Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I think that if communities, be it on Dribbble, Behance or Instagram, just keep growing because people want to put their portfolio out there and be seen and find clients and just have a personal brand because everybody has a personal brand in social media, then that's not bringing any value to the design industry.
Hello everybody and welcome to a new episode of Anvisa Zainiwana's podcast. I'm happy to welcome you on board on today's topic, which is one I think that's very juicy for many designers out there, but...
why not restrict it to maybe not only designers but any creative profession? So today's topic is around social media and the question myself and Anfisa will try to answer is whether you need social media presence as a designer.
And, um, it's a, it's an encompassing topic. It's a broad one. I'm hoping we can touch on as many points as possible in this episode. Also, I want to thank everyone who's listening and I'm happy that, uh, it seems we're sticking to the routine of creating this podcast. So this is already our fourth episode, I think, or even fifth. Yeah. So it's great to see that, uh,
We're having these conversations which we decided from the very beginning that we want to keep as informal, relaxed and unstructured as possible. So you will be witnessing something that's like a coffee that myself and Afisa are drinking and talking over in the city. So hi, Afisa. Hello. I was just saying like coffee at 8 p.m. Hmm, doesn't sound like a good idea.
Well, actually, I just had two ice creams. So I don't know what a good idea is anymore. You have a right. All the rights. Okay.
Hello everyone. Yes, sounds like a cool topic for a discussion today. I think a lot of people are asking themselves, do they even have to start something like that? Since, you know, every creative is creating something, right? Everybody has their dribble page or podcast or, I don't know, email list or Instagram page, etc. And like, it's a kind of
might feel like you're missing out something if you don't start your own social media presence. And that's something we should totally cover today and really discuss who needs it, why doing it, and what are the pros and cons of having some extra side projects such as online presence, I'd say. But before we dive into that part, should we also talk through our last week, our things that are going on, any struggles, any updates on your site, Ioana?
Yeah, so I was also about to ask you
How was your week from the last time we spoke? I'm going to answer first as some... Well, we're recording this episode as I'm past... I just reached my pregnancy term, actually. I'm 37 weeks pregnant, which is nine months and something. And this means that my baby girl is due to join us in the world anytime now, which is exciting. It's also a bit...
of course, not only the birth part, but also the part of taking care of a newborn when you have no experience whatsoever. And also I've been struggling with being able to unplug from my professional efforts because it's really hard to...
the feeling is that I'm abandoning my identity or a part of my identity and I just keep postponing it. So every week I keep working, I keep doing professional stuff. I keep continuing my projects. And every time the week passes towards the end of the week, I tell to myself, okay, next week I'm stopping everything and I'm going to enjoy my pregnancy and that's it. I need a
break and then the next week starts and then I'm all again in this spiral of doing things all the time because it's part of who I am and I just can see myself differently but probably I won't have a choice very soon now so
So I'm curious to hear how was your week. Yeah, I feel like this is a transformation you're going through right now. It's very hard to accept it, especially since you still don't know what to expect from it. But yeah, talking about the week, yeah, the last week. So remember that drama situation with the freelance project I had? It's actually resolved right now. I'm really happy about it. Yay!
It took some time, like it took maybe like two or three weeks to go through this. But luckily the client realized that, you know, the timeline is really starts to be very tight and that we need to
make things as soon as possible because the launch is really like in a few weeks. So it will be possible to find a new illustrator. It will be possible to find another designer to finish some of the flows. So she approved or decided to pay to the illustrator. And I said like, all right, that is fair. So I'll finish my part as well.
So luckily that is done. The only issue is that I already started working on other projects, of course, and now this thing doesn't fit in very well. So the whole planning and the whole destructive part of it just affected the whole process. And I'm trying to find a way to squeeze it in between all the other sort of small projects I took in already. So that's a little bit challenging, but...
Another small thing I want to slightly celebrate is that I've started another new, oh, by the way, that's a good fit into our topic, but I've started a new page, Instagram page about my course students.
It's like a small page, but I really want it to be not about education. I don't want it to be something like another Instagram page and other carousels and stuff like that. But I really want it to be like a platform for the students of a course I'm running to really share their experiences, their challenges, their issues they're going through as they are transitioning to UX design from different other industries.
And really just to know what tips would they tell themselves if they were starting again, because they've started recently, like a year or so ago. And this is a lot of information, a lot of challenges right now. And it's interesting to hear that somebody else is going through them because a lot of people are doing it right now. And it's just cool to be related, to see how other people are
Solving some of those issues or going how they're going through this. So it's just like this I wanted to be a place for people who transition into UX design and kind of share tips Maybe maybe stories and stuff something like that. So I've already got like 10 interviews of my students I'm still planning more to come but we'll see how how far it gets.
