035 | Weekly Round-Up 🔧

Some of you may have noticed that there was no round-up last week.

I know there would have been immense disappointment while eating your roast dinners and creme eggs and for that, I apologise.

The bank holiday weekend got the better of me a bit, I was away from home and my usual routine was all over the place.

Weirdly, I had written most of the post but just didn’t get round to finishing it, giving it a little edit and posting it.

It had been a quiet short week as has this one just been so will roll them up together and ask for forgiveness.

Highlight Reel:

• Not that happy with these weekly updates/building in public
• A bit of maintenance and no momentum.
• Sunday 7️⃣ has started well.
• I’m dramatically upping my social media engagement game, next stop Gary V!
• Weekly Wins is showing very marginal gains WoW.
• Mentoring is continuing.
• I’m hoping to improve the #BuildInPublic experience for you the reader.

Full episode:

It’s been a bit of a strange week for me this week.

A combination of the long weekend, the ongoing house moving saga and a bit of travel thrown in, has knocked my mojo this week.

Not in the confidence sense, I still 100% believe in eOpinion, just in the really can’t be bothered sense.

Frustratingly, if I had known it was going to I would have lent into it a bit more and taken some time to relax and refocus.

I have spoken before about adopting the maintenance & momentum philosophy from David Hieatt.

This week has very much been a maintenance week. The bare minimum of maintenance.

For the record, I’m not worried. These things happen.

I don’t believe it is healthy to operate at 100% 24/7.

Next week is a new week and I’ve lots planned!

I’m still not over the moon about how this weekly round-up is coming along but have made some big steps this past couple of weeks to rectify it.

More on that below but first off a few bullet points on the week just gone.

Maintenance 🔧

When I talk about maintenance, there are certain outputs each week that has to be done.

For example, the ‘Daily eOpinion’ has to go out every weekday.

The panel is very engaged with it and knows it is due in their inbox every lunchtime. To just not do it would alter levels of trust and expectation.

This consistency has led to a steady but significant uptick in the size of the panel.

Interestingly and I’m still not 100% sure why, we saw a big jump in the number of people taking part which at 13% WoW was well above average weekly uplift.

Any client work is obvious. We had two projects go out this week.

There are a few other bits and pieces but on the whole, if I can get those done, to the outside world all looks normal.

Doing solely maintenance for an extended period will result in very minimal growth.

Now and again is fine, like last week, but need to monitor if it becomes too regular. This will be indicative of a far bigger underlying issue.

Sunday 7️⃣

Feedback on the last couple of posts has been really encouraging.

I’m very glad I started it. If you want some inspiration to start yours, check out this book.

For those staring blankly at their screen right now, the Sunday 7 is a weekly newsletter rounding up seven of the best survey data related stories we’ve seen in the press and online that week.

What is somewhat surprising, although very lovely, is how many positive feedback emails I’ve received from the eOpinion tribe in the last few weeks.

Issue #3 went live a little earlier and can be found here.

Any feedback or suggestions on how we can make it even better, don’t be scared to get in touch.

Being Social

I don’t regret a lot in life but one thing I’ve been mulling over recently is how late I am to the social media party.

I was chatting to one of my mentees (see below) this week and I was advising him on being more proactive, being more engaged and to start building his own personal network and brand.

Despite working in marketing for coming on 14 years, I’ve done very little to market myself.

You’ll notice in the last round-up I mentioned a 30 day challenge to kick start my social engagement.

You’ll also notice there was no post as promised on the topic.

I will rectify this, this week.

But, I’m engaging on Twitter and LinkedIn every day and seeing some pleasing yet small results.

Keep your eyes peeled for more details soon!

Weekly Wins

I mentioned in the last post about my #BiggestWinOfTheWeek challenge I’m posting every Friday.

I’m plugging away but this is a slow burner, marginal gains every week but moving in the right direction!

The size of the tumbleweed is getting smaller each week!

This week’s LinkedIn post is here and Twitter post is here if you would like to add your own ‘win of the week’ to the conversation.

Mentoring

Not sure if I’ve mentioned in a previous post but I have been doing some mentoring with the Youth Group that was founded by Jack Parsons.

The young guy I’m working with is a marketing student in Derby who is looking to go on a placement year in September.

If you have ever fancied doing something similar, give them a shout and get involved.

Building In Public

I’ve known for a while that I wanted to build eOpinion in public.

It’s a really interesting movement that reflects the core values of transparency, accountability and trust that I want to adhere to.

I also know I have not been doing a great job so far, but I am doing something about it.

While researching #BuildInPublic I came across Kevon Cheung and his epic guide on the topic.

After connecting on Twitter (see, engagement!!), Kevon very graciously invited me to a BIP community that he had founded.

Due to my week being as it was, I’ve not been as involved as I’d like yet but I have high hopes and am excited about seeing where it goes.

I’m currently in the process of writing my ‘build in public manifesto’ which will dramatically improve how I go about this. I’ll share this once complete.

The End!

I hope this post has been an interesting read, apologies again for missing last week. Please feel free to ask any questions or provide feedback. You can get in touch here or give me a follow on Twitter / Linkedin.

This post was originally published on chrishutchings.online