My first exposure with robots was at an engineering camp I attended when I was 15, and let me tell you: it was not love at first sight. I loved the programming aspect of it (that camp was also where I was introduced to programming), …
One of the things I love about being a technical consultant is that I’m encouraged to learn new things, even if they don’t directly relate to my projects. Over the past year one of those technologies has been Salesforce: first with my Platform Developer 1 …
Would I, unprompted, ever go to a kickboxing gym? Probably not.
Would I do it for Instagram? Absolutely
I received a message from a mixed martial arts studio in Dallas offering free classes to influencers. I thought this was an interesting tactic because though I definitely have the audience numbers and share a wider variety of lifestyle details on my stories, my feed is not at all about fitness.
They weren’t asking for the moon, just for recognition, which I’m all for. Also I’ve been slacking on my running routine lately so I figured this would be a great opportunity to force myself to do something healthy and active.
I told them I’d try out the Tuesday/Thursday fitness class because it fit into my schedule, but ended up having to opt out of the Tuesday one because work got crazy.
I had no idea what to expect beyond what I’d found on their website. I left work at 6pm to make the 6:30pm class and changed in my car in the parking garage (I usually avoid gyms like the plague, so I wasn’t taking my chances on the awkward “Do you have a bathroom I can change in?” conversation)
I walked in and the guy at the front-desk immediately recognized me as an outsider, asking “Is this your first time?” and handing me an extensive form to fill out about how I heard about them and what I was hoping to get out of the class.
At this point in time I had no idea who ran their IG account so I didn’t know what name I’d reference or who I’d talk to if they asked me to pay, but luckily the studio provides your first class free anyway so I didn’t have to have the conversation
There was no box to check that said “I’m just here because you guys messaged me” so I checked “self-discipline” under the motivation section
The front-desk guy set me up with boxing gloves and introduced me to the instructor (who had held the door open for me as I walked in). The training room was exactly what you’d expect: lots of punching bags, mat floor, wall of mirrors, typical.
The class itself ended up being four people and the instructor. This was actually a perfect number because it was enough people that the instructor didn’t watch me the whole time, and few enough that if I was “behind” it wasn’t like twenty other people were shaming me in terms of their physical prowess.
There was another girl there who seemed to be about 100x more into fitness than me (she was wearing a t-shirt from a different gym) and when I asked if she went there often her response was “just this month” which was an indicator to me that she was probably also approached on Instagram. I confirmed this later when I saw the gym repost her account on social media – she has around 2k followers and runs something of a model-account on Instagram (nice portrait photographs of herself done by local photographers).
To that end, no one said anything about Instagram while I was there which was both eerie and nice because I knew someone associated with the gym was probably on the lookout for the people they had contacted. It felt like I’d just gone in for a class for the first time and was really, really, out of shape.
I posted about going to the gym in my stories after the class in my typical story-style. Their account responded fairly quickly, thanking me for coming
It was at this point that I realized that the instructor for the class I was in is probably an admin for their Instagram account. Was it a weird feeling to think that the guy who held the door open for me when I walked in knew who I was before I even said hi? Yes. Yes it was. Is it something I’ll just have to get over? Also, yes.
I actually really liked the class. They messaged me to say I still had a month of free training sessions, so I’ll probably continue to go back (and post when I do). If I really like it I might actually sign up with the gym. It’s currently four days post-class and I’m still comically sore, but I figure after another week or two of this routine my body will stop hating physical activity.
In terms of engagement, a fair number of people did click on the link to the studio’s page and I got a lot of feedback from people who are already engaged in the activity (e.g. “I do this! This is so cool! You should try Jiu Jitsu!”) so it was a great conversation starter in terms of connecting with my audience.
A local business not at all affiliated with technology reached out to me offering a free service in exchange for publicity. I said yes because I enjoy adventures, it fit into my schedule, and I could fit their request in with my branding on Instagram. No one treated me like I was well-known and it was all around a good experience. I might actually end up signing up with the martial arts studio full-time if the next couple weeks go well!
Good writers make you think, great writers make you want to change the world around you. I would argue without hesitation that Cathy O’Neil is a great writer, and with a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard you can rest assured that she knows what she’s …
Amazon Ranking: #11,008 Do you listen to Reply All? Did you listen to today’s? Weren’t you blogging about how amazon reviews are rigged? Well, that’s today’s episode! This was the series of texts I got from one of my friends who keeps up to date …
As with all of my posts that seem to be popular: I didn’t expect this one to be such a hit. It was just another morning before work as I frantically tried to think of a question that I hadn’t already asked before that would also be relevant to my current life (which at that moment was juggling a social and learning a new code base)
I was surprised when 6 hours in the post had already broken all of my previous records, for my account at its current engagement rate 2k likes is considered above average
When it was almost 24 hours and the post had gained momentum, I was still feeling baffled. Excited, but baffled.
Before the end of the second day, it had exceeded the 5k mark by a significant amount, leaving me curious about whatever had sparked this kind of response.
I’ve never had a post get 3k or even 4k likes before, so reaching 5k on accident meant that I was doing something different.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bkke8xjhbvv/?taken-by=jonesdoeslife
But the post really isn’t that different from any of my others: it’s a picture of me at a computer, asking a simple question and answering it. I posted it around the same time as usual and it’s really not that exceptional.
What was different this time is that the question I asked:
What this did is opened the dialogue up to people who wouldn’t necessarily be in my audience, but still like engaging in posts. People being able to answer in 1-2 words boosted the number of comments I got which also makes the post look more popular.
At the time I’m writing this, this post has been viewed 69,314 times by 57,943 individuals. Around 52k of those views occurred from people’s home pages. That means it showed up because they follow me or because they follow one of the hashtags I use. The next biggest viewing source was 12,134 views that came from an ambiguous “other” category, which could mean people sharing links, in messages, etc.
77% of the people who viewed this post weren’t my followers (around 45k of those people who saw it) – but it had to be propagated up into their news feeds somehow. My guess is that the culprit responsible for all these views is Instagram’s “follow hashtag” feature that has been rolled out and updated over the past six months.
What’s cool from a branding perspective is that it makes using hashtags even more valuable (though it also means you need to be selective about the ones you use, because if it’s off-topic people will absolutely complain). It makes it much easier to be exposed to a wider audience if your post is one of those that consistently makes ‘top posts’ for particular hashtags.
Making an industry agnostic post that was just techy enough to keep tech people engaged while not being so specific that others outside of tech didn’t know was I was talking about was a major factor in hitting this milestone. Additionally, the fact that hashtags are now more prevalent on people’s feeds make it easier for strangers to discover new content (thanks, Instagram). I’ll definitely be playing with these ideas more in the future.