Well, that's great news. And maybe you should also share the name of the page so everybody can follow it. Yeah, sure. It's a UX for freelancers, basically the same as my course is called. Yeah, it looks a little bit similar to my page, but I would call it a little bit, I would say it's a little bit more crafty. I spent more time like
you know, having those brushes around and more colors a little bit and more faces and more emojis there. So it's really more like a, I want it to be more like a community of the people who are transitioning to UX design. This is wonderful. I think it's a, it's really something to celebrate because I think that these kinds of places on Instagram or any type of other platform, if you want, even Dribbble Behance, the idea of small communities
that brings something that's more authentic, more emotional in a way, more honest, personal, then this is what actually brings values to the social media exchange. So value and...
I think it's a topic that I get asked about a lot, probably you do as well. How do I transition to UX design? People kind of tend to share the same fears, have the same struggles. So I know that for people, it's extremely powerful to read testimonies of,
uh, other people that have been in similar situations, uh, in a similar process with similar background and so on. And so I think that, uh, this is a good, uh, very good entry, uh, towards our subject today, which is, um,
yeah, whether designers need a social media presence and what would make that social media presence valuable? What would make, what, I think the question that any designer needs to start with when considering to, uh, when considering creating a social media channel for them, be it Instagram, YouTube or whatever is, um, why am I doing this? What, what is, um,
or the value that I want to put out in the world. So I think that this also is the question that we should start with. So why should people, what's valuable about these types of efforts? So you just shared some examples
when introducing your new page indeed it's it's the value of being honest putting yourself out there sharing human stories and so on but otherwise if you if you if you start by creating a social media channel because everybody has a social media channel and you feel a pressure that you need one then that's wrong so how do you differentiate in the beginning the
the right mission, the right purpose for your channel and something that's just peer pressure or just going along with everyone is doing. So I think this is the first question to answer. I would also add there you have framed a question around
So what's in it for others? Why would somebody want it, right? Other than you. So what's the value that you're sharing? I would also add to this another question which goes in line with this first question. And that would be something like, what's in it for you? What do you expect to have from it to yourself? So for example, what are the things that you're hoping to get for yourself? For example, if I were starting a new page today,
I would do it not just for reasons to, you know, share what I know, but also for reasons to maybe improve some of my skills to, first of all, connect with others, maybe find friends, find people who I can ask questions and discuss things together. Or, for example, if I want to write, improve my writing skill, or if I want to, you know, share what I learn every day, if I want to be consistent in my learnings and maybe, you know, develop a new habit of,
I'm on this learning curve, I'm on this learning trajectory, I want to reach this goal and I want to be accountable of how I'm doing it. So I'm dedicating myself to writing about it every day. And I pick one social media and I'm doing it. So I know why I'm doing it for myself.
So that's an example I would also think of. Not just what's in it for others, but also what's in it for me? Because you want to also stick to it and you want to be consistent in what you're doing. And if you don't have other reasons other than, you know, please everybody else and do it because everybody else is doing it, then it's very easy to start being, let's say, not happy about what you're doing and just start wanting to
jump off and stop doing it. And it's very easy to stop doing it because it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of energy and not always it doesn't bring return and investment of your time. So I think it's very important to also think about yourself in this whole journey.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, actually listening to you made me want to continue by actually sharing my story of joining the social media space and deciding to create your ex goodies. And maybe then we get the chance to listen to yours as well.
So I started actually exactly by asking the question that you just suggested. So why am I doing this? And I opened UX, I created UX Goodies in, I think, July 2018. So it's something over two years now.
with two reasons in mind. One of them you already touched on. It was the idea that I'm on a learning journey. I'm doing these efforts, these constant efforts of upgrading myself, my design skills, my knowledge, my understanding of the design philosophy and everything. And so I was doing this on a daily basis, but I wanted to
create a routine or some sort of schedule maybe or some sort of space in which I could feel like I'm obliged by or I commit that I'm gonna put content everywhere in this small space just to get myself to be more organized and um
consistent with my learning efforts. So by creating UX goodies, I kind of had to make sure that I have content to post on a daily, maybe weekly basis. And that meant that I had to research the content I'm putting out there and read articles around it and make sure that I get the right frame or the right understanding of a new concept that I was exploring and so on. So on one hand, it was this learning routine created for myself.
