NHT Blog

I remember being at Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando and listening to a keynote speaker tell a story about a time when he didn’t release an episode of his show.  He put up a slide that showed an email from a listener, asking, “Where the %#&!* is Episode 479?”

Needless to say, this shows real loyalty by an audience who counts on that host to be there when they say they’re going to.

I get it that content creators and influencers want to keep up with the latest trend(s).  It’s by no means easy to be the first one out of the gate with something, no less guarantee that you’ll be the one to get credit for having started it.

Oh sure, you might have a video that goes viral, in which case everyone knows that it was yours, but I might also win the lottery.  Yeah, the odds are probably not too far off from one another.

I recently had a bad experience with a song that was sent to me for review.  It had started out nicely, caught my attention, had my interest up, and proceeded to go downhill (actually, it went in too many different directions), to where I had to decline it.

So, understandably, I was a bit cautious as I continued to listen to “Sweet Song” from Waking Up Production.  Fortunately for me, this one did not disappoint, and, with a smile on my face, I was able to hit the Approve button.

When I saw a song come through for review consideration by Ariana Colletti I thought, “It’s already a No.  I just wrote something about a track from her in mid-July.”  But the newest song was too good to NOT write about, and so it’s the basis for this week’s post.

It didn’t hurt that “Too Far” wasn’t being released until last month anyway, which allowed me to schedule it out and leave space in between the previous track from her that I wrote about and this one.

It’s Monday, which means it’s back to work for you and me.  That’s a pretty routine statement, right?  Except in my case, when I focus strictly on my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast, I answer with, “Wait, that’s it?  ‘Back to work’?”

Yes, yes, I’m the same guy who just under three months ago wrote a blog under the headline, “You DO Have to Spend Money to Make Money.”  And for the record, I still stand by everything I said in that post, so, don’t email me or message me through social media trying to call this a contradiction.

Purely by coincidence my blog this week could almost be considered a Part 2 of sorts to what I wrote in last week’s post.  It was something I saw between putting that one online and now that made me realize there was more ground to cover on the subject.

I’m referring to what it says in your bio, although this week I’m specifically thinking Instagram and Twitter (a.k.a. X).

Nowadays everybody wants to be an influencer or a content creator or both.  In fact, a great number of people will put one or both of those on their social media accounts to identify themselves as being exactly that, regardless of what level they’re at and/or if it’s even true or not.

And that, my friends, is a very common and serious problem worth analyzing.

So many times we’ve heard the hypothetical situations posed to us.  “What ONE person, dead or alive, would you have dinner with if you could?”  Or people, of course, ask, “What would you do if you won the lottery?  How would you spend all that money?”

There’s a long list of these types of scenarios, none of which are anything realistic.

We’re all striving for engagement, right?  Follows, Likes, Comments, Shares.  We toss and turn at night trying to strategize how we can get more of each.  We’re all guilty of wondering, “How can I get something to go viral.”