Half of the year is gone; what have you done?

SO this was a crazy, crazy year, with lots of things happening in it. I tried a few things, dropped a few ideas, and made a few things a permanent part of myself.

To start from the top, let’s talk social. Earlier in the year, my social media strategy used to be just to post things and hope my followers would grow automagically, turns out just posting AINT WORTH SHIT! You also have to engage, and that too with the right audience, as everyone has been shouting towards me and I’ve been daftly ignoring.

Well, from nearly the end of June, when Twitter and LinkedIn started punishing me for this by dropping engagement on anything I posted, I started to try out engaging with other folks on there, and in the process also made a few good friends on Twitter tbh. Also GASP, I had real phone calls with them, which I guess also bring the online relationships to the real world?

Anyways, this change is kinda showing up, my Tweet impressions for the first 4 days of July have been nearly 1/3rd of my peak engagements for any given month. Here’s the actual stats:

For June:

For July:

On the other hand, let’s also have a look at LinkedIn. Through talking to a few folks on there and also via random calls, LinkedIn is actually doing its job for me. People are seeing those posts on time, the only problem is they aren’t engaging with it. This is completely my fault, because I have been posting content which has been all about an ASK, ie, watch my YT video, watch my podcast, etc.

Instead I should now be focussing on giving some knowledge in the format the LinkedIn crowd understands (formatted listicles basically). My life update posts also did well there, anyways would be linking to all of them below here so no need to go searching for them.

So what do my LinkedIn analytics look like? Let’s have a look at the SSI (linkedin.com/sales/ssi) shall we?

“Top 1% Industry SSI”, what does that mean? Clearly this is doing well as well, which is why I’m getting the views on my posts but no engagements because of low value provision.

I guess this is the point where we can move to the highlights of this month? Let’s Go!!!

Appeared on a Podcast

This one’s kinda self explanatory, I was asked to be on a podcast back in May, didn’t share it with anyone then because didn’t want to jinx it. We talked about React, starting with React, and a bunch of other stuff which would be helpful to beginners (if the podcast reaches them ofc).

Travelled to 3 different States within India

This year back in Feb-March, before the second wave, I had the chance to visit 2 different states. I always wanted to visit a state in the South and experience their culture as a citizen, so I visited my friend in Tamil Nadu and stayed with him for about a week. Later on I also spent a few days with a cousin of mine and his family.

Here’s a photo from some cycling on the beach ;)

Later on in March I went to visit Madhavi while she was in Gujarat during her birthday! We had a lot of fun walking around the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, and later on took a LOOONG roadtrip from Porbandar to Okha (the tip of Gujarat), to Somnath. Now if you know about India these are religious places (and I guess no places for couples to be), but believe you me the emptiness of roads and beaches everywhere made it a romantic enough setting. Also the cleanliness of the beaches was unbelievable (since no one goes there lol).

Here’s one of those places, note the distinct lack of people

https://photos.app.goo.gl/a9vQuet4gtBDzvkd8

And here’s the total distance

After this, while going back, hadn’t visited the grandparents for a while so had to go back to the center of India. The cheapest way from Ahmedabad was via a layover at Indore, so decided to stay there for a day and work a little bit.

After coming back from such a exhilarating adventure, it was nice to spend a few days with the grandparents, after which I came back home.

Took YouTube more Seriously

Okay so I’m facing this weird phenomenon that one of the videos I had posted previously but just because I had given a session somewhere, was somehow doing really well. I have gotten nearly 2.3k views for a long video on a really simple topic.

So instead of doubling down on what works well, I’m spending time creating content on whatever I want to instead 😂. Anyways, the main purpose of all this is to remain fun and keep my mind engaged, so it’s doing its job at least.

Didn’t you used to have a bunch of paid API products?

Yup, they’re still there. Still being consistent plus I’ve added a few more offerings, but for now only one of them (the Superhero Search API), have any paid users.

You can check the rest if you want at https://rapidapi.com/user/jakash1997

A Final Few Quick Updates

My current daily habits summarized in a comment:

My current work setup:

And finally, a job update:

I presently work at hash.ai.

So that would be me, cheers!