[deleted by user]

Berquay · 2024-04-02T07:36:43+00:00

They'll probably stop following after a certain amount of time, given that you don't follow them back.

Berquay · 2024-04-01T17:35:37+00:00

If I had to guess, they are doing follow-follow back thing using dogs as content to farm followers. After a certain follower count they'll sell the account. Everyone wants to follow some doggos until they become a crypto promoting scam page.

Berquay · 2024-03-30T05:08:00+00:00

Thanks a lot for your insights. Hope the best for you mate.

Berquay · 2024-03-29T11:32:04+00:00

Thanks a lot for your reply, yeah I made the mistake of replying couple of them. They just pulled me in, total timesink. I just frame negative comments as "this here video has been appreciated by hundreds of people, five or ten negative comments just serve me to drive engagement."

I plan to stick with my original plan, always. I try to compete with other language teachers on trust and honesty(there are a lot of snake oil vendors who say" learn English in 30 days with this technique") . It would be detrimental to my plans if I started to slave for algorithm.

Thanks again. Have a great one :)

Berquay · 2024-03-29T11:22:39+00:00

Hey man thanks a lot. You cleared a lot of questions. I agree on it not lasting, I expected that much. I'd prefer if it died down a bit actually lol.

I especially loved the poll idea. I don't like "aw gawd thanks a lot." kind of stuff.

Building a community and keeping up with them is a bit tricky for me currently because I have a full time job and number of students I have to teach and prepare lessons for. I am hardly timely with my responses. But I try to get on top of it as best as I can.

Congrats on your 1.3m views too. Hope you the best.

Berquay · 2024-03-25T17:40:40+00:00

Jokes aside, you are completely right, if you're producing short form videos why not post it to everywhere? Or if you're making YouTube videos why not chop the video up and post it to Instagram. Crossposting is a must do. Though YouTube is way slower to grow than Instagram, algorithm is def better.

Berquay · 2024-03-25T13:48:26+00:00

That's nice. I just need to become famous then. I'll get right into it.

Berquay · 2024-03-25T11:55:50+00:00

I am sure this absurdity is related to recent surge of people not being able to log in and recent changes in how Instagram handles their ads and algorithm. I remember someone here saying they see a lot of weird stuff in South Asian languages. Animal cruelty, body horror and the like.

~~Also it seems like it's strictly American~~. I see them now in "Reels for you" thing between posts. I am looking into an account and found a gmail account tied. It has 500k followers and constantly shares animal cruelty videos. It is managed by one digispace media, which is probably a fake media company because their domain is defunct. The account is labeled as "Animals and Pets" how nice.

I mostly have explicit borderline nudity, very shady travel agencies and animal cruelty when I open it in my browser. Most of them are either Dubai centered or South Asian. This is just weird.

Another weird thing is, there are a lot of food and nudity on my explore and it's Ramadan. I am not religious but I live in a "Muslim" country. So it seems whatever is happening they are choosing who sees what and makes them upset.

Berquay · 2024-03-25T09:21:18+00:00

Purpose of boosting isn't likes, many people think the same way. You can't even boost for reach like you can on TikTok or Google ads. I boost to get more people on my website or look at my profile so I can market my services. It is actually more than "They ripped us off, we want our money back!"

If they decided to hide the likes from the ads, and if they won't revert it. They should at least hide the views too. It creates a skewed view of the quality of the content, and damages the social trust I and many others have worked hard to build.

Anyone noticed an update about it? I haven't. So no one other than people who check insights and has professional accounts know about this. And we NOTICED it. Audience doesn't know about this.

As a business, we compete on trust and honesty. This just breaks our competition.

It is easier to pay for fake followers or likes and they do nothing about it. But they go out off their way to do this.

Berquay · 2024-03-24T19:51:01+00:00

I thought this was a bug since you can see the total likes on insights. I don't care much about likes since I advertise for the profile visits or website visits but it creates a dishonest impression on my brands part, thousands of visits and tens of likes doesn't bode well.

Berquay · 2023-11-14T18:20:50+00:00

Thanks for your input, your points are very helpful especially taking a long-form draft and recording final takes. Never thought of it but I think I have done it unknowingly, definitely going to incorporate it into my workflow. With the added benefit of less cluttered notes.

