The Armchair Economist’s Apprenticeship is a weekly series documenting my progress throughout my journey in the apprenticeship module of the Praxis program. I’m currently a market research analyst apprentice for Economics for Business (E4B). My position is subject to change depending on the needs of my employer. At the request of my boss, I’ll still keep mostly quiet about the details of my employer for the time being.
Week 24: October 12, 2020 – October 16, 2020
What I’m Learning:
One cool thing I learned at work last week:
If you’re new to social media marketing and paid marketing here are some tactics I learned on how to acquire new subscribers, website users, content writers, etc.
- Organic social – using free social media activity without paid ads
- Paid social – social media activity with paid ads
- Organic search engine optimization – using free methods via keywords in our content, making the search engine algorithm work with us
- Direct referral – word of mouth, reaching out to individuals
And here are a few tactics on how to save on advertising costs:
- A/B testing (experimentation) method – for example, run two types of ads, static photos and videos, and find which one generated more likes. Then, double down on the more successful result. On Facebook, video ads performs much better than static photo ads. Ever wonder why all these campaign ads are mostly all videos? Facebook prioritizes and promotes video over photos. I’ve even seen still images run as videos.
- Paid (industry specific) influencers – they can tell their followers to sign up on your platform or email list and it’s an efficient way to gain more users that way instead of paying for each like/follow or sign up.
One cool thing I learned outside of work last week:
Two defunct satellites nearly collided into each other but thankfully didn’t. Recent near collisions of objects in orbit has raised concerns again for the growing space junk problem and raising more credibility of the Kessler syndrome – a theory hypothesizing that collisions of junk causes a cascade of more collisions.
Why should we care?
We depend on weather and GPS satellites which orbit Earth and it’s obvious what the consequences would be if they were damaged or destroyed by space junk. Recently, the ISS, International Space Station, had to be maneuvered out of the path of flying space debris that could’ve damaged the station. Thankfully the astronauts onboard were not in real danger.
In the future, when space travel is more affordable via competition, I predict that the junk hauling business will become indispensable and commercial trawler types of spaceships will find a lot of profit.
What I’m Creating:
One example of how I created value at work last week:
I finally completed the marketing plan and created a pitch deck for our bossman over at the Mises Institute, of whom are funding our E4B budget. The pitch deck is an in-depth look at our current and future plans, divided up into three phases.
The other half of the marketing team, my coworker, and our founder had a meeting to finalize the marketing plans and they gave their input on what our boss needed to know.
What project I’m currently working on at my BP:
Right now I’m shifting focus on organizing content contributions from our authors who are writing articles for us.
What I’m doing to become a better version of myself overall:
Whenever I’m going through conflicts, internal or external, I talk with my closest friend who always hears me out and occasionally doles out tough love. It motivates me to improve my attitude and outlook on life and find solutions to my conflicts. Talking about mental distress actually does something and it’s not useless, I find it cathartic.