And on the other hand, it was the fact that I was already a social media addict. So I already spent a lot of time on Instagram, a lot of time on Facebook. I was already very much on my phone and most of the time. And so somehow I naturally felt that it's a space in which I'm already investing a lot of time and it doesn't seem to be invested with any...
fruitful outcome, so why don't I turn this addiction, if you want, into something healthier? And so these two ideas met and UX Goodies was born. And I remember that I had absolutely no expectations as to what's going to happen with UX Goodies, because at that time, I think there were, I don't know, two, three, four accounts
discussing UX design and having UX posts. Maybe there were more, there were more accounts on, uh, UI design if you want with mock-ups and animations and so on, but there were, I think three or four accounts for UX design. Yours was one of them. So you were there when I joined the,
I think you were, I don't know, among the, maybe you were the first person to do this on Instagram. This is what I remember. There wasn't any, I think carousels were not even a feature when we started doing this or we didn't consider using carousels. But I think they weren't even up as a feature.
So there was no recipe, if you want. There was no right way to do it. I had to experiment, to try different things, to explore, to see what people react to. And it was a lot of trial and error and a lot of unknown territory. But at the same time, it was very exciting. And I feel like I was there in the beginning of something that
has become bigger than us in a way, if you want. And so, yeah, I'm really curious to hear your story and how did it all start for you? - Yeah, it's really cool that you have mentioned that it's all started because you just wanted to be dedicated to yourself and you wanted to shape, maybe change your mindset through, like you already were consuming a lot of content. You just wanted to shift towards create, not consume a little bit more.
you know, and make also use out of it. Not just consume it, but also create and share something. I guess it was like in 2018 exactly when this Gary Vernichuk, which is, I'm not a fan of him, but just like a disclaimer, but I remember he was telling it from everywhere, from every social media he was running, which was like every single social media, but he was saying this, create, don't consume, create, don't consume, that's the mindset. And I felt like,
At some point in 2018, a lot of people also started shaping their mindset towards not just reading the content online, but also creating it and sharing and trying to be
proactive at whatever you're doing and that's really interesting regarding my own my personal story as well so that's right it's like in 2018 there was I think like you were really in the in a super like you you literally raced on that wave when people started finally like moving to Instagram to share their stories share their journey and stuff like this so you were really in the perfect timing and
to join. I joined a little bit earlier. I think my page started in 2016 and it was before that I had like my travel page and I was traveling a lot before. So pretty much I was focused and dedicated to my travel page.
before that. And I was spending much more time like sharing stories of my travelings and stuff like this. And for those of you who doesn't know, in my past, I was like a hitchhiker and this crazy person sleeping on the gas stations and couchsurfing and stuff like that with my backpack for months around and stuff like that. So I had a lot of stories to share there. But at some point, it was around 2016, maybe 15, when I started feeling a little bit tired of all of those nomadic lifestyle things.
And I wanted to really focus much more on the career, on the work and, you know, reach my professional goals. So I said like, okay, let me also separate my past traveling life and, you know, start writing more about my design work, my design life. And yeah, I started in like May, I believe 2016. And as you said, like there was absolutely no one. There was like, I remember pages that were sharing dribble shots and
and um they were they were really like ui shots basically and then there were a couple of the pages who were sharing some sort of stationary um like beautiful workstations basically the shot of the day here is the book i'm reading and it was like really more about lifestyle and technology and something about ui so there was not much about ux so
So in 2016, when I started sharing it, I totally went without any expectations, just as you said. It was for me more like a place to, like,
in the past, as I said, I was traveling. So there was a lot of people I was talking to. Every day you would hitchhike a new car or be in a new place. And there were so many different people to talk to. And then all of a sudden I sit in my room in the forest worlds. There was like no one around me. It was super calm. And I was like, hey, well, I need to talk to someone. So I really just wanted to start expressing myself anywhere where I could be heard.
And Instagram was the place just because I already have this traveling page. And then I started, you know, writing something there. I think there was like four or maybe also about four accounts. I think it was most of the guys who I've been following in design, they were Czech people. And I was about to move to Czech Republic. So that was like a nice coincidence. There was Lubos, Lubos Volkov. There was Jan. Jan, I forget his name. I'm sorry. Yeah.
And then there was Alice Nesetril. So those were the guys I was talking to pretty much all the time. And then, yeah, there were a few more people, but they were like, again, UI and Dribble shots.
And then just because I was one of those people who early on started documenting their struggles and life, and I was also doing the freelance, and I was also doing like a startup journey, which was very, very challenging at that point. So I was just sharing everything that was going on. And it was not about beautiful slides. It was not about, you know, right now everybody's using graphical content.
Back then it was just photos and maximum you can expect a photo of a book or a beautiful shot of your working station. And I was not using Instagram. Maybe I did some of the UI shots as well, but I don't remember already. And so back then it was just really about sort of literally a blog and where you would write this long posts, long reposts and share something that what happened today, what you've learned today and that's it.