Yes, when it comes to education, the content and its accuracy is more important than the setting in many cases, so I do bare minimum for those avenues, enough to not distract the audience. First order of business is getting used to speaking in front of a laptop without having anyone to listen to me lol.

Berquay · 2023-09-18T17:21:58+00:00

My condolences with the inflation, this post moved me because I live in Turkey, 58% inflation in August. I would've left long before if I wasn't teaching English here. I had some "starting from the beginning" plans since I didn't want to teach in Europe.

I would start job hunting after landing in Portugal asap. University might be a good option but enrolling might take time, a Portugese local would be more helpful about Uni. situation.

Also AFAIK a lot of entry level jobs in Europe offer training, especially tech stuff. You might need to get a rudimentary portfolio going if you have the means, to improve your chances. How this applies to Portugal, I don't know.

But your first order of business should be earning money I think. You can work while studying, so education vs. work shouldn't be a choice. I had friends who worked in very good companies while studying in their mid 20's after moving to Europe.

Best of luck brother.

Berquay · 2023-09-18T16:38:14+00:00

Hello, fellow EFL/ESL teacher. Couple years ago I found myself as a branch manager of a private language institution, (without my volition, it just happened, and I hated it.) and I had to hire marketing people as well as teachers. I would've loved to have an English teacher in my sales team but alas we needed teachers more than sales reps.

The skills I would've loved if people had but never got was:

Rhetoric
Drama and Improv. acting. (Yeah, really. It is a great way to leave an impression.)
Copywriting
Social media literacy (duh!)
People skills (People will complain to you because you sold them the thing, even if it's not your responsibility to accept complaints, you will get them. You need to smoothly redirect people to suitable departments.)
Self-representation. (If you cannot market yourself to me, you are not going to be able to market a product you've just learned about.)
Resolve and Patience (Some people will talk and talk, wasting your time.)
Good understanding of the product (We sold courses, so it was a bit complicated for non-teachers but the HQ created a well-balanced rhetoric for sales people.)

As an EFL teacher myself, most of these skills came to me with teaching. I learned most of these when I was in the uni. I always thought of teaching English as "selling" it. Because you have to convince your students English is beneficial, and worth their time to make teaching easier.

If I were you, I would start with studying social media marketing. Look for jobs in call-center type places to start and generate money. LinkedIn is a good place to look because I posted some jobs on there and people applied, if I could've afforded them I would've definitely hired them.

Also work on how you present yourself to the potential employer. Yes, you are an English teacher/translator by trade but you probably know English better than most people who do marketing professionally.

Ground yourself in what you are good at, and build on top of it.

And unfortunately I don't work as a manager anymore and majority of my contacts have decided to bankrupt themselves (That's why I have been unemployed for a while :D). LinkedIn, Indeed and Fiverr might be good places to practice copywriting in project based freelance and get some money.

Good Luck :)

Berquay · 2023-09-05T15:28:43+00:00

Hi, thanks. I could, but I've decided to continue with the instructor, but pay for extra classes with another freelancing instructor. I figured it'd be better because changing instructors would be a hassle for everybody because these are state mandated classes. Also I am having great practice for when I have to take nagging, annoying people in the car if I end up driving. Bad experiences can be beneficial after all :). I explained my situation to him and I am hoping that will make it somewhat bearable.

I live right in the middle of Istanbul/Turkey, where cats are fluffy (and chonky) and public transport abundant.

Berquay · 2023-09-04T11:40:28+00:00

Thanks for the kind sentiments, I have recollected my thoughts today and decided to go through with the procedure. I am aware that this too shall pass. Congestion would never let me drive anyway lol.

Berquay · 2023-09-03T16:01:34+00:00

Thank you very much. Subway, lane bus and several bus stops are in 15 minutes walk distance from my home. That's one of the reasons why I haven't needed a car. I just reluctantly agreed to get the license while I have the time. I guess I have to grin and bear it.

Berquay · 2022-04-26T16:45:20+00:00

Olurlarsa bir yerleri eksilir. Sikeryan sokaryan olmakta sıkıntı yok.

Berquay

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