Last newsletter of 2023👋

✨Welcome to the 2023 APH Wrap-up. We wrote about our journey of this year, the memorable moments and the insights learnt along the way :)

2023 has been the CRAZIEST, MOST UNBELIEVABLE year for Arey Pata Hai?!. If you had met us in the beginning of this year, this is what we were doing:

• We were shutting our content-marketing agency.
• Our team of 10 was reduced to a team of 3 because we had lost our US clients due to recession.
• We were on the brink of heading our own ways. Until, one meeting on 1 March, Swati suggested this idea of creating content for curious minds. This was our last resort to save our dream team - the 3 of us. And APH was born.

Name: Arey Pata Hai?!
Birthday: March 1, 2023
Age: 305 days
Videos made: 201
Number of Quiz questions played: 1012
Family members: 536,000

APH took birth and grew up to a big family of 500k fam all in the SAME YEAR! Presenting a glimpse of our journey to you. If we can inspire even one person reading this in some tiny way, our wrap-up will be a success🤗

SOCIAL PROFILES

The roller-coster moments and what we learnt from each of our accounts:

INSTAGRAM:

The first channel to give us some hope & validation for our content. We reached our 1000 followers on 25th April, 40 days since we started posting. We were pretty happy to see the 4-digit follower count. But then, 4 days later, we reached 10k!!!!

Totally a pinch-me moment for us. So dramatic. So sudden. We had only dreamt about seeing that "k", that "m" against our numbers.

The sudden rise came because our 38th reel blew up. And then a few more. And then the latest one to go viral was the 167th one.

Lesson: Social media is a game of taking many shots. The more shots you take, the higher the chances of you getting lucky. While also ensuring every shot is slightly better than the previous one. It took us 37 reels to get lucky.

We also love Instagram because it gives us the ability to connect with the audience like no other. We play Quiz-Wiz in our stories and the response on DMs for that has been insane. On Quiz days our DMs can be scrolled endlessly ❤️

FACEBOOK:

“Who uses Facebook?” - we thought. It’s a platform where we started posting ONLY BECAUSE of its seamless integration with Instagram. But guess what? 

It is the first platform where we saw the M of the "1M” views. But that's not it.

Facebook gave us the most special firsts as a content creator:

• It is the first platform to give us money for making content!
• It is the platform that got us our first brand deal :)

So glad we ignored our question of "who uses facebook?" haha.

Lesson: Do not self-reject the platforms. Takes 5 extra minute to post. But the benefits are truly beyond your imagination.

YOUTUBE:

Honestly, we had set out to be a YouTube channel ONLY. But it gave us no results for 6 months. The month of September ended with us having 697 subscribers.

Heart-aching.

But the 7th month looked this:

Yup, from 747 to 100k in the same month! This graph will be our favourite story to tell ❤️ YT is now our biggest platform :) Wish it had stories and DMs too. But glad to connect with you all through the Community and this Newsletter.

But this was our real achievement as content marketers:

When we started, a YouTube search on "Arey Pata Hai" would show results relating to Adhey phata hai HAHAHA. Glad that Arey Pata Hai?! has its own identity now and all cracks have been filled ;)

Lesson: There can be 180 days of zero result. But then, 30 days can change it all! Keep going.

CONTENT

The only idea we had when we started out was - "Make informative content". Our very first videos were purely interesting explanations. We had made APH for the curious minds like us and thought this is the only way to reach them.

Making these was a very fulfilling experience. But the biggest challenge here was: these videos took time to make. Condensing hours of research into 60 seconds was tougher than we thought.

Enter - Spray & Play Quizzes!

We shot quizzes for the first time in April. Random idea Mohit had in his dream. He thought - "why can't two people be on the screen while one asks them about some facts?" (Clearly, we didn't realise this is called quizzing haha). Spray bottle has been a constant since the very first one.

We enjoyed making these videos. But the creator bug in us also wanted to find more interesting categories. And so there were different formats tried:

There is Trivia game with friends, there are faceless quiz videos, there is a long-form explanatory video and there was a special AMA video for you all. Want to do more of all these in 2024.

2024 plans:

So grateful for all that we have built in 2023. Our heart lies in giving information in a fun way. While Spray & Play Quizzes are here to stay, here is what we want to do in 2024:

• Do LIVE quiz events and meet with you all in person!
• Make perfect products for you all
• Host corporate quizzes
• Make more long-form informative videos
• Collab with our dream brands (Hi Marvel!)

And not hesitating to do anything exciting beyond this list :) Will need your support throughout ❤️

All through 2023 this is

⚡What kept us going...

Your kindest comments, DMs, emails - LOVE THEM SO MUCH! We were all alone when we started, we don't feel so anymore. All thanks to you all :)

So manyyyyyyyyy of your kindest words are not here but please know that we see them, and we really appreciate them. You kept us going and we are SOOOO GRATEFUL❤️

🤩 The last QUIZ-WIZ

Can't end the newsletter without this ;)

Our Arey Pata Hai?! logo has a question mark and an exclamation mark. This punctuation mark has a name. It is also usually written like this ‽ symbol. What is "?!" called?

Will wait for your answer in our inbox. Just hit reply to this mail :)

👋 See youuuuu in 2024. Our bestestttt wishes to you all for achieving all that you want to and beyond :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR ❤️

Loveeee,
Team APH

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