And I think it was like exactly as you said, 2018 when the sliders popping up and I will do a shameless plug because I should admit that, but I was the first one who created the design carousel. It was July, 2018. And then after that, everybody started doing it. But back then when I was doing it, I was totally, totally not sure if I were, whether I should even start putting it just because it was like everything was photo, photo, photo, photo. And all of a sudden I said like,
let's do maybe slide like a pitchy deck, you know, should I do this? I was so not sure of doing it, but then I posted it. And I remember I was super, super surprised by the amount of engagement it got. It was like, maybe at that time I was getting about 500 likes and then all of a sudden I got like 1000, I don't know, 500. So it was tripled the usual engagement. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy. But that was a super, super, super simple and not beautiful,
But at that point, everybody realized that, oh, wow, you can actually do those beautiful sliders. And then it started to be really a big thing. In 2018 slash 19, everybody started doing sliders. Now we are overwhelmed with them. But back then it was like something that was really like a test mode and something unexpected. You don't even know whether you should be doing it.
And only then I've seen that again in 2018/19 the whole community started like really joining, being proactive on Instagram. And that is very, very cool. Though I'm approaching, I guess, today's situation where I think we are all experiencing the overwhelm of the content and we see that there are way too many content, way too many sliders, way too many people, way too many
information and sometimes not very proven information in fact and like right now I think the whole I mean we're talking about Instagram just because it's our domain I guess but at least in that particular medium it feels like there is just way too much content already and now we're even questioning whether it makes sense to even start it and this is where we can have some sort of a discussion to think whether
What do you, what do you think? Would you recommend starting it? The new page doesn't need to be Instagram. It could be also whatever, even podcasts right now, podcasts are also quite saturated. I believe at least I can see that. Or I don't know if Twitter account or whatever else is out there, maybe LinkedIn page with the blog there, et cetera. So what do you think?
does it make sense in 2020 um to start a new sort of a blog online social media presence or do you believe that it's so much already it's so much content that you should be really meaningful and like have the purpose going into that what do you think yeah um
I will be circling back to the thing that you just, uh, that you would, that we kind of started with. So the question of why am I doing this, that everybody needs to ask before, uh, starting a channel on any kind of platform. Indeed. My next question after your story would have been, what do you think of the state of the social media space right now? And I totally agree that it's really, um,
overloaded with content there's so much redundancy the same content over and over again there's little innovation there's little newness to it everybody kind of does the same thing the same recipe now everybody knows the recipe it became a recipe and so hey
I feel like it's losing value instead of gaining value in time. And maybe this is something that we all have the responsibility of,
reframing or addressing a problem maybe we can address it by talking about it like we're doing right now maybe we can address it by being more uh involved in um guiding or challenging new creators if i go back to uh the question of why am i doing this i think that people should have uh
a personal purpose, okay, but should also understand that they have a responsibility towards the community. So we all now have, once you enter this common space, then you're kind of responsible for what you're putting in it.
And so I think that if communities, be it on Dribbble, Behance or Instagram, just keep growing because people want to put their portfolio out there and be seen and find clients and just have a personal brand because everybody has a personal brand in social media, then that's not bringing any value to the design industry. That's only personal gain at best.
but if, if you, if we want to do things that push the design industry forward, that, that are healthy for the design industry, that are even ethical, if you want, then things should be done differently. I mean, you should consider every time you put something out there, that it has meaning, that you build a conversation around it, not just posted for the engagement and likes and so on. And so you put something out there and then that
becomes a conversation with other designers because that's the only way so just like you said when telling your story sharing your story with us you had conversations in the beginning that's how it all started with Lubos with other designers tech designers and
So I think that the value in having a social media presence is being part of this community, being part an active, involved, healthy member of the community. Having the right conversations, encouraging conversation and not just posting content that's going to be juicy and sticky and then get likes and grow your page and to what end.
So I think that this is something that in 2020, everybody should answer. Why am I doing this? Is it just personal gain or is it because I feel like I can contribute?
to the community I love it I think I totally agree with you I think that it's definitely out there that people start doing it for sake of doing it without sometimes even asking themselves does it even make sense am I doing it for like am I doing it for getting into this explore page and you know as
As I've noticed already, I think in one of my recent posts, like not post stories, I mentioned that I started seeing way too many top 10 fonts every single day. I wake up and I scroll my feed and I have like five posts of top 10 best fonts. And I'm like, damn, it's so many content of that topic. Like I really want more of a meaning behind it. I know that fonts are like always getting engagement and that's definitely a topic that
can bring some traction to your page. But I also feel like if you're doing this, let's say the post that would get that traction, you don't need to just do this post that will gain the traction. You also need, okay, you did this traction, you gained some followers, great. Now also take a conversation, do the conversation, take a step back, think of what,
what values can you share? What, can you have a conversation with those people? Can you connect with them? What are you, what are you trying to do? Like, why are you doing this basically? Right. And, um, what I liked that you mentioned, or you touched based on having more of a conversation rather than just gaining engagement. And I really liked the fact that
I mean, you don't need to be necessarily always just sharing value. It doesn't need to be just, you know, here is another educational post, another educational post, another...
