MOVING FROM TWITTER TO A NEWSLETTER WITH LINDA BLOOMFIELD

Linda Bloomfield started #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter in January of 2018, which is a weekly round up of paying gigs for creative folks in the UK.

What caught my eye was a Tweet (here) saying she’s moving Opportunity Tuesday to a newsletter format, so I reached out to understand her move from a social media network to an email list, which I think can be super helpful for lots of us!

I guess my first question is how long have you been doing Opportunity Tuesday? And is that how you built up to 16.5K followers on Twitter? That number of followers is no joke.

Linda Bloomfield: I posted the first thread back in January 2018 – can’t quite believe it’s been that long! I think I maybe had about 1,000 followers at that time, and I was working in an arts centre in London. I was constantly being emailed opportunities to “pass on to my network,” and started to question who that really was? And did it seem fair that people only had access to a lot of these opportunities if they were already in a ‘network’ of some kind?

It can be hard to find interesting paid opportunities in the arts as they’re not all shared in the same place, and frankly freelancers have enough unpaid admin to do without spending hours hunting for the next commission.

The first (Twitter) thread was a hit, and my following grew steadily – I tried to keep up the thread every week, with a few breaks for holidays, and now I somehow have 16.5k followers, which seems wild to me as outside of OppTues and the occasional theatre/arts chat I mainly post about nonsense: cooking, gardening, and my dog!

When did you see the writing on the wall regarding Twitter?

I owe a lot to Twitter – I can’t deny that my following has helped me build a profile and definitely helps me find more work – I’m freelance too!

So I’ve been following the Musk takeover closely and it really feels like things are headed down a rocky path. If Twitter even still exists in a few months I’m concerned it will no longer be a safe or trusted platform. I hope I’m wrong!

Did you consider moving Opportunity Tuesday to another social media platform?

I did consider other platforms. I know quite a chunk of “theatre twitter” has already jumped ship to Mastodon, but it just didn’t seem as “easy” and accessible as Twitter. Instagram doesn’t really work for words and links in the way I would need it to for OppTues, lots of people aren’t on Facebook anymore, and I’m too old for TikTok!

I follow a couple of other Substack newsletters and it has always seemed a clean, simple and accessible form of communication – so giving that a go now instead. It’s going well so far!

The thing I love here is you’ve been doing this since 2018. That’s four years, which is forever in internet time. And in your first post on Twitter, asking for people to sign up, you got about 1,200 people to sign up. From one Tweet, that’s great! But again, you built up four years of trust to do that, so when people saw “hey, subscribe here,” they did it. They trusted you.

I guess so. It’s very lovely! I’m just so glad people have found it useful for all this time. It’s my favourite thing in the world when people get in touch to say they’ve had successful applications for things they’ve found through Opportunity Tuesday!

Can you speak a bit about showing up for those four years? There had to have been slow weeks, right? Self doubt creeps in, “why am I doing this?” What kept you going all those years?

Oh my gosh, yes absolutely. There are definitely times I’ve regretted committing to 10 every week!

I genuinely put the hours in to find the “right” things for the list each week. I won’t, for example, just list standard jobs that wouldn’t be of interest to freelance artists, and I won’t list anything exploitative. So it takes around three hours every week and there are of course times I wish I didn’t have the commitment. I’ve occasionally been known to post at midnight, or “Opportunity Tuesday… on Wednesday,” and even once or twice have included an “interval” in the thread while I eat my tea or watch bake-off.

But people get it because I don’t get paid for this so it’s got to realistically work with my life. I’ve taken a few breaks over the years, for holidays, family stuff, or just when work is particularly chaotic – and people have mostly been kind, understanding and patient.

For the handful of times I’ve regretted starting it, there have been 1,000 times I’ve been so glad I did.

It feels like it’s bigger than just me now – a community has been built around it, one that celebrates open recruitment, fair pay, and support for freelancers, arts and culture. A bunch of other free lists and threads have sparked since 2018, often citing Opportunity Tuesday as their inspiration. I feel very proud.

And with your first email send, what was the reaction? I’m guessing you had like a 50% or higher open rate, right?! What’s the response been so far, from sending out these listings via email?

You can tell I’m new at this because I hadn’t actually checked until I saw this question! Oops. Looks like the first email on Tuesday received a 76% open rate – wow!

Since then we’re now up to just under 1,800 subscribers in total – I’m floored to be honest. And delighted it will be able to keep going this way, if / when twitter dies.

A few people are also chipping in real money now – access is the same for free and paid subscribers (and always will be) but people can choose to chip in £1 a week if they can afford to. The income isn’t huge but will mean I can properly make time for it each week going forward. As a freelancer myself, in a cost of living crisis, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that!

A 76% open rate??! You are a legend. And it’s a testament against the silly notion that “nobody reads emails anymore!”

Compared to putting up these listings on Twitter, how was it different putting it all together in your first email? It was your first time, I know, so there’s a learning curve, for sure. But it’s nice to not have a character limit, right? Haha

Not going to lie, it took quite a bit longer than anticipated! But I think that’s just because it was my first time, and I’m also still cross posting to twitter at the moment which I won’t be doing forever (maybe).

Substack is a lovely platform though to use, really simple and clean, and it was a treat to be able to write as much as I like for the introduction and the end. It sounds silly, but OppTues has such a specific format that it’s hard to give it much…personality?

But you’re totally right, the change to email means each weekly list can come with a bit of razzamatazz and colour – an intro, a story, some context, a response to what’s going on in the world and in our industry for freelancers – that feels like an exciting opportunity.

I’ve already thought about adding in some news, links to other arts folk doing great things, stuff like that – it’s going to be fun to get creative and experiment. I’m sure the layout will get a little fancier in time too, once I’ve learnt the ropes! (It will probably always end with a photo of my rescue dog Mabel though, I reckon she’s the main reason the open rate is so high)

ANTI-SOCIAL

My absolutely-biased bunch of raging links against social media:

• “Instagram is telling creators when and why their posts are ‘shadowbanned’” – oh, how nice!
• “Facebook and Instagram are struggling to attract and retain the younger generation that’s crucial for their longevity. Why? The simple answer: Gen Z prefers video.”
• Speaking of video, “the rise of personalization and short-form video platforms means that the streaming services’ marquee editorial collections don’t drive as much listening.”