Millions of page views a month have turned into millions of downloads and minutes watched of our podcasts and videos.
By Nazarul Islam
Norm and Cliff are busy on a virtual stool, lamenting those Crowdstrike calls they sold too early, or the Tesla weeklies that blew them up last week. They celebrate each other’s victories and call bullshit on each other’s ideas in a jocular, collegial way. It’s their community. There are tens of thousands of these trader chat rooms attracting Norms and Cliffs from all over America and beyond.
May be hundreds of thousands? It costs nothing to start one up other than the desire to give up that much of your time and the ability to attract a few dozen subs.
Here is something amazing—the guy I’m telling you about, talking them into the market close on the microphone each day – has never worked a day in his life on Wall Street or at a hedge fund or an asset management firm or even at a prop shop. If I told you what his job was prior to starting the room, you wouldn’t believe me. Also, I like him, so…
We’re in the early stages of building the communities around our digital media content the same way we’ve done so with our blogs during the previous decade. Millions of page views a month have turned into millions of downloads and minutes watched of our podcasts and videos.
How? Community and Consistency – It becomes part of the fan-base’s regular routine. Every Wednesday, tens of thousands of young people – investors, advisors, analysts, traders – know that the latest episode of Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben will be waiting for them on the podcast app of their choice. We’ve been hiring employees out of this listenership.
They know exactly what we’re doing – the perfect pool of talent for the future of our workforce – Because they’re already in the community.
Every Tuesday, the community knows to expect the live broadcast of What Are Your Thoughts at 5:30pm eastern. We almost never miss a week. Consistency – The community gets to live chat with us and each other during the show. Community – Current clients are watching and listening. Future clients are watching and listening. This is the formula.
Listening to a podcast is a religious ritual. You receive the same quality product about the same familiar subjects with the same comforting voices and you become a part of people’s lives.
Part of their ritual – “It’s Saturday morning and on Saturday morning I make coffee and listen to the Joe Bidden show to catch up with Joe, Ish, Ice, Parks – you know, all my buddies.” You aren’t friends with them in real life, but you feel like you are.
There are many versions of this in the stock market. They are growing larger, with audiences into the millions. Scaling – The longer the audience spends together, the easier it is for their attitudes and ideas to get into something that can be directed – Something that can be channeled into a tidal wave. January 6th.
If you’re building one of these communities, hopefully, you’re trying your best to give them helpful information, inspiration and positive reinforcement. Because you could also go the other way and get a big response by telling people the world is going to hell and they need to keep tuning in as things get worse and worse. Pessimism can be a highly effective community-building tactic.
I saw this firsthand in Florida ten years ago with Peter Schiff and Doug Casey telling a live audience of thousands to start planning for the final crash. Final, as in, find a remote parcel of farmland to hide out at, a loaded shotgun resting at the front door. Subs were definitely subbing after that powwow.
Robinhood communities, Reddit communities (and sub-reddit on top of sub-reddit communities), Message board communities, Chat room communities, Social media communities and Fanbase communities – We’ve come a long way from the Beardstown Ladies investing club.
If you see something in the markets these days that appears to make very little sense on the surface, or to be unsustainable given how incongruent it is with all of your prior ideas about the right way to invest, chances are there’s a community somewhere behind this activity. Feeding it and feeding upon it simultaneously. Tread carefully and try not to kick the beehive.
The bees are highly invested emotionally. In many cases, their inclusion is literally all they have.
(Research: Investment Chronicle/Economist)
[author title=”Nazarul Islam” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Nazarul-Islam-2.png”]The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.[/author]
