We launched. Then this happened.

Two weeks ago, Thought Liters launched. Here’s the first episode, ICYMI.

In this short edition, I’ll recap the results, the learnings, and what’s yet to come.

First off: an enormous THANK YOU to everyone who has chimed in on social, or watched the above video, or sent a congrats text. This is still a relatively tight group (aka I still know all of you personally), and I just want you to know how much it means.

Let’s talk brief analytics / results from the video. Then I’ll share what I’ve learned and what’s to come.

Results / Metrics: (from main vid + clips)

• Full Video: 73 views, 8 subscribers, 3:47 (38.9%) average view duration (AVD)

• Clips: 16k views, 170k impressions

Key Takeaways: 

• For the full video: the results are expected. It’s a new channel; YouTube has little reason to recommend it around. Good news: AVD was higher among viewers who came from YouTube recommending the content — but in general I’ll be looking to up that number. Opportunity for improvement: 0.8% CTR. Yikes; oof.

• For the clips: literally 99% of the impressions came from this clip on LinkedIn. It must have gotten picked up in the new Video tab. I’m assuming it was just packaged better than everything else, so will aim to make more posts/clips with that style and format.

by the way: if you’re interested in the master plan I’m executing against… the master plan (for now)

What I’m Learning:

1. Better ingredients, better pizza: I worked hard as shit to cleanly edit a ~10 minute video. It took hours and hours and hours. And then 99% of the engagement came off a 39 second clip with good packaging on LinkedIn. Going forward, gonna put much more emphasis on the first few mins of video, and how best to make the clips punchy. Otherwise I’m just gonna burn out.

2. People are bought in, regardless: Literally everyone I pitch Thought Liters to wants to get involved. That shows me I’ve got the right idea — directionally, anyway.

3. Holy f*** the time input: Readers, this content takes a long time and a ton of effort to pull off. There’s a reason I’ve devoted this chapter of my career (plug) to making this type of content for myself and clients: it works, but it takes more than side-of-the-desk commitment. To prove it, I’m thinking I’ll literally time how long it takes to produce an episode start to finish. More to come on that.

What’s Upcoming:

• Ep 2: The next Thought Liters will launch next week (fingers crossed). I’ll announce it here first.

  • Well aware that the gap between releases is way too large. From ep 4 onward, I improved the show structure which should cut down edit time.

• Podcast launch: The long-form (40+ mins) asset in audio-only format will release on Apple, Spotify, etc. The show is already up on those platforms, with a trailer. Will likely hard launch once 3 eps are ready.

• Guest differentiation: I have 8 episodes filmed with 2 more booked. Those first 10 will all be Pittsburgh-based entrepreneur guests. After ep 10, I’d like to experiment with others — either traveling artists coming to Pittsburgh (comedians, musicians etc) or entrepreneurs elsewhere (e.g. fly to NYC, film a “season” there). More to come on that.

Once again everyone, really appreciate your input and cheer so far. For my part, I’ll continue to stay transparent about the process here.

Adam