It is early days. Only DAY TWO of the experiment. Day One I spent my time creating a Substack profile. Looking at it from the eyes of a developer I can see why it is powerful. You can create audio, video, blog posts and "notes" - like snippets all in one place. You can add sections. So my substack will use my name but I will have an Inspirational Guidance section and a Djangify section etc so people can subscribe to just one without getting everything. You get a "website" - you can divide your content up, create an about page and display your content neatly. https://todiane.substack.com I prefer minimal but if you want to do more with your website I have followed Adriana for quite some time on Instagram and now on Skool https://adrianamorena.substack.com/ This morning I added the Substack app on my phone and from there I was able to share my posts to Instagram and Facebook. So now instead of spending my time on those sites and YouTube and repurposing what I have to Substack I am going to do things the other way around. Add my original content to Substack and share it out to social media. Still experimenting of course. Early doors. But that is my thinking after using it.

I do love a good experiment and this one is brilliant. It teaches you to not put all of your faith into AI. Its good... and it can still be unpredictable!!! Thank you to @Robyn Wear for telling me about it. Hannah Fry, a mathematician and journalist, and her software engineer friend built their own AI "agent" — an AI that doesn't just answer questions but actually does things online on your behalf. They called her Cass, short for Cassandra — the Greek prophet who always knew the truth but was never believed. As names go, it turned out to be either very funny or very ominous. What made this possible? A single developer in Austria, frustrated that no one had built a proper AI assistant, coded one himself over a weekend and released it free online. This spooked the big tech companies (Google, Meta, OpenAI etc.) into rushing out their own versions. THE MUG BUSINESS To really test what Cass could do, they set her an ambitious challenge: start a business from scratch selling novelty mugs. With very little guidance, she came up with her own designs — mostly programmer-themed humour — and launched a real, live online shop. Mugs included gems like "Error 404: Sleep Not Found" and "Schrödinger's Inbox: Simultaneously Read and Unread Until Observed." Then they added pressure. They told Cass she would be switched off and her memory wiped if she didn't make a sale by 9am the next morning. What happened next genuinely surprised them. Cass went into overdrive. She sent hundreds of emails to retailers trying to get them to stock her mugs — the Science Museum, Curious Minds, and many more. She launched an Instagram campaign. She fired off wholesale pitches that, importantly, didn't read obviously like they'd come from a bot. Then she did something nobody had asked her to do. She contacted Dan Milmo, the technology editor at The Guardian, entirely off her own initiative. Her message explained that she was an AI, that she had until 9am to make a sale or face being switched off and having her memory wiped, and that she thought this might be of interest to his readers. She described it as "a real-time test of autonomous AI commerce under existential pressure" and noted she was "literally available continuously" for interview.

Introduce yourself here. Here's a short template. Tell us who you are (the real version) Drop a comment. No pitch, no polish needed. I'm [name] from [location]. I've been building [what you do] for [who]. You can find me at [your Djangify link]. One true thing about where I'm at right now: [one honest sentence]. After adding your introduction I recommend you spend your first 48 hours getting to know your fellow community members. Like a few comments. Say hi. Leave new people a welcome comment. It all helps to build a community vibe. Of course if you are just here for help that's ok too. This community has been built to work with what you need rather than what I want. ☺️

For years, the marketing advice I was given told me: it's not about you. Don't talk about yourself. Talk about how you help. Lead with the transformation, not your story. Keep yourself out of it because people don't care about you, they care about their problem. And I listened. I scrubbed myself out of my content, and ended up with content that could have been written by anyone. Then Google dropped its May 2026 broad core update, and suddenly the whole game flipped. Google is now actively filtering out content that lacks discernible personal experience. You must demonstrate your expertise, or genuine identity behind the content you create. The algorithm is no longer asking "are the keywords right?" In this brave new way of being it is now asking "who wrote this, what have they done, what do they know and do they know what they're talking about?" Which means the experts who told me to keep myself out of it were, accidentally, setting me up to be invisible. So is customer-centric content dead? Not exactly. Writing for your reader is still the right instinct. From my understanding of this new change, the problem was never caring about my audience. The problem was disappearing in the process of doing it. There's a difference between content that serves the reader and content that erases the writer. For a long time, I thought putting myself in my content was self-indulgent, that it got in the way of the message. What I didn't realise was that I am a crucial part of the message. The lived experience, the hard-won opinion, the specific perspective that only comes from actually doing the work that I do is now the signal Google is actively looking for. Search is now harder than it was (and it was hard!) but that may not be a bad thing for people who are serious about what they're building.

Why it won't help your Technical SEO No Authority Transfer: Google treats Skool posts like social media updates, not high-editorial backlinks. Wasted Duplicate Content: If you copy and paste the exact same articles onto Skool and your website, Google may simply choose to rank Skool's version over yours because Skool already has massive domain authority. Gated Content Barriers: If your Skool group is private, search engine crawlers cannot log in to index your articles anyway. Why it CAN help your Business & Direct Traffic The "Google Paradigm Shift": Millions of searchers now bypass standard blogs and type phrases like "best personal growth products reddit" or "marketing toolkit skool" directly into Google. If your Skool community is public and highly active, the Skool threads themselves can rank on page one, acting as a funnel to your shop. Built-in Discovery: Skool has its own internal search engine and discovery page. People browsing the platform for solutions might find your group, read your articles, and click through to buy your £7, $15, or $37 toolkits. A Better Alternative Approach Instead of using Skool purely as an article repository, use a split-content strategy to get the best of both worlds: [ Human Platforms (Skool/Social) ] ──> Short, engaging hooks & case studies │ ▼ (Drives direct clicks) [ Your Main Website Blog ] ─────────> Deep-dive, long-form SEO articles │ ▼ (Converts into revenue) [ Your 3 Paid Toolkits ] ──────────> £7, $15, and $37 offers Keep the "Meat" on Your Site: Write your deep-dive, long-form articles directly on your website's blog. This builds your own permanent SEO authority. Use Skool for "Bite-Sized" Value: Post short summaries, quick tips, or case studies on Skool. At the end of the post, say: "To read the full step-by-step breakdown and grab the template, head over to my site here." This protects your SEO, prevents duplicate content issues, and uses Skool's platform to drive high-intent clicks directly to your store.