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    The S.W.I.P.E.S. Email (Friday December 30th, 2022)

    Swipe📁Wisdom🧠Interesting🧐Picture🖼 • Essay📄Sketch✎
    A fun email for Friday. I hope you enjoy!

    Edition: Friday, December 30th, 2022

     

     

    🎤 Listen to this email here:

    Swipe:

    I like this ad because the headline copy and image work together to show your tires are the only part of your car that touch the road.

    The headline uses underlining for "you're only safe as your tires" and the image cleverly removes the body of the car and just shows the tires:

    tubeless-tire-ad.jpg

     

    Wisdom:

    I like this quote: 

    Quote

    “Once you understand the motivation, reward and punishment structure of any system, you can begin to control it.” 

    - Guido Van Rossum (founder of the Python programming language)

    I once heard Cesar Millan (the Dog Whisperer) say all dogs like at least 1 of these 3 different rewards: 
    - Toys
    - Food
    - Affection

    Once you know the type of reward a dog responds to best, it makes it much easier to train!

    Hugsy likes toys, food, and affection:

    hugsy-image.jpg

     

    Sid is primarily motivated by food, and is "meh" on the rest:

    sid-dog-treat.jpg

     

    Poe mostly responds to affection:

    poe-affection.jpg

     

    Knowing the reward/punishment structure seems to help in any system!

    - Training neural networks
    - Training dogs
    - Raising kids

    Interesting:

    Here's a funny term I heard:

    A doctor friend said a lot of her patients have “Million Dollar Pee” because they take so many useless supplements 😂

    Picture:

    I hope you're having a great holiday season!!

    austin-holidays.jpg

    This picture sums up Christmas & New Year's in Austin: Cold enough to wear some long clothes, but warm enough to work outside without freezing to death 😂

    Essay:

    Here's an idea for the U.S. Department of Education:

    Crowd-source short form videos for every subject & every grade K - 12. Students can casually browse these like TikTok as a supplement to their classes.

    Here's An Example: 
    Take this 3rd grade Language Arts curriculum and put a $10,000 award for the best short video for each section (1 minute or less)…

    education-outline.webp

    Educators across the world will flood social media with their entries.

    The $10,000 prize is split up into: 
    • 1st place: $6,000 
    • 2nd place: $3,000 
    • 3rd place: $1,000 

    You then take the winning videos and add them to playlists on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. 

    Now let’s do the math…

    The U.S. Department of Education budget in 2022 was $636 billion. 

    Each grade curriculum is 32 weeks, with 5 lessons per week. 

    • 160 lessons per grade X 12 grades = 1,920 lessons 

    • 1,920 lessons X $10,000 per prize = $19,200,000 

    • $636 billion / $19.2 million =  .003% of budget

    Conclusion: 
    For just .003% of your US Education budget, in one month, you could give high quality supplemental materials to every student in the country (technically the world)…and turn social media from a time-suck to kids, into a powerful teacher that benefits millions!

     

    Evidence crowd sourcing works has been proven by @xprize and @DARPA. Interesting analogy is @thesamparr and @ShaanVP offered $5k for anyone who can make a clip viral…it resulted in hundreds of clips, hundreds of creators, and hundreds of millions of views…for just $5k 😳

    sam-par-tweet.png

    Even if this program cost 5x or 10x what’s quoted here it would still be an intensely efficient use of funds.

    This same competition could be held every year, or whenever there are changes to the curriculum…massively increasing the quality of the education as people compete.

    This program could bring out a whole new generation of digital educators.

    A high school English teacher in Missouri may discover she has the skills to educate millions of students online, rather than just 100 students in person.

    Digital education would advance quickly with this method.

    I hope someone takes this idea and runs with it!

    Sketch:

    My content consumption has changed in the last few years.

    I’d say for every 1 blog post, I’m viewing 100’s of Reels/TikToks/Shorts

    blog-vrs-video.webp

    I've also noticed far more growth on my short videos than my blog posts recently (see full stats here).

    How many blog posts do YOU read vs watching short form video? Reply to this email and let me know!

    Hope you're having a great holiday season, and I hope you enjoyed these Friday tid-bits!
    Sincerely, 
    Neville Medhora

    nev-head.webp


    P.S. Tomorrow is your last chance to grab our Copywriting Course 2023 deal. Use coupon NEWYEAR2023 for 40% off all of 2023!

    28 Comments


    Recommended Comments



    Great content, I thoroughly enjoyed receiving this and last weeks email, especially the part about taking a different approach to the educational system.

    I have here an article about attention span in 4 year olds being reduced by Sponge Bob, due to constant camera angle change.

    I believe these short vids/ reels are only feeding into reducing peoples attention spans.

    What are your thoughts on this?

    Does the benefit out way the downside?

    Let me know what you think.

    Link to comment
    • Administrator

    Hey Albert, I think attention spans are the the same, but we have cooler technology and media forms that tell stories quicker!

    Link to comment

    Like Sid, I am also primarily motivated by food. Happy holidays to you and your pups - I'm a big fan of the newsletter and your blog. Going to jump into the Copywriting course when I finish saving up for it - in the meantime, I appreciate learning from you in this way!

    Link to comment

    May God continue to bless you with His infinite wisdom and lead you into His  truth and perfect will for your life. 

    I loved the picture of you and your Christmas 🎄 tree, and the pictures with the 3 sweet dogs (who I call) "God's 4-legged angels." I love dogs too; their love is unconditional and heart-warming. 🐶

    Thank you for keeping me on your email list; I learn so much from your God-given gifts (your wisdom and wit - among many), and it always blesses me to consider your generous heart in sharing your gifts with others. May God show you new ways to bless others that will also bless you - beyond what you could ever hope or imagine. 

    Jesus loves you, Neville. He promises to reveal Himself to anyone who will seek Him (Jeremiah 29:11-13; James 1:5).
     

    Link to comment
    • Administrator

    Thanks Eddy! I totally agree with this....although I am finding more and more that shorts have moved from solely my entertainment to my education.

    Link to comment

    this is brilliant Nev

    and I’m making a living as a “conversion cartoonist” with instant understanding illustrations and copy that compounds – brevity is respectful of your readers’ time & attention 

    Link to comment

    I hate videos, especially if I'm trying to learn something. It's much more efficient to read something (for me) than to try and watch a video. Having said that, there are thousands of just awful videos out there. I don't have time to sift through them looking for the one or two gems.

    The other thing is time. It just takes too long to watch a video, I can read much faster than I can watch, unless it's really tightly edited and packed with info. 

    So blogs I read, I don't watch videos at all.

    Link to comment

    Your newsletters are both fun and educational. 

    I prefer focusing on traffic from search engine (blog ,YT) because it gives you evergreen traffic  

    Shortform video have short life

    90% views for my youtube channel comes from search.

    Link to comment
    • Administrator

    Why thank you PF....I like SEO traffic too, but have noticed YouTube traffic to be very similar. Many of my 4+ year old videos still get hundreds of views and day and bring in signups!

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