Happy Friday all,
Another week down. Congratulations on making it through another week. I hope you were successful in your endeavors, and that everything is working out well.
To start, I want to talk about probably the most important thing we are trying to do here at Dunsel’s: Creating a community. We are doing this on multiple fronts with varying degrees of success. We think this is the most crucial component to the overall long-term success and health of this company. I have been writing weekly blogs to plant the seeds of community. By reading this, you are part it. Whether you like it or not… Kidding, but not really. This is an exercise in storytelling and communication, and if successful we can convert this community into a force that is unstoppable. The blog is one front. Then we have our social media channels where we are dispelling information in different ways. On Instagram and Facebook, we are trying to develop the persona around the brand that is Dunsel’s. To do this, we are creating and recycling (nice) educational content about the environment, problems afflicting our environment, local natural attractions, product features, and more. This has felt like the tortoise approach in his race with the hare. Even though we do want to win the race, we also want to find our hare. The other front, where many fingers point, is the newer social platforms; TikTok and Reels. If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve been putting a lot of weight there. To give you a synopsis on how it's going, I thought it might be interesting to provide some numbers…
On Instagram Reels:
5 videos, 6,239 views, and 172 likes
On TikTok:
3 videos, 701 views, and 34 likes
The thing that I find interesting is that the videos we’ve posted on both platforms are exactly the same. Save for the first TikTok we made which had to be split into 3 separate videos due to a 15 second time restraint on Instagram Reels. The different successes on the platforms is interesting to me, and it is something we will explore and experiment with in the future. What's cool about these platforms is really the chance to get in front of people who don’t know you. Your chances of this happening is significantly greater than on a traditional follower based feed like traditional Facebook and Instagram are. These algorithms only care about things like engagement, % of video watched, and things like having a human face in frame. Your video will be thrown into the machine, and if the algorithm likes it, the numbers will go up. It is also rather easy to piggyback on the many different trends to grow your audience. For example, I made a TikTok with the new typewriter effect.
Other noteworthy happenings:
My meeting with Mr. Robert Blacklidge on Monday. His insight and guidance are incredibly helpful, reassuring, and our meetings serve as the beacon through the murky waters of making this business work. Robert has suggested more than a few times that we start an affiliate program to help our audience essentially grow itself. Fortunately, since this business is being run through Shopify, there’s an app for that. It was painless and simple to set up an affiliate program with specific rules and customizations available. We now have a legitimate affiliate program and are busy compiling a list of influencers to reach out to. If you think you can sell one of our products there’s no reason why you couldn’t set it up too. Just sign up, share the link with someone, and if they buy it you get 40% of the cut. We are hoping that this is plenty of incentive for people with any size audience to help us grow.
Another exciting new thing is our logo redesign is finished. I was happy to do the first one, but I wasn’t thrilled with the result. I really do like the new one, and I think it does a better job at conveying the maritime persona we are going for. We used Fiverr to get this done, which was an interesting challenge in that I was never able to actually speak the designer, but nevertheless I am happy with the result. We’ve updated every logo, but if you come across an old circle logo, let me know. I’d appreciate that.
Will and I pitched again at Domi Station’s pitch night. The group had to be split into two sections for the sake of having enough time for everyone to pitch, and after a miscommunication Will and I were split up during the 2nd slide of our pitch. I carried out the rest of the pitch rather smoothly (I like to think so at least), and Will was able to pitch on his own in the second group. We got twice the feedback on the same pitch! Not expected, but good stuff. Also somewhat exhilarating to be put on the spot like that. The feedback was great, and really drilled home that we need to do a better job at telling our story on the website. The site is the main channel for people to learn about what we are doing and what we make, and we want it to be exceptional. You may have noticed a new landing page with a slideshow greeting you. This is phase one of the redevelopment of our story telling. Phase two will be the second attempt at our ‘about’ page. It is admittedly bland at the moment, but our homework for the weekend is to fix that. And to make TikToks. We always need to be making TikToks.
I think that sums it up for this week. Will and I are about to take advantage of the rest of this sunny afternoon and go sailing. We’ll probably make another TikTok too.
Happy weekend. Happy end of January. Get outside and enjoy yourself.
-Jon