goodies post and stuff like this but there could be also a conversation where we can just ask each other what's your experience what's what's your intake on this what's your thinking process um what are your challenges and just like really share and talk a little bit more that could be one way to go about it i'm not saying that this is what you should be doing but i'm just saying that there has to be why in what you're doing not just like gaining the traction and feeling good about it but also to sort of and have a meaning in what you're doing and
Again, that does not mean that you should, right now we're talking about the recipe in Instagram, but if you look into it, there are other platforms out there, Twitter. I know that people in Twitter, I mean, there are probably some influencers there, but this is happening more like on a dialogue level there. I'm not a Twitter person, so that platform doesn't work for me, but still,
still i know that people are having a conversation there in linkedin there are also people who are having a conversation there and there are other places where it's not just about sharing but also about exchanging and it's about building the relationship with the people in at whatever scale doesn't really need to be like a huge page with too many followers but really like having a meaningful conversation or having some sort of a relationship built um
So I don't know, somehow I feel like I'm moving towards the word community, which is not my intention, but that's maybe something that is in my mind right now. So I'm sort of discussing it. Well, I think that community is at the base of the social media effort for a guild, if you want, because we're the design guild. And yes, I think that we're building communities. That's what's happening. So it should be framed around the word community. Yeah, maybe, maybe.
And I have another point that I think that a lot of I get, you probably get this question as well. I often get the question, how can I grow my page? How do I get more followers? And my first instance is to ask, why do you need more followers? What are you actually looking for? If you're looking for relationships, then you don't need 10,000 followers.
You just need three, four people that you can engage with in a meaningful way. That's it. So I think that people are often very transparently driven by the fact that they want to grow their pages. I think that maybe you can have some rewards along the way. Okay, I reached 5,000. I reached 10,000.
but it's not gonna prove meaningful to you either. So what's meaningful is actually getting to know people, having conversations, showing your authentic you and so on. And another disclaimer that I wanna make is that I think I'm also guilty of sometimes putting content that's maybe too easy or too circulated already, like something around fonts or anything along those lines. So it doesn't have to be that you always put
valuable, sophisticated, intimate, personal, challenging content. You can balance things, but in the end, so the problem is not necessarily the content choice, which is also a problem, but it doesn't come down to that. It comes to your purpose, right?
building this page. So and I think that a common purpose is the peer pressure that everyone has an Instagram page and I'm gonna be left behind or a dribble or a behance or whatever. We replace Instagram with whatever other platform and another thing is that people imagine that they're gonna be getting a lot of clients and work from their Instagram page which is
By all means, it's very possible. I know people who really get their clients from Instagram, but to be honest, my best and most serious and long-term and valuable collaborations came from LinkedIn. They didn't come from Instagram. So I think I had one freelancing project that let's say quality if you want or longer term or, but otherwise,
I have 2,100 followers and I don't get that many clients. So I don't know why people imagine that that's how clients recruit their designers. They just go on Instagram and start looking for design pages. It's not what happens actually. So yeah, so I think this is one of the strongest reasons why people might argue that they need an Instagram page. But in fact, it's a myth if you want. I want to bust this myth. I agree with you. I would add my five cents there. I also just wanted to say like,
let's bust that myth. I think in the past, again, when this Instagram community was not so over saturated with creative
And really, by the way, really great and talented people when it was not so easy to find those people. Back then it was, okay, there were people who were looking for designers and they could find this amount of designers and they could reach out and find the perfect fit for their team. But right now it's even hard to select one. It's really hard to get noticed for the right clients.
That has basically the same culture and values that you're sharing and maybe the budget and maybe the timeline and so on and so on and
Of course, yes. I would say that when I was getting, before and maybe something around 2018, I was getting pretty consistently some client requests, but it was not like a specific client in this tech industry, with this product would reach me out and say like, hey, we need a designer. I was looking for you and blah, blah, blah. It was more like people
people who know me because I was quite proactive would reach out and say like, hey, I'm consulting this project. We're looking for a designer. Would you be interested? Or, hey, I'm a developer. I would love to work with you. We have this client. Would you be interested? Or the same even for like UI designers. So it was not
necessarily like businesses business owners who would reach out because you know they are following some ux influencers they were really just the people normal people who would have the same similar businesses as you have freelancing businesses that would want to collaborate with you and it was based on the relationship because they were trusting um i mean back then they were trusting me and what i was doing because i was sharing my work on a daily basis
So the trust was there, but the community was not so saturated. So the visibility for you personally would be just higher. But I would totally say that in 2019, when there were just...
