That Time Dad Reflected on How Things Were Going
So it’s been a few months since I launched this website, the twitter handle, Instagram and YouTube accounts for DadLifting. At this point, after some experimenting across those platforms, I think I might have a path forward for each platform and I wanted to share that here.
Instagram – @Dad_Lifting
My experience with instagram has been the most rewarding so far and it has fulfilled one of the reasons I launched DadLifting: to connect with similar people out there in the world, join a community. On instagram, I’ve found supportive Dad’s lifting at their homes in their basements and garages. I’ve found a community. I’ve made friends.
I plan to continue to put effort into that community going forward, posting similar things as I have to date. Basically, I post fitness related posts and try not to clutter my feed with much personal stuff, I try not to post superfluously. But in the stories, I’m looser and share more about the family and kids. I also plan to continue to interact with other bro’s on there, liking and commenting with supportive thoughts. Not sure how much I’ll talk to the camera there, but I could try some of that at some point.
YouTube
YouTube was where I first got really into fitness online. I am a huge fan of the platform as a way to share information and entertainment. I’ve posted 17 videos there so far and each video takes a lot of work and I’m not terribly good at the editing and things like that.
More so than instagram, however, YouTube has forced me to get reps in front of the camera, which has made me more confident in my job where I have to speak in front of rooms of people. So, I’ll keep doing that, but given that each video gets like 20 views, I need to put less pressure on myself to make good videos.
As far as content, I think I’ll use YouTube as a repository for videos I make as part of blog posts or projects or trips. I want YouTube to function more as a way to have a digital record of things I am doing. I’m going to title videos with “That time Dad [did this thing]…”. The audience is going to be my kids in the future or my grandkids.
Like the creator of the Oasis in the book Ready Player One, I envision future generations pouring over videos I took as a way to remember or learn about me.
Twitter – @dadlifting
Twitter has been one of my biggest successes with my professional online persona. My handle @mlpguy has about 4,000 followers, and I’ve been tweeting there consistently for like 8 years to get that following. Finance twitter and #EFT (energy finance twitter) is a pretty fun place to hang out generally and especially when markets are open and moving.
But because I have a focus of tweeting specifically about energy stocks, and because it’s associated with my corporate job, @MLPguy is not the handle I would use to talk fitness. So, I created a fresh, brand new account to focus on fitness and lifting content. The fitness accounts I’ve found so far are mostly very aggressive, angry and salesy. It’s not a great combination. I have found it harder to locate the community that feels right for me on there.
I’ve attracted a few of my friends from my finance twitter account that know me and like me. But I struggle with what kind of content works on twitter if it’s not in finance. So, I’ve been pretty disappointed overall with twitter and I get the feeling others have too. Like some YouTube guys with like 500k subscribers will have less than 5,000 twitter followers. So, I’ll keep trying to figure that one out, but it’s been much less interesting thus far than Instagram.
Facebook?
I don’t have a Facebook account anymore, not for like 8 years now. If I were there, at least I’d have that base of old high school and college friends to build from, but I just never got that into it and at some point it became creepy to be able to stalk a bunch of people I used to know.
LinkedIn?
I haven’t put anything on linked in related to my fitness aspirations. That’s an area I’ve kept totally professional and probably will continue to. But that platform is great for connecting with people, so maybe it might make sense to add a second LinkedIn account just for fitness stuff? I’m not sure there’d be much upside, except as an amplifier to blog posts I might write.
Where will I go from here?
From here, I plan to keep growing my community on Instagram and keep posting videos to YouTube. But my focus will be on building a niche in the fitness community with the blog. Writing is a proven strength of mine, so I should play to that strength as much as possible.
I’m not sure what the niche and audience will end up being, but it will involve fitness and/or family for sure. Telling my stories as I roam the country trying gyms along the way. Sharing wisdom from fatherhood and garage gym ownership too. Maybe curating content I read on other websites. Maybe all of the above!
