Tommy: This is Conservation and Science podcast, where usually we take a deep dive into topics of ecology, conservation and human wildlife interactions. And I am your host, Tommy Serafin. Ski and I always strive to bring you diverse perspectives on the topics we cover here on the podcast. I just refuse to assume black or white position, because the topics we talk about are far, far from being black and white.
Tommy: And I said that we usually, take a deep dive into these topics because in not in this episode, this is like a Christmas episode, Christmas time episode. Unlike other podcasters who take a break for the time of, you know, December, January, I do not take a break, but I would like to push those episodes like this one where I first and foremost, thank you for being good listeners, being with the podcast, being a subscriber.
Tommy: Especially thank you for all the new subscribers, but no less thanks. Or maybe even more thanks for all the people who are here with me for years. At this point. With some of you are here for five six years. Thank you for being here and for the support, of my work and supporting the podcast and speaking about support.
Tommy: Big, massive thank you for all of you who decided to support me by buying me a coffee or buying my, limited edition podcast. And if you feel like a Christmasy generosity, the link is in the description of the show. Buy me a coffee.com slash. Thumbs up. Those can always buy me a coffee. This is great help. Because I'm editing those episodes very early in the morning and coffee is, is a great help.
Tommy: So, yeah, if you feel generosity, pause this podcast. Right now, go in the description and buy me a coffee. Okay. Pause it. Come back. And thank you so much for all of you who are supporting me. By buying me a coffee. Now, why have you here? I would like to share what is going to happen in the next year, in 2025, what we have or what I have planned, for the podcast and for you.
Tommy: So first of all, I have episodes planned until early March already. Some of them are already recorded. Some of them are only planned, but there is a content, sort of planned up until early March. And we will have, a few episodes about hunting. We haven't talked about hunting for a while, so we are going to talk about, hunting, from the perspective of how people like or dislike hunting and that they dislike hunting because of their perception of hunters motivations.
Tommy: So we're going to talk about that. We are going to talk about how being a hunter and, and hunting might that might, spark sort of like a, an environmental stewardship. So we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about like also when this environmental stewardship is not, something that is resulting out of hunting or out of, sort of like extractive outdoors activities.
Tommy: So this episode is like squarely in the social sciences. And I think that this is very interesting. And social sciences are very important for conservation, like we all know. We are also going to talk about, invasive species, particularly pink salmon. I'm, I'm giving you kind of like, a scoop what's coming? We are also going to talk about renewable energy, and especially with a special focus on offshore wind and how offshore wind turbines affecting or might affect, marine wildlife, especially cetaceans.
Tommy: So that's another episode that I'm sure you will find very interesting. Now, all those episodes are going to be on their unchanged fortnightly schedule, and I was told that those of you who are listening me from the US, you're not sure what fortnightly is. I was talking with the one, the, guy who lives in the USA, and he's like, oh, what the fortnightly?
Tommy: Is it some medieval word? So no, no, not medieval word. Apparently it's being used, day to day in Ireland and Great Britain, the UK. I'm being told, I hear that word obviously, I am not a native speaker, so take it with a pinch of salt. But one way or another, fortnightly every two weeks. So, the schedule is, as per usual, every two weeks.
Tommy: And you might have noticed that I was running this replay series, which, I was presenting episode the best episodes from last year, 2023. So that kind of made that podcast on a weekly schedule. And really, on the one hand, I wanted to present the best episodes for all the new subscribers, all of you who just, new to the show.
Tommy: And you might not, listen to those, episodes when they were published originally. So that was one reason. But the second reason was that I kind of, wanted to say like, how much really, social media and promoting those episodes on social media impact the numbers because, you might have noticed that I didn't promote this, replay episodes on social media.
Tommy: They were just published, podcasting platform and organically, I could I could see the numbers, how many people are listening and kind of gauge whether social media is really contributing, I think, to listener ships and number of downloads, the number of streams or not. And the results are, well, a little bit, but much less than I thought.
Tommy: So that is something that I was teasing for a while about the social media and all that. And 2025 will see the changes in my social media presence. So they go as follows. First one TikTok gone. I think the platform was a little bit dodgy, and outside of that, the conversion rate is absolutely minimal. So tick tick tock is gone.
Tommy: I'm not going to be posting any more on TikTok. And that pretty much goes for short form vertical videos. I will either not do them at all, or I might do much less of them and is slightly different form. Perhaps just the clips from the podcast are not the best form for this short form content. Also, it takes a long time to produce them relatively long time and again, conversion rate is minimal because you see, I am not here to build my social media presence.
Tommy: I am not social media content creator, am a podcaster. I'm going to be I'm making podcast. I'm making this podcast on YouTube as well. And that is what I'm focusing mostly. Okay, so TikTok gone. Another one that is gone is X Twitter Twitter x this platform. Oh man, I invested a lot of time and energy and in the early days it was really instrumental for my podcast and for growing.
Tommy: And I met a lot of people there. And I'm saying, Matt, because like subsequently from, you know, interacting with him on Twitter and I met them in real life and some of them are just friends right now. And, a lot of them, a lot of you, I should say, and that sort of relation, is pretty much offline now.
