Yesterday, I had a bit of a wake-up call.
Both of my blogs, LYEATT and Engedi Artistry, were created to serve a purpose. For LYEATT, it's developing a community amongst professionals of all ages (and young professionals, in particular) to share emerging ideas in business. For Engedi Artistry, it's creating a community that appreciates art in all aspects of life. And, because I try to be as transparent as possible, the meta-theme for both blogs is reintroducing you to a faith that has probably been tainted by somebody or some group in the past.
I've said before that I don't really care about the numbers, but if I'm honest with myself, they do. That became super apparent yesterday.
If you've caught on by now, I like to do "series" of posts on both of my blogs. A great example of that is the new series on this blog called Adulting 101. Over at Engedi Artistry, I had started a series of Artist Spotlights that highlights the artistry of somebody that's not me. The first one was on graphic designer Aaron Draplin, who is an artist in the traditional sense of the word since he creates beautiful images. I wanted these spotlights to focus on who I would deem artists in the non-traditional sense, so I decided to do my next one on YouTube tech enthusiast Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD. (You can read that post here.) I share links to all my posts via my Twitter account, and with MKBHD's spotlight, I decided to tag Marques himself in the tweet.
What I didn't expect was what would happen next: He retweeted it.
MKBHD has over 850k followers on Twitter, and he's not somebody that retweets all that much stuff. My phone instantly blew up with tons of retweets, likes, and blog views. According to my Twitter analytics, the post has appeared on the Twitter feeds of more than 120k people. And that number is still growing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself "famous" now. I'm definitely not the next Ken Bone. But I've been writing these posts as if they would only ever be seen by friends and family. Of course, I'm happy to say that I do believe all my content is accessible for readers regardless of whether or not they know me personally. (If you're reading this as a result of the MKBHD post, thanks for coming back!)
Still, I think there's a lesson to be learned here not just for me but for you, too. The power of what we say can reach further than we can possibly imagine. This is especially true in our modern digital age. All it took was a very simple retweet from one person and bam: 100k+ views. A lot of likes came from folks I've never met and probably never will meet in India, Europe, and beyond.
That's insane to think about.
Given the opportunity, what would you say to 100,000 people? I suppose the better question would be, how are you crafting your life's narrative to speak to 100,000 people at any time?
Because the reality is, you never know when or if you'll have that opportunity.
Are you proud of the narrative you are crafting for your life?
If your life "went viral" overnight, are your words something you'd want people to hear?
What's your digital footprint like?
What would your employer think about your digital presence?
These are questions I have kept in mind before and definitely double down on keeping those in mind post-MKBHD. I would encourage you, my friends and readers, to keep these in mind, too.
Both of my blogs, LYEATT and Engedi Artistry, were created to serve a purpose. For LYEATT, it's developing a community amongst professionals of all ages (and young professionals, in particular) to share emerging ideas in business. For Engedi Artistry, it's creating a community that appreciates art in all aspects of life. And, because I try to be as transparent as possible, the meta-theme for both blogs is reintroducing you to a faith that has probably been tainted by somebody or some group in the past.
I've said before that I don't really care about the numbers, but if I'm honest with myself, they do. That became super apparent yesterday.
If you've caught on by now, I like to do "series" of posts on both of my blogs. A great example of that is the new series on this blog called Adulting 101. Over at Engedi Artistry, I had started a series of Artist Spotlights that highlights the artistry of somebody that's not me. The first one was on graphic designer Aaron Draplin, who is an artist in the traditional sense of the word since he creates beautiful images. I wanted these spotlights to focus on who I would deem artists in the non-traditional sense, so I decided to do my next one on YouTube tech enthusiast Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD. (You can read that post here.) I share links to all my posts via my Twitter account, and with MKBHD's spotlight, I decided to tag Marques himself in the tweet.
What I didn't expect was what would happen next: He retweeted it.
MKBHD has over 850k followers on Twitter, and he's not somebody that retweets all that much stuff. My phone instantly blew up with tons of retweets, likes, and blog views. According to my Twitter analytics, the post has appeared on the Twitter feeds of more than 120k people. And that number is still growing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself "famous" now. I'm definitely not the next Ken Bone. But I've been writing these posts as if they would only ever be seen by friends and family. Of course, I'm happy to say that I do believe all my content is accessible for readers regardless of whether or not they know me personally. (If you're reading this as a result of the MKBHD post, thanks for coming back!)
Still, I think there's a lesson to be learned here not just for me but for you, too. The power of what we say can reach further than we can possibly imagine. This is especially true in our modern digital age. All it took was a very simple retweet from one person and bam: 100k+ views. A lot of likes came from folks I've never met and probably never will meet in India, Europe, and beyond.
That's insane to think about.
Given the opportunity, what would you say to 100,000 people? I suppose the better question would be, how are you crafting your life's narrative to speak to 100,000 people at any time?
Because the reality is, you never know when or if you'll have that opportunity.
Are you proud of the narrative you are crafting for your life?
If your life "went viral" overnight, are your words something you'd want people to hear?
What's your digital footprint like?
What would your employer think about your digital presence?
These are questions I have kept in mind before and definitely double down on keeping those in mind post-MKBHD. I would encourage you, my friends and readers, to keep these in mind, too.
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