Founder of the Social Media Escape Club
If we can go back to vinyl records and film cameras, we can go back to blogs and RSS feeds.
The common excuse is that no one will go back to blogs or RSS feeds. Yet we never say the same about film cameras or people that buy vinyl records. Sure, if we mean people as in everyone, then sure, no one will go back. But vinyl sales continue to rise, and people keep taking photos with film cameras.
Do we need permission from the masses before we do something that might bring us joy?
The urge to JUST POST something on social media is strong. You post, someone leaves a comment. Or likes it. Action, reaction. But I post this on my blog, and…. seemingly nothing happens, which I know is not true. This is a living, breathing archive of my life’s work, and anybody who visits can enjoy it.
Before social media, we had the blogs, right? The forums. The websites.
Getting traction meant being mentioned on any of them. You wrote something, someone else liked it, they linked to it.
This was actually my job in 2008 when I was working in Audience Development at AOL.
We had writers who wrote stuff, and then we emailed relevant sites (well, blogs) so they’d hopefully link back.
This was a long process. We were basically fucking cold-emailing the editors of these sites! We had to make reports and shit.
Along comes social media, where “everyone” sort of rushed to because blogs were getting bought up by megacorps, plastered in ads (CPMs were going down down down), and drenched in SEO slop (we’ve had slop now for decades, long before AI).
The thing I’m getting at – was while some folks benefitted from the early social media days – traction, eyeballs, listens, etc. it was inflated. It was artificial. The bubble had to burst, and I think we’re seeing that now.
Things existed before “everyone” was on social media, and now we’re going to have to figure out how to do that again.
We can’t rely on 10,000 people seeing a thing. We need to get 50 people really into what we’re doing before we hit 100.
“We are not worried about the meme situation,” said photographer Antonio Guilliem in a 2017 interview with Intelligencer.
Reuse the material you post on social media (that probably 95% of your audience never sees) and put it in your newsletter.
Go live and make it FUN. Make it wild, weird, or whatever you want it to be.
Make a cat-cam, or read poetry next to a fireplace to lull people to sleep. Live video doesn’t have to be talking heads or video games.
Continue reading “GET CREATIVE WITH SUBSTACK LIVES”Before seeking more (subscribers, audience, fans), seek flow. This is something I bring up a lot through my Email Guidance offering.
Is your website set up in a way that pulls people in? Or is it a bunch of links to third party platforms that seek only to monetize and collect data from your fans?
Does your sales page include comforting and informative videos about what you offer? Or do you only post those sorts of videos on Instagram for just 3% of your followers to see?
Does your store have more than one item (this one from Laura Kidd) in stock?
We want to expand and grow our audience, but stepping back and making subtle changes to our current operations might be a better place to start
Love this bit from ‘When Fashion Brands Curate Better Than Museums,’ which goes along with the bit of wisdom we learned from Olivia Rafferty, about looking outside of your industry for inspiration (listen to that here).
“Meanwhile, museums are out here filming awkward TikToks and selling tote bags that say “Support the Arts.”
Meanwhile, Gucci drops a film series directed by Harmony Korine and it’s sold out before you even hear about it.”
Replace museums with “bands” or “authors” or “photographers” and drop in whatever cookie cutter / color by numbers marketing dreck they’re producing.
“Remember when your creative strategy was something like “post on an image on Instagram once a week”?”
It will never get easier to reach your fans on social media. Every day will be harder than the one before.
Time to seek new new paths!
“We weren’t meant to follow 5,000 people. We weren’t meant to stay in touch with people we went to high school with and know what they had for breakfast. That’s information that we just don’t need,” said by me in my interview with High On Hope.
