Social Media Escape Club – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

YOUR ART NEEDS MORE OF YOUR ART

I believe a few things in my line of work:

Let people know what you’re doing.

By this, I mean when you have a new song, exhibit, drawing, or idea, you should share it with your audience or your fans.

Like Rick Rubin says, “make stuff, and show it to your friends.”

Let people know what you’re doing in a way that is as creative as the work itself.

Established artists can send out a flyer with a BUY NOW button because they have the luxury of being established artists.

Radiohead and Beyonce can drop a surprise album because they’re Radiohead and Beyonce.

You’re not Radiohead or Beyonce.

Posting “here’s my new thing” and a link gets lost in the river of content, because everyone posts “here’s my new thing” every hour of the day, week after week, year after year.

“Meritocracy is a myth,” says Delon Om. “I always believed that my art would speak for itself- that its merit would earn recognition and validation. Unfortunately, I have learned that is not the case.”

It’s never been easier to distribute your work and get it seen by a million people by lunchtime, but because everyone can do that, it’s also never been harder.

This video from Noah Kalina documents how he captured a photo and made it into a print, which sold out in a few hours. To my knowledge, he only mentioned this offering in his video, which “only” got about 900 views in a month, but his work doesn’t just speak for itself. His work is the work, and his art is the art. It’s all Noah Kalina.

He didn’t just post “new print for sale” on his Instagram Threads and call it a day.

He spent many hours making that art and told his friends about it in a 100% Noah Kalina way.

Bobby Hundreds doesn’t need to write 500+ word newsletters, he’s Bobby Hundreds! He could easily get away with posting his random thoughts and links to new endeavors. But I imagine someone like Bobby has so much creativity coursing through his veins that he’s compelled to share more about the big things he’s doing.

QUESTION: How can your creative spirit inform how you tell your friends about your work?

MAYBE YOU DON’T NEED MORE SUBSCRIBERS

What if the people receiving your emails forwarded it to friends? What if they copied the text from it and posted it on social media? What if your words traveled from the inbox into Facebook group chats and meeting rooms?

When was the last time you sent a newsletter that got 10 replies?

If none of those things happened — not even close— maybe getting more subscribers isn’t the answer.

From social media to Substack Notes, people post in the void. No comments, likes, or engagement of any kind.

Hey, sometimes things don’t work!

Your “questions to everyone” or “open invites” have good intentions, but after a dozen or so attempts, it’s time to reassess your strategy.

Stop asking “everyone” and start actually asking people.

➡️ Reply to someone else’s post. Go into the comments section of another post, or another Tweet, and reply there. Be the person that people love seeing in the comments section by being insightful, gracious, and / or funny.

➡️ Email someone directly in your network. If you’re hoping those people even see your original post and take the time to reply is a long shot. Instead, reach out and ask them. Say you’re looking for their insight for an upcoming post.

➡️ Invite someone before inviting everyone. If you’re just getting started in hosting video hangouts, live sessions, or workshops, consider inviting a few people you know directly. See if you can get three people to commit before announcing to “everyone.”

➡️ Go beyond “just sharing” and make it a big deal. Make a whole post about it. Go deeper than typing “THIS,” and explain why this piece resonated. Don’t just “curate your feed,” rolling the dice hoping that 10% of your audience might see it. Take the time to write about something (or make a video or an audio snippet), and share it directly with your audience in an upcoming newsletter (where 99% of your subscribers will see it in their inbox).

Soda section from a grocery store in Palmerton, PA

“Yeah, but Seth, I just want to post my thing and go do other things,” you might say.

Well, you see the results that “just posting” gets you.

Also, how can talking to your fans, audience, and readers be a waste of time?

Setting a timer for 15 minutes and communicating with real people five days a week will probably get you more results than the hour you spend making one Reel for 153 “people” to see (and which will never be seen again after 12 hours).

Does it scale? Fuck scale, do the work.

The strategy of “just posting” ain’t working, and it’s not going to get any easier to reach your fans in that way as we roll into the second half of 2024.

SOCIAL MEDIA LOSES POWER WHEN WE BUILD COMMUNITY IN OTHER PLACES

Social media rotted our brains on the instant gratification racket.

“I accept defeat,” I repeat after HINDZ from a recent video, “I accept that billion-dollar corporations have invested millions and millions of millions into the psychology and understanding how to keep me on these devices on their platforms, and it works.”

It’s not enough that social media gobbles up our attention – it tricks us into thinking we’re nothing without them.

This is made worse because “the creative status quo has made us lonely content machines.”

We are isolated, working on projects alone in our studios and rooms. We are so in our own heads that when we get together to discuss these things, we can cry.

We’re trying to figure this out on our own, thinking we’ll beat the tech bros with better-crafted hashtags, disguising our “link in bio” text, or churning out vertical videos to appease the social media overlords.

If we just read one more social media strategy guide, or watch more one more YouTube video then we’ll crack the code.

No, thanks.

I’d rather spend my time in deeper connection with good people.

As writers, we can work with our photographer friends (like Patrick Fellows did here). Or the photographer Wesley Verhoeve who will make black and white landscape photos for “painter Brie Noel Taylor to paint over in color.”
Cody Cook-Parrott hosts FLEXIBLE OFFICE, where amazing creative people gather on a video call to work on their projects together.
Carolyn Yoo made a zine called ‘How to keep your hobby from becoming a job’, and it’s brought a bunch of people together in the comment section and in real life – I handed a copy to my creative friend, and she loved it!

