to compare apples to apples.

It's not apples to apples. I mean there, there's some version of apples to apples here, but in the end it's gonna, I'm gonna have to make a leap of faith.

Yes.

And say, okay, I, you know, here's what I've seen. I am going to choose this platform as my IT really the question is the tech platform and I suppose the business platform too, because I, I think. And I spend absolutely no time on LinkedIn, but I think LinkedIn might be better long term, maybe for what I want to do business wise.

Yeah, it depends. It. And I think that's is just like I try to talk all the time. Do it backwards.

Yeah.

Start at what is it I want to achieve in a year, in two years.

Exactly.

And then just, just work it backwards and that, I think that'll help it. And certainly there'll be some subjective because the Type of engagement may be better for you or may motivate you more on one platform versus another. Like, I don't.

Facebook's motivation or Facebook's engagement a hundred percent motivates me the most.

That's awesome.

Every time.

That's great. And like on X, you. One of the things I dislike about it is it's easy to. I know how to turn on engagement, but I don't like to be controversial all the time.

Of course.

Right. I mean, I have a post right now that's growing and growing and growing, and it turned into a conversation. I was just posting about this Google thing popping up in my new truck because it runs Android Auto, apparently in the background. It does not like CarPlay that it runs on top of it. It is the operating system.

Oh. The car itself is running Android Auto.

Interesting. And I tried to turn everything off because I was like, well, I don't use.

Yeah.

And when I go to use Apple Maps, a big thing pops up and says, oh, Maps won't work. Right. Because you've turned off the Google Play Store. And I said, wait a minute, this is not right. So I just posted about that and it turned into an argument between Google Maps and Apple Maps. Of course, not by me, but by everybody else.

No, that's the festering cesspool of the Internet.

That's right.

And this. For anyone who thinks that this is new, I have news for you. Like, it goes all the way back. Well, I mean, it's human nature, first of all.

It is.

But in terms of it happening online, I think we can go back about 40 years to Usenet, the beginning of all of that, and maybe 45 years. And the. I certainly one of the first flame wars was which text editor is the right one to use? And it's. Is it emacs or is it vi? And in the right circles, you can still stoke the flames. Yeah, yeah. But like. And then. And then for a long time it was. And. And it still exists to a degree, but not like it was. It was. Is it Mac or is it PC or. And now is it, you know, Android or iOS?

Yeah.

And it. This will always be a thing. And, and it's fine. I mean, we, we, like, we traded on that with Mac observer for two decades.

Yeah.

It was wonderful.

That friction.

Yes.

Is also an opportunity. So that's where I say the 8020 rule. Like, I, you know, I don't want to talk about a Wagyu beef tenderloin that costs a thousand dollars, but I posted. I'm interested.

I'M like, well, if it's a curiosity.

If Costco sells it for a thousand, what do other stores sell it for? Yeah, people just, you know, like I said, 2 million people, 2 million views. But you can't do that all the time. That's at 20%. You know, maybe even those kind of posts, maybe even 10%. But you, then you got to bring in all the value. The more value you add, the more you give of yourself on these platforms. Oh, the reciprocity faucet just turns on it.

And that, I mean, that's, that's sort of part and parcel of my career has been just helping people and giving advice. So that part of it is natural for me. It's where is the val? Like, where is the value going to be best received? Or, or where is it giving back to you? Yeah. Where is it currently best received? And then I'll use that to help me make the decision as to where I think it will in the future be best received. And I could be wrong. Those might not be related.

Well, yeah, I think it, it just always changes and you need to be prepared for that change.

Yes.

You know.

Yes.

For sure. Awesome. This was an interesting topic for Friday. We're not going to go when you come back next week because I have an interesting topic about emotion and desire and how that is an important. Those two topics or pieces of human nature can be used to sell anything.

Yes. And we'll have Scott Jordan from Scotty guest on next week, too. That's just going to be a whole lot of fun. I, I think. Yep, he is. I've known Scott for a long time and he, I've tried to get him on the show for, well, what, 10 years and we're finally gonna make it happen. That's right. So. Yep. Terrific. It's gonna be a blast. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Make sure you go to BusinessBrain show review and leave us that review because we, we want it and we love it.

We need it.

We need it.

That's the cost.

Keep on living that charmed life. We'll see you next week. Have a great weekend. Later.

See ya.