Futureproof You: the TikTok effect
“People want personalities - and this shift began years ago.” [#169]
👀 Peek at my Week
I’m on the uni open day circuit with Julieta this month.
So far, we’ve done Sussex University, Brighton (an inspiring talk on International Relations, but the campus is too Brutalist and “the animal protesters ruined it.” It’s also a bit too close to home for her, given we’re just down the road in St Leonards on Sea.
We’re off to Royal Holloway in Egham, Surrey, this weekend and Southampton on Wednesday. Southampton sent her a personalised invitation - very slick; she liked that.
I think she’ll love Royal Holloway. Beautiful campus in 135 acres of parkland (she wants Hogwarts). It’s close to London but not in the dirt. Egham is a tiny town full of pubs! Easy to get around and socialise, which is just as important.
She’s spending her 18th birthday at the open day bless her, but we’ll make a weekend of it - nice hotel, Christmas lights, and shopping.
It’s got me all nostalgic for my unidays, and comparing the two. The Web was new (opened to the public in 1991), so we were getting used to that. We had a computer room, but I didn’t have a laptop, so I hand-wrote all my essays.
No mobile or email till my mid-20s, but more headspace. I survived!
My life revolved around books and journals, and I spent a lot of time in the library (still my favourite place to go when I travel somewhere new).
Fingers crossed she gets the grades she needs.🤞
🦋Bluesky starter packs
I set a client up on Bluesky. There’s been a mass exodus from X with recent events, and I’ve noticed a big drop in followers. Seems like everyone’s migrating to Bluesky - it’s topped 20M users. The era of massive social media platforms is over.
I’ve enjoyed Bluesky because it’s simple and also values links and has no algorithm driving it. - Jay Acunzo
We’re staying on X. But we’ll be posting on Bluesky (journos love it - friend requests coming in fast) and LinkedIn too. I don’t want to be in an echo chamber.
So far, it’s all very civilised and calm. It looks the same as X but feels different. I like the ad-free experience and white space. But I miss the breaking news, live sports and drama—the Twitter town hall. I realise how conditioned I’ve become to that dopamine hit.
I’m seeing lots of starter packs like this one from Reuters on the future of journalism with good people to follow. People want to make friends and find their tribe, so it’s worth doing one if you're on there.
Interesting take on it from Sophia Smith Galer.
Bluesky has a problem: Journalists like it.
The rush to Bluesky is happening partly because of a media yearning to cling to a form of social media that suited them, not their audiences.
That’s my feeling about doing more of the same (text posts) on another platform. I can’t see the point.
“People want personalities - and this shift began years ago.” Thanks to TikTok, vertical video has taken off, and I see LinkedIn pushing it too. Sophia’s talk at the International Journalism Festival was sold out.
By all means, try it out… “but don’t use it *again* at the expense of trying out a video platform that will future-proof you and reach audiences a lot more successfully.”
Good advice. I will have a play to get better with video and because I like the diversity of people and topics it brings you and how it mashes up the storytelling structure. No beginning, middle and end.
It also builds community around fandom culture, e.g the trend ‘Delulu is the solulu’ - aka embracing the fake it till you make your dreams come true.
To me, being delulu means having so much self-confidence and self-assurance that you completely refuse to believe anything else.
It means showing up to life with radical optimism and joy.” - Courtney Johnson (247.3K followers).
Go, Courtney. Gotta be your own biggest cheerleader. I wish I’d had that much confidence at 28.
How to get started on TikTok? “Just make content and see what works.”
📚How to Build a World Class Substack
Build a sustainable and thriving publication without burning out.
Thanks to Claire & Russell for their book baby! I treated myself to a physical copy.
Is it worth writing a biz book these days? Things are so fast-moving, won’t it be out of date?
I asked Russell and he said he’ll update the digital edition. Check out their Kickstarter for other perks.
So interesting it’s not called How To Build a World Class Newsletter. I have mixed feelings about that.
▶️Read, Listen, Watch, Book
Creating a profitable Substack that grows your brand |
& Enterprise Nation.Louis Grenier: Stand the F*ck Out - a masterclass in launching a book on LinkedIn | Lulu Publishing.
Behind the Byline: Navigating challenges and improving working conditions for freelance journalists.
Free webinar on 26 Nov, to discuss some of the biggest challenges freelancers face along with newly-launched Freelance Guidance for Editors | Women in Journalism.
Cheers,
Nika 🥂
PS More experiments! I’m hosting a newsletter Writing Hour every Friday, 2-3 pm BST, for the next three months—real-time support and accountability. I’d love you to join me - info here.
It's the best I've seen. My cousin went to Royal Holloway to study English literature (before becoming an RAF air traffic controller, stationed for some reason in the USA)! She visited us while she was there, when we lived in Surrey (close to Egham) in the 1980s. I visited it in and remember delving into an original multi-volume Dr Johnson Dictionary they had on the shelf in the library!
It's certainly appears much better than Surrey University in Guildford and Gloucestershire Uni in Cheltenham where I went, which are more like run-down comprehensives, renamed colleges. I fell in love with Surrey Uni during an open-day they held in the maths department during A-levels in 1989. They gave several really exciting maths lectures in the auditorium as a sales gimmick; when you enrolled a year later you first found that the accommodation was oversubscribed, and secondly you got brain dead lectures on Fortran computer programming that wouldn't have been out of date in 1965.