really really a lot of a lot of great designers out there it just became too hard to get noticed among those right people who might be interested in working with you and right now I think I would guess maybe I don't know once twice per month this is maximum some question about it and in most of the cases when I look into who is writing to me I realize that this is not the the people who I would expect to work with they don't share the same values from what I see and from how they're
the first request message is framed and so right now I don't think it's a right place to search for clients if that's your purpose. I think instead what you can think of is this funnel of if your goal is to be a freelancer and to gain more clients then instead think of Instagram as the
place where you maybe share your journey and where you maybe share your daily work bits but you don't like educate and don't like share all those designer related content but more like share who you are as the person because ultimately to reach the clients and to
be reached out to, you need to build this trust. And Instagram is the page where you can just share what you do, how do you do, what's your values, but it doesn't necessarily need to be this educational content that teaches other designers how to do things. It could be that you have a website or you have your LinkedIn page and somebody found you through other networks, but
but they went into your Instagram page because they just wanted to see a little bit of who you are as a personality because they want to see if you're trustworthy. And when they go there, they see, oh yeah, you're actually a real person and you're doing these things and you have those different projects and you're passionate about design. I really want to work with you. So don't think of it as just that you need to build your, I don't know, audience just to be trustworthy. Trustworthy doesn't need to have numbers in your followers account.
It can be just as simple as who you are, what you're doing, and why you love your job and show your personality, basically. So that's what I think if we talk about having freelance clients through your social media.
Do you still have sometimes a client request? And if yes, how this is happening and from which platforms you're having it on? What do you think? Where do you think the clients mainly would come from if you were a social media or if you were a freelancer on a daily basis right now?
Well, I think that, like I said earlier on Instagram, I get requests, just like you said, maybe one, two, three per week. But they're mostly small projects or projects that I'm not necessarily interested in getting involved in.
so the kind of projects that I am looking for in my freelancing efforts and space are more long term long term meaning a couple of months at least so not long term five years but long term not three weeks of a project
um and so on instagram they're pretty much just like instagram is bite-sized freelancing projects and i'm not very much into that at this point in my career i'm looking for longer term and building relationships professional relationships with the clients i work in and indeed having uh finding some meaning in the work i do so that's why fast small projects although i can i
they're exciting because you get to do something in a short amount of time. They're not what's interesting me. Instead, indeed, like I said, LinkedIn has proved to be a better space for me, but also I'll find clients and jobs and, yeah,
and some freelancing partnerships that prove to be long-term and very meaningful. And so I would say to designers that being a position, I loved your point about not necessarily having to be an educator on social media in order to, uh,
grow your business or your freelancing goals or client goals and so on. You can also, I think it's even better if you show yourself, show your personality. And that's even something that will increase your chances of getting hired. If a hiring manager or recruiter is going to look on your social media profiles,
they want to see it's it's the same for your with your portfolio people want to see personality they want to see who you are they want to see what your values are what you stand for um what what how you differentiate from the others if everybody's doing the same content how can i how can i choose one person versus the other because they're
they're the same person in my eyes. So you don't want to be the same person with 10,000 other people that are doing the same thing. You want to be you. And that's why I think that people, I'm hoping this wave of design educators, although don't get me wrong, I don't want to be a hypocrite. I have been doing this. So it's not like people can easily say, but you're doing it. Yeah, I have been doing it because
it's kind of aligned with my personality in a very intimate and strong way. So, um, in my, uh, what I didn't mention in my story earlier is that I have been doing some social media activity, um, that was in the music industry. So I was, uh, let's say the, uh,
social media manager for a rock band, a big rock band in Romania. And I was already doing social media activities for them. It was very exciting to see their community grow, to get their music to more people. So I was already into this world. I had, I kind of needed continuity. I needed it as a hobby if you want. So it's something that's part of me, social media. It's something that I didn't do because I have to do it or because other people are doing it. It's just who I am. I don't know. I'm a social media person.
so the the point is that you want to put your personality out there you want to be doing things that are true to yourself that make sense in your life that make sense that are aligned with your personality and um i don't want to keep repeating myself but make sure you're authentic and you're doing it for the right reasons and showing yourself just like you said is a way more powerful than uh branding as a
self-branding as a design educator. Plus, speaking of knows it all, I think a very important point is, okay, you have decided that you want to build a social media presence. You want to go on Instagram or YouTube or Dribbble or Behance.
The next question you have to ask is, what content will I be putting out there? What do I want to put out there? And I think that design educators tend to just frame information that's out there on the internet or in books and, I don't know, design literature and so on. So you just take pieces of information that are academic, if you want, or community approved, and you put them out there.
