Hello! If you learned something useful from this article, consider buying me a beer!
And if you prefer to watch a video of the answers, see video below on my YouTube Channel :
If you want to learn more about building a brand online, attend my workshop!
If you do not prefer to look at my face and would rather listen to audio-only in podcast format, following the podcast on Anchor ( also available wherever else you listen to your podcasts! Search for “The Naina Redhu Experience”.
The Q&A in text format
How do you differentiate between positive criticism & unwanted advice?
“Criticism” has two definitions : “the expression of disapproval of someone or something on the basis of perceived faults or mistakes” & “the analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work”.
The former is negative & unhelpful. The latter can be helpful in identifying weaknesses.
Rarely will you find someone critiquing you / your work unless they themselves are invested in you, your work, your growth or the subject / industry. If you’ve paid them for their advice, if their previous advice has been helpful, if they are known to you, if they have been through the same things that you are going through, then consider their advice with a pinch of salt.
If it’s an internet stranger, ignore them entirely.
Book recommendation : Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
How do you focus between your different ventures?
I could do better in this department. For now, I’m forced to consider the possibility that my photography career might never recover from COVID19, so I have more time to focus on my hand-painted brooches & my workshops.
Simple equation : how many workshops (how many participants / subjects, without diluting my brand) should I do in a year so that I can earn enough to cover my Cost Of Doing Business (CODB). Same for Brooches : how many do I have to sell in a year? And then work backwards & invest time accordingly. Works the same for every product / service / brand.
If you want advice customized to your business or brand, hire me for a consultation
Can you share something about Twitter, as a social media platform?
Like any other platform, it is great if we know how to put it to use. I see it as more geared towards sharing expertise / positioning yourself as an expert. Sharing news about you / your brand. Getting newsletter subscribers (again, dependent on subject matter / industry). Engaging in longer text discussions, which are visible publicly. Reaching out to other experts in your industry & engaging with them. I haven’t sold anything via Twitter but I have had people visit my blog, download desktop wallpapers & appreciate my photography over the years. Depending on a brand’s target audience, if it includes young people, those will rarely be found on Twitter.
Your Twitter feed can be highly customized, which is not possible on any other social media platform. Don’t want to see anything related to “Trump”? You can mute the word “Trump” & even if someone you know tweets about him, you won’t see it. You want a chronological feed? You got it.
Will an Instagram blog work as well as a WordPress blog?
Instagram is not a blogging platform. It is a social networking service / app. An Instagram page is not a blog. Writing Instagram captions is not “blogging”.
Blogging is a much larger activity than simply posting on Instagram. If you have an Instagram page, technically, you don’t own it – you have very little control over it. If you have your own website / blog, you own all of what you produce and post.
It is always better to have a website & blog and then, presence on a handful of leading social media networks.
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Newsletter : naina.co/newsletter
Workshops : naina.co/workshops
Art : naina.co/art
What is #NAINAMAMA? : “Naina’s Monday Ask Me Anything”.
Having used the “Ask Me Anything” questions box on Instagram Stories over the last few years, I’ve considered doing it in a more structured way and I’ve observed that a lot of the questions are repeated. The repetitiveness is understandable because of the nature of Instagram. Stories are gone after 24 hours and not everyone gets to see them. This is not only a waste of my time, but also a loss of information that someone might find useful. I have, indeed, considered saving these stories as “Story Highlights” on my Instagram profile but I do not like how they eat up valuable real estate. Someone visiting my Instagram profile for the first time, sees my profile photo, my statistics, my bio and then an entire row of Story Highlights and THEN they get to the real reason they are likely to engage with me : my work. Without the Story Highlights, they can see six posts and 1/5th of another three. With the Story Highlights they can only see the first three posts in their entirety, which, to me, is unacceptable.
Every Monday, I will put up the Q&A box on my Instagram Stories and attempt to answer about 5-10 questions. I will also document those questions on my blog, similar to today’s blog post.
