Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
Grief strikes at the oddest times, I swear. Holidays and birthdays are fine, but I recently saw some guys out with their moms for lunch, or coffee, and that just destroys me.
Those moments when mom would ask me about an old friend, or a job, or a place I visited, those are gone now. She cared, and noticed, in a way that’s different than anyone else.
Knowing I’ll never get to have a coffee date with my mom, ever again, is tough. It doesn’t seem fair, but that’s life.
We’ve seen sites we love sell.. shirts, sure. But I mean, there’s sooo much to be sold out there.
Apparently New York Magazine opened a shop, which seems odd, right? A music site could sell music (like Bandcamp’s store in Oakland, CA), but what’s a magazine sell?
In the beginning of 2018 I envisioned opening a shop for Skull Toaster based around classic metal magazines, like a museum of sorts, which then of course would have merch to buy to keep the lights on.
And heck, existing store can do it backwards! They already have the store, now start a site! I think of the countless record shops and music equipment stores and metal-themed restaurants that could use their brand to pull in artist and bands and designers, interview them, then put all those assets on the website for people to see for years to come (rather than disappear in the river of social media posts that are gone in 3.2 minutes).
Do websites still matter? That’s pretty much where you buy tickets, and do your banking, and emailing.. yeah, websites still matter. Make sure you got one in 2019!
I wish more podcasts had blogs, and vice versa.
It doesn’t have to be a site with 14 updates a day, but it’d so nice to read some of the highlights of an episode before diving in.
I’m thinking beyond “show notes,” too. Podcasts are hidden and out of sight. It’s hard to stumble into an episode, whereas social media makes it easy to randomly find interesting ideas, or stories.
It would make sense, too, for weekly shows to post daily, because that just builds the brand. What news items do you cover? Maybe reviews, or instructional posts? Blogs get sticky, and when you have repeat visitors, whammo, you have a new episode up, and people click play (especially people who aren’t quite into podcasts, yet, and that’s a lot of people).
And how many quotable items are inside a podcast? The stories and insider information are just tucked away in an audio file, and maybe the episode gets one post of like, “hey, here’s our new episode.”
Pull out two items, that’s two more posts, that’s two more items to post to socials, and include in your email newsletter. One podcast could practically get you five posts that you can spread out over 2-3 weeks.
Another week of trying to capture the “likes” and “watch history” from my social channels and put ’em in a place where I can actually see them five months from now.
Listening: The Unsubscribe Podcast, with great ideas and thoughts on work / wife balance, toxic masculinity, relationships, and so much more. Doing my best to find and share more podcasts that aren’t just two dudes talking.
Watching: ‘5 things to start making electronic music at home‘ by bad snacks, which I thought was pretty neato since I’m still trying to learn music making with my computer.
Thinking: From a protected Twitter account, so no link, but this: “Kind of great when you’re wondering, ‘How would they react to me putting my pronouns in my signature or asking if I can at this government job?’ only to discover you won’t even need to ask because your office manager includes theirs.”