But what about taking the personality spin and putting it on the content you make, showing your struggles, showing your transition stories, showing what went wrong on your last project, showing how you're struggling with finding clients, showing something that's not necessarily doing design education, but it could be more valuable than design education itself. So showing struggles and showing the real life of a designer, that's important.
that's actually another way to go about it and it's more personal and powerful and people should consider different types of content and it's something that I've been I've been wanting for myself to reframe UX goodies from sharing bite-sized information on I don't know
what is UX design and how is it different from UI design, sharing more of mental health topics as a designer, the personal struggles I have as a designer, how do I create my design career and so on, things around that.
And that's why we're doing this podcast. Yeah, because it gives us the opportunity of exploring more of ourselves and showing more of what's happening in our minds. So what are your thoughts on this in terms of what content people should put out there? So for me personally, again, coming a little bit back to the topic of saturated market, I feel like to me personally, Instagram just became like this fast food content and I think
Not to say that it's bad, it's just that people spend less time engaging with the content and that content should be really more to the point. Like really smart, really one slide explains it all in a super concise way, super clear way and so on and so forth. So if you want to get your point
you really need to spend some time thinking how to frame that point and make it super easy to understand and so on. And I feel like if you just copy all those other profiles, that's not going to work out. This recipe is not working anymore in case if you're interested in growing your Instagram.
it's really becoming just a little bit overwhelming and I don't want to just create those carousels and just all the education things. We spent a lot of time last year I believe educating let's call it so but this year 2020 it was really a different year in so many like directions starting from this crazy year and the mental health and a lot of people lost jobs and a lot of people
we're looking for meanings and that's a space where you could also experiment does not mean need to be like copied what worked last year but you really need to try different things things share different things share different struggles share different stories um reflect on in your experiences and really try to look for this inner voice and try to understand what you can share my personal intake in that i was actually
since I felt like okay I felt like I'm in this cage of doing the sliders I've been doing those sliders forever should I keep doing them and I felt like I don't want to do them anymore I wanted to diversify my content I wanted to start start putting more my face out there I wanted to start doing more of a videos or gtvs and maybe a little bit reels and stuff and more like a lifestyle almost like lifestyle of a designer that I don't want to be just the
you know, technical teacher who is saying all those steps that the designers needs to be doing in order to become designers, you know? So I felt like I also, I started feeling that
I want to become more of a lifestyle designer, sort of a blogger, if that's the thing. And really share more behind the scenes, like what you do, what's your day look like? What, I don't know, what books do you read? What questions do you have? What problems do you have? Where do you learn more? Where do you get motivation from? And stuff like that. So really share the personality instead of this.
who shares all those classes and stuff like that, which is still a part of my journey and still a part of my lifestyle because I still have the course and students, but I don't want it to be everything.
everything I don't want to be like this teacher so I'm still also sharing and I think like it's not just me but everybody who is in this journey of sharing something online are always supposed to be transformative it doesn't need to be always the same it doesn't have to be in this cage of following one recipe that worked for you once and now you're you're supposed to now follow the structure every single time so it's like a little bit of a digital transformation and
seeing where do you feel yourself growing? What do you want to improve? What exactly do you want to share? It's not that you've started with this purpose and you stick to this purpose forever and now you always have to talk about this particular thing.
over and over again. But it's also like learning and exploring and transforming yourself as a creative. So like this long journey. And maybe I'm talking about that because I'm doing this for like four years now, but it feels to me that way. That is also like a journey that you're taking it under a transformation.
Maybe now we could go, uh, onto sharing our final thoughts, if that's okay. Yes, totally. If people have been listening to other episodes that we already put out there, they know that we, uh,
close the episodes by sharing a couple of highlights that we liked or important points that we feel like we made in the conversation. So I'm going to start with mine and I'm hoping I won't mention all of them. Please. But the most important part I think is before answering the question, do designers need a social media presence?
everybody do their own introspection effort, introspection exercise and answer for themselves. Why do I want to do this? Why am I doing it? What am I expecting out of it? What's the personal gain? But also is this bringing any value to the industry and to the community that does it have value or is it just
personal gain from one and to another. I think another point that we made several times along our episode today is the fact that recipes don't work anymore. And even if they did, I don't think it's a good idea to apply recipes when you're building something that's personal.
