The challenge of advertising

In my last blog post, I said I was going to give up social media for Lent. A noble aspiration I’m sure, and (like many people) spend far too much time scrolling through nonsense on social media. So far, so good, but it’s only been two days. Yesterday I had a realisation; the main way I tell people what I offer is via social media! And I’m running Past Paper Masterclasses from 31st March to 2nd April this year, and Lent doesn’t end until 2nd April. Uh oh, how am I going to let people know about them? So far, nobody has signed up for them.

I have a few options. Either A) I pay for Facebook advertising (I don’t want to do that), or B) I use social media just to post and share to groups the information about the sessions, or C) I don’t share the information to groups, and hope that people come across the masterclasses organically.

I’ll sit with C for now, but if people don’t sign up I’ll have two options, either 1) I don’t run the masterclasses or 2) I switch to option B.

My decision to stop using social media was inspired by the intoxicating effect of doom scrolling (I do think it is an intoxication!) and posting stuff ‘for work’ isn’t really the same thing; however, how far do we stretch the self-imposed prohibition?

My daughter has chosen to give up chocolate for Lent and was gobsmacked to learn that chocolate chip muffins and hot chocolate both contain chocolate. Do I really want to nudge the boundaries of what I’ll allow myself to the point that it’s no longer an uncomfortable sacrifice? On the other hand, given the mission of Physics With Keith is to help as many people with their physics as possible, is it immoral to persist with a self-imposed prohibition deleterious to that mission?

I don’t really know what to do, but I’m open to suggestions! Please do comment, but perhaps comment on the blog post rather than on social media (I get comment notifications through the Facebook Business app, which is separate to the Facebook app. Does that make it permissible?)