Testing 8 Marketing Ideas So You Don't Have To

Hey honeys and hustlers,

I’m ranking my creative experiments from 'why bother' to 'worth every minute.’ Sometimes when you’re working in your business, you can forget that the time spent working on your business is equally valuable. I also get bored and creatively restless easily, so maybe tinkering is just in my nature. Here’s a list of what I’ve been tinkering with this year in an effort to grow my community on my deep connection platforms (my podcasts and newsletters). I want to note that these might not be as relevant for folks who are mainly trying to grow their freelance business or social media platforms.

P.S. Stay until the end for some creator economy news stories and to vote on our next creator deep dive profile!

• Short form videos. 6.5/10. I’ve been making short videos introducing the articles that I write for my newsletters and posting them on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Threads. I haven’t seen a ton of conversion to new subscribers, but they do start conversations, which I enjoy. I would say there’s likely more I could do here in terms of experimenting with hooks and visual transitions to increase the ROI on these. I could also likely try posting these to TikTok (which I’ve been hesitant to do this year for obvious reasons) and Instagram (which I detest for posting), but quality of depth > quantity of platform for now. Cost = Descript and Adobe Premiere Pro subscription.

• Podcast crossover episodes. 8/10. These include episodes I’ve hosted and episodes I’ve been a guest on. It’s been nice to test out this co-hosted style show where we’re asking each other questions and coming prepared to talk about very specific topics that are relevant to our audiences. cost = Riverside + Descript + Captivate subscriptions.

• Memes on Threads. 7.5/10. Social media is silly, and the creators on Threads seem to be in the mood for lighthearted jokes. Ever since I saw this livestream on beehiiv, I’ve been contemplating this low-effort, high-reward tactic. So far, I think it’s worth the two seconds it takes to source and schedule these with a link to my newsletter. I started this recently, so I’ll check back in later to let you know how this goes. Cost = free social media accounts + Typefully 1-year subscription.

• Newsletter thumbnail design. 2/10. I did a ton of research on this. Made a swipe file in Notion. Created various templates in Canva. Created brand guidelines. The works. But ultimately, with all my link sharing, 90%+ of the views of these articles will come through email, not through web traffic. So with all the effort they take, not many people will actually see them. They look cute and shape the aesthetic of a newsletter website, but ultimately aren’t a huge factor in web clicks or new subscribers in my experience. A lot of work, but not a huge payoff. Cost = free Canva account.

• Substack livestreams. 9/10. Unfiltered talks. Audience engagement. Audio and video for repurposing. It’s an unexpectedly great community-building platform. I’m probably still not using it to its fullest potential, as I don’t repurpose the automated short video clips Substack creates as well. The only hindrances are that Android users can’t schedule livestreams on mobile, and you’re unable to schedule livestreams on desktop (but I hear the second one is coming, supposedly). As I mentioned previously, I’m going to keep doing these and may even use Descript to pick highlights and quotes for me to share as well. Cost = free Substack account.

• Vibe coding. 8/10. There are a ton of hindrances to creating apps and websites this way, as all vibe coding platforms (Bolt, Lovable, Replit, etc) will require integrations and plugins like crazy. BUT there are some web designs I would only have been able to make with vibe coding. I still know very little about code, but a lot more about custom web design and user experience/UX design, and it feels good that it’s platform agnostic. Cost = free at first, then $20/month on Bolt.

• Printing custom-designed posters and pamphlets. 9/10. Going the extra mile to make people smile and leave them with something tangible paid off. I would definitely do this again. High cost, high reward. Cost = less than $50 for prints, $1K for custom design. (Not including travel and lodging for events)

• Creating short-form video templates in Descript. 10/10. My temptation is to make every video have unique captions. The more difficult something is to copy, the better. But making every video unique means that the format isn’t easily repeatable, not just for me, but for any editor I want to work with. The reason I left CapCut wasn’t just because of the proposed TikTok ban; it was because my editors couldn’t easily replicate my results, and it wasn’t a true NLE. I couldn’t save templates or easily save caption presets. Descript also just makes it easier for me to go from long form to short form. Having repeatable short-form videos also makes them more recognizable on social media, which is a bonus. Cost = Descript 1 year subscription.

Future Experiments

When I have time (haha, what’s that), these are some things I’m excited to try next. Ultimately, I’m still trying to build a marketing engine that matches the growth and scale that I’m trying to achieve without sacrificing depth, quality, and community engagement. For reference, almost all of my marketing pre-2025 has been text-based, photo-based, and short-form video-based. And the latter two were not as consistent as the first one by a long shot. I’d mix in a poll on LinkedIn or speaking at an event every once in a while for a little razzle-dazzle. There’s nothing wrong with what I was doing, but as I move away from posting daily, the posts I do publish have to convert more.

• Creating lead magnets. So far, I’ve been using Notion and Chronicle for this. I’m on the free plan for both. The only “lead magnets” I’ve tried are just gating the articles, so letting the content of the articles be the magnet. I want to try creating useful docs for people to attract them to the newsletter.

• Creating carousels in Figma. I’m on the free plan in Figma. I’ve been wanting to lean more into carousels for LinkedIn and Threads, but Canva isn’t best suited for carousel generation. I’m excited to play around with this and some rotating CTAs to see how they work.

• RootfulX. This is my makeshift name for a place where I can safely experiment with AI applications for my business. Whether that’s meta prompting for my vibe coding sessions, or brainstorming new ideas for each media project of the business.

• Sponsoring in-person events with merch. As much as I want to go to every relevant in-person event, I simply can’t if I actually want to get work done. So I’d like to be able to send merch and possibly a sign-in form to events, I can make support event creators and reach more folks. When I say merch I mean stickers, pins, etc. Not necessarily bigger items like t-shirts. Excited to see how this goes.

• Having signable posters for events. For Melanin MVP, I’ve been taking some inspo from Tracksmith and Playa Society. One thing they do well - big displays that people can sign when they reach a destination. I think this is a keepsake that will bring people into the community and start conversations. Hoping to try this at least twice this year.

What creative experiments are you running this year? What creative experiments would you like to try this year? We still have 6 months left in the year. So much time to try something new that could grow your audience engagement, community, and creative business!

In Readworthy News

While the Substack co-founder created quite a stir by announcing that he’d be writing a weekly paragraph (definitely not to be confused with a weekly column) on a beehiiv newsletter, there are more pressing stories to attend to.

// Time Magazine releases its inaugural Time 100 Creators List. In 2006, Time Magazine made the first recognition of online creators, noticing that much of the content online was generated by users. This was in the heyday of MySpace, which feels like the purest social media platform I’ve ever experienced in hindsight. They discussed how they chose the 2025 creators and made video content with 9 of the selected 100 (including Sean Evans, photographed above). Did I buy a physical copy of this magazine? Yes, yes I did. I recognized quite a few names, while others are a complete mystery to me. But I’m curious…

// Grammarly buys Superhuman and Coda. This announcement comes as Grammarly bets on agentic AI to fuel enterprise-level administrative support and strategic internal communications (likely including help desk tickets for SaaS and eCommerce companies). I use Grammarly as a writer, but haven’t used their AI tools. Interested to see what this looks like and how this affects the cost and potential bundle pricing for these companies.

// YouTube has announced it will only pay creators who use their real voice and produce original content starting July 15th. This means that reused videos, copied content, low-effort uploads, and fully AI-generated videos will be ineligible for monetization. While we’re not pushing the boundaries like Denmark, this is a great step forward on a widely used and respected platform for creators. I’m very happy to see this.