Rubik's cubes, LEGO blocks, and Memes

I solved the Rubik’s cube in 32 seconds when I was 12 years old.

“WOW, you must be a genius, Viviek!” Well, I don’t like to brag, but I'm definitely…

NOT!

I know a secret 99% of people don’t know: the 7 steps to solve the infamous cube.

My teacher gave us a 3 week assignment to learn how to solve the Rubik’s cube. YES, we were graded on this!

For the 1st week, our teacher gave us a how-to guide and walked us through each step. But, it wasn’t enough for me.

I trained like a pro athlete and practiced each step at home. Every night before going to bed, I’d practice each step 5 times using the guide and 5 times without.

Every morning, I’d wake up an hour earlier to do the same. After 12 days, I solved the Rubik’s cube without any guide.

After 16 days, I solved the Rubik’s cube 100 times. And by the 20th day, 300 times.

On the last day, we held a tournament with 100 students.

I won placed 2nd. I missed 1st by 3 seconds. Ouch!

The crazy part: I had the fastest time in the whole tournament. 32 seconds. The next best time was 1 minute, 25 seconds.

How’d I do it?

I skipped 3 of the 7 steps. But it wasn’t luck.

12-year-old me learned an important lesson that day.

You have to build a strong foundation before you take shortcuts.

To be creative, to build a personal brand, to solve the Rubik’s cube, you need to master the basics first.

Then, you can throw all the rules out the window and do it your way.

Now, let’s get into the 3 T’s .

Marketing Tip: Repurpose Content like LEGO blocks

Repurposing content is like playing with LEGOs.

You have the same blocks, but by putting them together in different ways, you can build a castle, a spaceship, or a robot.

In the same way, you can take existing content and turn it into something new for your audience.

You can turn 1 long-form content into 100 pieces of content.

Unlike playing with LEGOs, you won’t have to destroy your masterpiece to create something new.

Instead of 100, I’ll give you 10 as a starting point.

Take your best performing long-form content. It can be a Twitter space, blog, newsletter, or video.

Now, repurpose that content into:

• Tweets

• Twitter threads

• Linkedin Posts

• Slideshows

• Infographics

• Twitter Spaces topics

• Podcast episodes

• Tiktoks, YouTube shorts, and IG reels

• Reddit posts

• Medium posts

Creator Tool: Canva

When I started my creator journey, I sucked at graphic design, but Canva shortened the learning curve.

Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform perfect for content creators. Today, all my graphics, memes, powerpoints, banners are all designed on Canva.

The free version has a wide range of templates, images, logos, and design elements you can drag-and-drop to create anything for your brand. I love it because I save time and mental energy!

I recently upgraded to the Pro version for $129 per year to get access to premium features like:

• brand kit: plugs my brand colors, font, and logos across all my designs

• background remover: great for graphics with multiple PFPs

• premium templates and designs

There are some other great features I love on Canva Pro. But…

There’s no need to dish out $129 a year for the pro version when the free version gives you enough creative freedom!

Weekly Test: Memes, Memes, Memes

Last week, I said I’d post 1 meme per day. I ended up posting 9 memes in total (2 on 2 days) because I made a mistake with scheduling!

I put all the memes in a Twitter thread below:

What did I learn?

1. Engagement Rate is okay.

I pulled my engagement rate from Twitter analytics and go by their definition.
Engagement = total number of times a users interacts with a tweet. This includes tweet expansion, retweets, replies, follows, and likes.

Engagement rate = Engagement/ impressions.

My average engagement rate was 6.3%. This was lackluster. Most of my tweets average 5%-6%, while my highest performing ones reach 15%-17%.

I hypothesize 3 reasons for the low engagement:

a. My personal brand isn’t known for memes.

b. My memes didn’t follow news trends. The best performing memes on crypto Twitter capitalize on current events like the FTX collapse.

c. I’m mediocre at creating memes. Okay… fine. I suck at memes. I’m hilarious when I write (geez this guy has an ego), but meme comedy is different from injecting humor into content.

2. Memes are hard.

This art styles requires a perfect balance of humor, relatablity, and contextual knowledge.

I spent 2 hours brainstorming meme ideas and made them on Canva.

I have mad respect for Twitter accounts that grow off of memes. It’s hard. But don’t let the difficulty stop you from making your own. Every brand should try their hand at memes.

Look at fast food franchises on Twitter (McDonald’s & Wendy’s)! They are memeing away.

3. Improving my meme game

Moving forward, I’ll post 2-3 memes per week to get better at it. I don’t have a secret formula to make consistently make great memes.

But humor, context, and relatability are part of the equation. When I figure out the formula, you’ll be the first one to find out!

THIS WEEK: Help 14 creators

This week, I’ll help 14 creators level up their content game to celebrate reaching 1469 followers!

If you’d like to be one of those 14, comment “69+”on the tweet below!

The “+” let’s me know you read this newsletter and I’ll prioritize you! Enjoy this special power!

Next Tuesday, I’ll share how helping others like this grows my brand (and can improve yours).

P.S. I want to improve my newsletter every week, so if you have any feedback or tips. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

Here’s 3 questions I have:

1. Should I take out the first part and only focus on the 3 T’s? What’s an ideal length for you?

2. Do you have any suggestions for mini experiments for me to try? I have created a list with 30 on there, but would love to hear your thoughts!

3. What’s your favorite Web3 brand?

Thanks for reading! If you haven’t already, join The Degen Lettter here and level up. Follow me Twitter and Linkedin.