Tommy: So I'm not going to just be gone from Twitter. But I probably going to have my my presence on Twitter will be similar to my presence on Facebook, which is, basically on Facebook each time I publish an episode, there's like it automatically paused, pushed from my website to Facebook that it's there. So if you follow me on Facebook, and I know that quite a few of you are, about 500, people are following me on Facebook.
Tommy: If you prefer to get notifications there or share those posts on Facebook, I'm there. I'm providing this opportunity to interact with my content on Facebook, but I'm not actively logging there and reading posts and doing stuff. So I think is going to be pretty similar with X Twitter. Like Facebook, they're they're both sort of in the bucket of legacy social media where I am not going to put, much energy into, Instagram.
Tommy: Instagram will stay a because surprisingly, I see quite, significant conversion rate from Instagram, which was surprising. And, you know, obviously I know that because I'm looking at the number, I'm kind of like a nerdy guy. So I looking at the numbers and see what's happening. So Instagram, a lot of you clicks on links in Instagram and going to listen to the podcast from there.
Tommy: So that will stay. And because I'm saying links that means stories. So I'm going to be publishing, Instagram stories pretty much like I do. At the moment those stories are also being pushed to Facebook. So again, those of you who. Facebook is your preferred platform and you will see those stories there on Facebook as well.
Tommy: I will probably kind of cut the number of like a regular posts on, on the Instagram. And similarly, I'm not going to be publishing reels the same, the same deal as with, TikToks as with the same is with Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts. I might do some of them, a slightly different style and less of them, but it's not going to be like, for every episode at the moment.
Tommy: For every episode I was publishing like a three short form, clips. That is going away. It's just not worth a lot of time. And, you know, maybe if I wanted to grow my audience on social media, then that would be useful. But that's not what I'm going to do. So Instagram is staying in, a form of stories and static posts, the probably not reels, and the main social media platform that you can interact with me is Blue Sky.
Tommy: I'm on blue sky. And the reason is obviously, like I said, I spend many, many, hours on Twitter and blue Sky is like Twitter evolved. It's actually arguably better with their feeds feature where like, if you don't know, feeds on on blue sky is something where you can choose your algorithm sort of thing, or at least choose like what types of posts you want to look at, right?
Tommy: So if you're into, nature related posts, you can you can subscribe to the Twitter feed that is about nature related posts. And you can also push your content, make posts into that feed that are about nature conservation, and maybe you don't want, you know, read stuff about politics or war about other stuff. Maybe. At least not on Saturday morning.
Tommy: Okay. So that's good for health that you can just control. What is the content that you're consuming? And also you can, from my perspective as a creator is better because you can put your content in the more, kind of targeted way. So blue Sky, that's probably the best platform to interact with me. And this is where I'm going to be a lot of time, but not as much as I used to on social media.
Tommy: So in general, in 2025, I will cut down my presence on social media. It's just not worthy. It takes a lot of time and it the results for the podcast are not that great. So I'm assuming that you already subscribe to the podcast here on this platform that you're listening to. Whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube.
Tommy: Thank you for being a subscriber. By the way. I especially encourage you to explore new podcasting apps, podcast apps that are supporting podcasting. 2.0. Whether it's a podcast, podcasts or podcast anywhere or, fountain or these sort of things, I encourage you to experiment with those podcasting platforms. They have a lot of podcast specific functionality, like cross-platform commands and maybe value for value and transcripts and chapters and stuff like that.
Tommy: And this is also very important for podcasting. For podcasting, if you're, listening to more podcasts, I think you should support podcasting that way because, you know, like Spotify, they're trying to basically close the whole ecosystem and have it for themselves. And so if you like the open, nature of podcasting and podcasts, I would encourage you to find, you know, podcasting 2.0 app.
Tommy: You can try a number of them and pick one that you like the most. And definitely in 2025, I am going to be rolling out more podcasts 2.0 features that obviously they're not going to be available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts because they do not support podcasting. 2.0 okay, so that's where is the best way to find me.
Tommy: And finally, finally I will put way more effort into a newsletter. So you already know I'm writing a newsletter. You should be subscribed to the newsletter already. And if you don't it's newsletter dot Tommy's outdoors, it's Tommy s outdoors. Tommy's outdoors.com right newsletter dot Tommy's outdoors.com and subscribe there. The newsletter goes roughly fortnightly like a podcast, but there are some extra articles there, some extra perks for subscribers like, you know, discounted places on online, webinars and conferences and stuff like that.
Tommy: And in coming year 2025, that time that I kind of recycled or got back, by being less on social media, I intending to put into writing articles and those article is going to be obviously on my website, but they will also be on the newsletter. And if you're subscribe to the newsletter, you will get those articles first, or some of those are going to be newsletter only.
Tommy: Or maybe there's going to be, you know, like a teaser that I'm just going to publish, like a short version is like, if you want to get a full version of that, article, subscribe to our newsletter. So if you already subscribe, you will get a full version of that article, straight away. So that is what I am planning for 2025.
Tommy: All right. So with all that out of the way, folks, I wish you Merry Christmas. Have fun, rest, and I wish you great and prosperous New year 2025. And I hope to meet you in 2025. And, I will. I am sure you will continue to enjoy episodes of the Conservation and Science podcast, because I have really good stuff coming in 2025.
Tommy: Okay, so have a good one. Thanks again for being here and talk soon.