I think that people should experiment and try to bring their personalities, uh, online if they want to be online. And, um, also I made a point around, uh, not expecting that you're going to be getting a lot of clients and jobs from, from Instagram or any other, I don't know what, how it's like for other platforms. As I said, LinkedIn worked for me, but, uh,
I don't think Instagram, the state of Instagram today can guarantee anyone that they're going to be finding clients. And the last point is the one that you made and I loved is that
okay, you want an online presence, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the online educator persona if you want. So not everybody has to be an educator or a teacher. You can be someone that just shares the honest life, the transparent experience of a designer, showing struggles, showing what you do in your everyday life, showing how a workshop went or a bad client story or a good client story and so on. And so being the educator that just recycles information that's already out there
may not be such a good idea in 2020. So these are my points. I really loved your point. I would totally repeat them if I were you. I would add there a few more things. First is...
Also try to ask yourself, if you're trying to, you know, play this, you know, followers game, ask yourself, do you really need those followers? And ask yourself it twice, three times, et cetera. Ask yourself, really, why do you need those followers? Do you really need to get engagement? Do you really need to get, I don't know, 10,000 followers? How much is too much? How much is enough?
Think about the value of the followers for you if that's one of the goals. Because honestly speaking, there will be never enough. You can grow forever. And if that's the goal, okay, then ask the question, ask yourself the question, why? And if you don't have a specific answer that satisfies you, then maybe you don't really need that. Another question is, or...
Or maybe not like a question, but another point is that if you are a freelancer or if you are working with the startups and kind of looking for new freelance gigs, then you don't necessarily need to be an influencer showing that, you know, you're this almighty, all-knowingly person.
kind of profile that will teach everybody everything. You might want to teach some bits of what you know and what you feel confident about, but you also want to share your story and your personality and who you are on a daily basis. You want to be trustworthy. You don't want to be this influencer who knows all this UX terminology and just looks like a smart ass. That's not what will give you the clients if that's one of the goals that you're having. And also, I think like if I were to try to reflect of what
this journey have been for me and what was the biggest value personally for me. I would also add that for me personally, it was about learning by sharing. So the biggest value I was getting is not, you know, that, you know, followers were following me and somebody were trusting me that, but also that every day, if you sit and try to reflect on what, what, what happened, like literally this act of reflecting and kind of,
kind of making lessons of what happened or trying to learn a new topic and reflect on what you have learned, this sort of reflection was probably the biggest value for me personally, because I was able to digest information or experience I was going through and I was able to learn something from this. So
Think of it as almost like a debriefing and trying to understand what went well, what went not well, and what can you make out of it. That was like the most grateful experience for me when I think of this whole journey. Maybe don't think of social media as something that you just have to do because everybody else do it, but also think of the value that you can get. Try to find your why first.
why you're doing that thing and what do you want to do and maybe if you don't have a specific answer on the question why maybe you don't even need to start doing that maybe you're good already and
You want to have your space for, you know, decompressing. Maybe you don't really want to have the space for having weekends and normal life and, you know, going outside the parks and, I don't know, and eat ice cream. You don't need to create so much. You don't need to be on this hunt of gaining those followers. That's, you know, doing it for sake of doing it doesn't bring too much value. It might just overwhelm you and make you feel a little bit
frustrated at some point so yeah try to find your why that would be my bottom line point I guess for today and I love it and I stand by it completely I think that uh that's what I'm hoping people will take out of this episode actually that they they have to find their own reason of doing it and make sure that they challenge the reasons that they're doing this for and
and indeed self-reflection is an amazing one. Instagram kind of can work as a journal for UX designers, so it's a journal that you just put out there with the world and share with the world and share what's happening instead of writing because I kept a journal for many years of my life and it was very important in being able to articulate
the wise and, and, and my identity in the end was shaped by, by the self self-reflection exercise. And maybe people should move more into that direction and indeed find their wise intent instead of, um, instead of just being there because of peer pressure or, uh,
yeah seeking celebrity and social media success i almost wanted to add like simons you know the author simon sinek or i don't know how to spell him but simon sinek something like this he had a book start with y so i also wanted to plug it in on this night on this note yeah so um
I'm hoping that this episode managed to answer some questions maybe that people contemplating the idea of opening a social media account have right now. I'm not, I by no means, neither myself or you, we're not discouraging people from going in the social media space.
On the contrary, we're encouraging them to do it, but to do it in a personal, authentic way and not just copying, recycling information that's already out there. It kind of feels, I think we all feel like everything was already said. So what remains unsaid is our own personal take on our experiences, which cannot be replicated and they cannot be copied and will guarantee maybe not the biggest following, but some followers that are
dedicated and involved and engaged and so this is what I think people should be going for building relationships instead of building followings and
And yeah, I'm hoping that people are inspired now to do something that's meaningful and resonates with them and aligned with their personality. Yay. Thank you so much for listening to this, guys. I hope you learned something today. And if yes, please subscribe and follow us. We don't have a page yet, but we might have a page until this podcast is out. So if we have a page, follow us there. We will see you there.
okay yeah okay bye bye bye and peace out and bye everyone have a great