Start reaching out to fellow zine writers, artists, photographers, and designers – get on a phone call, plan a meetup, gather in secret in remote parks, commandeer several tables at the local Denny’s, plan your own hyper-niche flea market, write a short skit.

These are things made outside of isolation.

Spending more time around creative people will do us more good than if we just sit on our hands and wait to be saved by the next tech-bro platform to deliver us a new magical marketing machine.

Are we so powerless to change the current situation that we sit back and hope somebody else fixes everything?

And then what? That person will sell the company to a Nabisco+Tide hedge fund subsidiary, and we’ll be back where we started.

Maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.

The answer is other people, community, and the exchange of ideas away from the supposed champions of our “creator economy,” which was here long before the silicon valley dorks showed up.

You can wait for things to change, but reaching your fans on social media will never get any easier. NEVER. I’ve been saying this since 2021.

Find some other weirdos, form your own band of misfits and start having the conversation about living in a post-social media world, ‘cuz baby it’s coming.

GRACEFUL PROMOTION IS POSSIBLE WITH A LITTLE PRACTICE

The video above was in response to this wonderful quote I found via Substack notes from Elissa Altman:

If you’re not gonna talk publicly about your work, plenty of other folks will. People can’t fall in love with your work if they don’t know about it.

Tell people about your work in only the way that you can, because if an unpaid intern (or an AI prompt) could write your self-promo copy, you’re toast.

🚫 Hey, new song! [LINK]
🚫 I just posted some new art. [LINK]
🚫 New items added to the store. [LINK]
🚫 New interview – we talked about art stuff! [LINK]

Those can work if you’re Radiohead or Beyonce or Rolling Stone or Best Buy.

Which you are not.

Let’s learn from Austin Kleon, who says to learn to steal like an artist (buy that book right now, dammit).

✅ Look at how Jeff Tweedy explains a new solo acoustic track he posted:

“It’s Super Bowl Sunday, that’s what I’m told. I have tallied the results of all your requests, and opted to do an acoustic version of “King of You” from the album Star Wars. Which was an unlikely favorite. Or at least it got two votes. It’s from an album that’s meant to be full of nonsense, because I think nonsense is good for us.”

No way an AI bot or record label intern could write that. And a lot more interesting than “new song, click here.”

✅ If you interviewed someone, get out of the way and put them front and center, the way Sari Botton of Oldster Magazine does here:

In this instance above, Todd Boss is the focus, the center of attention. Get the heck out of the way and let their words champion the piece.

✅ Artist Marie Enger opens her recent newsletter like this:

“Friends, this week? It fucking sucked.

But my buddy Ray Nadine (who you might know from the 2024 GLAAD nominated comic LIGHT CARRIES ON, Raise Hell (with our good friend and yours too, Jordan Alsaqa), and SOMETHING HAS CHANGED) reminded me yesterday as I was spinning out–

The horrors persist, but so do the little treats.

Then they sent me a slurpee.”

✅ Back to Austin Kleon – he promotes a recent newsletter on Substack notes like this:

“I don’t know what it is about my brain, but as long as I can find the right image to put at the top of the newsletter, the rest just flows out. (I started this letter last week but didn’t finish it — remembering Kate’s image helped everything snap into place)”

Not one of these asks for a click, a signup, or a “buy now.”

They all attempt to draw you in with story, delight, oddities, weirdness – you know, art. Magic!

The newsletter or the song is the vehicle, but the creative spirit behind the work must provide the energy to move it forward.

We need to get away from thinking of our offerings as commodities.

We are not promoting just a new song, a new thing to read, or another piece of content.

You’ve already done the hard part; you’re an artist, photographer, teacher, musician – you know how hard it is to play the piano?! IT’S IMPOSSIBLE, I TRIED, OKAY?

But promoting your work? That’s much easier than trying to sight-read sheet music, which is another impossibility – how does anyone do it?!

Let your creative wisdom inform how you talk about and share your work. Literally spend more than 12 seconds on it, instead of banging out “hey click here” and expecting anyone to give a fuck about it.

✅ BONUS: You can also go in the opposite direction.

Think about how you’d start a comedy show. What’s the expectation?

Even if you’re not a comedian, we’re all so familiar with the process that if we had to, we could at least do the introduction part, right?

“Hey everyone, I’m Seth. So great to be here!”

But it takes an artist to spend the first three minutes wrestling with the mic stand, dropping the microphone, and yelling at the production crew to turn the music off.

But note when the music stops, and Tim Heidecker abruptly says, “Thank you, okay, all right.”

That took some work. That was magic.

Those first three moments are rough. I got a little bit of anxiety from watching it, but it was like a car wreck; I couldn’t look away.

Like – why go through all that?

Because it sets the stage for what’s to come.

Why did I pack up my camera gear and use a wired microphone and go into the woods to make a video about hyping your work?

Because this is my art, my project, my work.

Some people will get that video. Some people will be like, “That guy is weird, and I’m not subscribing.”

Great. This is what I do, this is how I work. thank u, next.

Make people feel something. Stress, tension, release. The hero’s journey.

These are all things you can learn and study and steal ideas from (and a much better use of your time, instead of spending 2+ hours a day scrolling social media).

Time for another walk in the woods.