Founder of the Social Media Escape Club
I always love seeing talented friends post their art and magic.
This is from Joce Aucoin (“Choppy waters today I guess” from Twitter), whom I met like way back in 2002 or 2003 when she was doing LUJO Records and sending me albums in padded mailers when I was doing my music blog. Here we are 20 years later, still at it.
She’s been making a lot of collage work, which I just love seeing as she keeps growing it.
From the @tittybats account on Instagram, and pretty much how I feel lately with everything.
These are so wonderful.
“If we don’t support old shops, they’ll be gone forever,” Shin says. “I tried to ‘preserve’ the old shops through this series […] I hope when people see it, it will remind them to go and support their small local businesses.”
From ‘Shin Oh “preserves” traditional Malaysian spaces and places with her 3D pixel room building,’ via Kottke.
From today’s HEAVY METAL EMAIL, “FACTS ARE EASY AND BORING AND NO ONE CARES.”
Promoting your creative work should be art. It should spark curiosity, wonder, and delight.
That doesn’t mean spend 3 hours a week “engaging” on social media, or editing videos for TikTok.
Make stuff, then tell your friends.
Keep in touch with the creative, energetic, artistic people in your life.
Stop shouting it to “all” of your social media followers, especially when 80% of them won’t even see it.
Share the things you make directly with people who will appreciate it.
Loving the artwork of Andreea Dumuta / Galactixy Illustrations – order prints here. Always a sucker for the bright colors and rough, halftone vibes.
Found this art via this post on the Dungeonlust Instagram feed, but it turns out it’s just half of the original artwork (which you see at the top of this post).
More here.
Often I’m asked about people’s ideas, and this is what I usually say:
Don’t ask, just start.
Do it often, make your mistakes, and keep learning. You need to be child-like in your zeal for the idea that you have.
Make 10 instances of your “thing,” then get some feedback. Send it to people who might enjoy it, and see if they share it. If they don’t, DON’T ASK THEM WHY. Make another thing. And then another. Make them until they’re so good your friends are finally asking, “WHEN IS THE NEXT ONE?!”
But don’t seek approval before you even start. Just start it. Make it, stay busy with it, and refine it. Solicit opinions from people you trust, but don’t spend a lot of time monitoring comments sections or writing emails or having mega long conversations. That’s time you could be spending working on your thing.
Remember, you’re just starting something. You need a thing before you can really have conversations about your project!
So get busy working on your thing.
Wait, how?
Guess what – that’s for you to decide! Do you buy a domain name, then secure the 14 social media networks with that name first? Publish weekly? Release something every month? That’s up to you!
Make 10 of your things. From there you’ll be nailing down your process. The busy work, the technical parts, the images that you’ll use, tone, maybe working with other people – there are so many moving parts! Figure all of that out behind the scenes, quietly, before you’re bumbling and stumbling around in front of 1,000 people a day. Oops.
But work on it everyday, and get something out there as often as you can. It’ll force you to trim the fat from your process, and you’ll learn that quicker by a putting out a lot of stuff, rather than sitting on something until it’s “perfect.” You don’t want your production to be so arduous that it takes you weeks or months or years. That much time between releases, at least to start, and you’ll miss out on learning valuable lessons.
At this stage in the game you need those lessons. Those lessons add up. And while this thing you’re working on now might not work out, you’ve learned a bunch, so it was never a waste of time. Just take those lessons now and apply them to your next idea. Go!
This piece originally posted on Patreon on April 3, 2016.
In 2013 I was in Nashville, TN and hanging out with a photographer friend. He was helping a friend who needed photos so I tagged along, just to see how these sorts of things worked.
Not being a photographer, and only loosely understanding megapixels and such, I was shocked to see some of his cameras. I would think it’d just be super expensive digital cameras, but then I saw cheap 35mm point-and-click cameras.
Wait, what?
Turns out that you don’t always need fancy gear to make great things.
It reminds me of a time visiting a guitar shop, and this kid was sitting there riffing quite loudly (and annoyingly), all the while talking about GEAR. The “best” pickups, and the “worst guitars.”
Sure.
There’s this progression: as a beginner you covet the new gear. If you have the new, the fancy, the shiny, and high-end, well then you’ll sound better, or make better photographs.
But after many years, with enough skill, you find you don’t need expensive gear. There’s more to making beautiful things than how much you’re able to pay for the tools to make them.
This piece originally posted on Patreon on March 28, 2016.
The most engaged audience you have is the one right in front of you. At a show, a gallery, a book reading – that’s it. People gave up a night of Netflix, of takeout, of a million other things, and instead chose to be there with you.
Make the most of those opportunities. Make it easy to follow up after the event by getting email addresses. Put out a notebook and ask for emails, or just make a simple postcard explaining why people should join your email list, with a link to sign up.
Two things:
1. Don’t say “join our email list for updates!” That’s boring and ain’t cutting it in 2016. Say that you’ll be sharing behind the scenes photos of your process, and doing give-aways just for people on your email list, with special discounts, and pre-sale announcements of upcoming shows. Say THAT instead of “updates.”
2. Why haven’t I mentioned social media at this point? Well, because not every fan is on every social media network, and chances are you aren’t either. And you’ve heard bands and artists complaining about “reach,” and having to pay for their posts to be seen, right? Twitter is becoming the same (have you even looked at how many people actually see your Tweets?). This is why I stress good ole fashioned email – it ain’t going away (ask some bands about their old MySpace “Likes”).
You can sit on a social media 24/7, but your greater impact is face to face. When you get to shake hands, and hug people you’re making connections that can last decades, so do your best to keep in touch with those biggest fans and get their email address.
A book about MySpace today is laughable. But will a book about Facebook or Twitter (available now at your local book shop) ten years from now be any different?
The tools change, but the concepts are timeless; make something remarkable, and people will talk. If no one is talking about your thing, are you sure it’s work remarking about?
In this super connected world, everyone has the same soapbox (like Twitter), the same video broadcast platform (like YouTube), the same everything. Getting noticed is hard work because everyone is working so hard on getting noticed.
Then I see this advice: Be loud! Get out there! Shout! Tweet every hour! Talk at every event! Brand you! NETWORK.
Trust me — you don’t have to do this. There are shy, reserved, quiet folks doing great work without all the fanfare. They’re not speaking at conferences, or doing fancy videos, or spending all day on social media, but they’re making a living.
Your art is worth more than a play count on YouTube, much the same that your fans are worth more than their credit card number.
This post originally posted on Medium on Jul 25, 2015, and then posted on my Patreon on March 17, 2016. That means this piece is 10 years old, holy crap.
