Founder of the Social Media Escape Club
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.
Like it or not, some folks are going to settle for crap AI to fill up the sections on their business websites, or write bios for their bands.
But those aren’t our clients. We don’t wanna work with them anyways.
You and I are going to work with people who would never THINK to use AI for that sort of thing. We’re not seeking clients who are looking for shortcuts. If they want a shortcut, they’re likely not reaching out to us.
Good resource: Social media-free business from Dave Smyth.
Talking about leaving social media lately has become less about the logistics and technology and more about the people. Just… PEOPLE.
Like, knowing every single answer to everyone’s situation of moving away from social media is impossible, but talking about the process. Figuring out what feels right. Talking about the flow and rhythm, the natural vibes of how you want to operate.
Less about tactics and more about the conversations we can have to figure these things out.
I did a workshop about ABOUT PAGES recently, and did it without trying to be the authority, or the instructor, the EXPERT. No PowerPoint, just vibes.
But people learned and figured things out from the group dynamic. We’re all in this together, learning together, sharing our collective knowledge and experiences for the better of the group.
Let people get lost in your world.
If you’re an artist, and you’re shoveling everything onto social media, you’re missing the fuck out.
Every smart phone ships with a web browser.
Not everyone has a Facebook account anymore in 2025.
No one in the U.S. can install TikTok right now.
People are ditching Instagram and Twitter because of reasons.
You might not realize this, but some people fucking love music.
Like, that get band names and lyrics tattooed on their bodies. They wear nothing but band shirts. They dig through bins at record shops. They go to shows on Tuesday night.
The people who just load up automated playlists? Those aren’t your people.
Give people who discover you the ability to fall in fucking love with what you do.
If people find your music on YouTube, or Spotify, or Bandcamp, they can click on a URL and be on your website.
But if you website is just everything you already have on YouTube, and Spotify (a bunch of embeds), and a link to Bandsintown, well, what’s the point?
People still buy vinyl and CDs and cassettes. Yeah, a lot of people stream music these days, too, but fuck them.
Let people fall in love with you.
Give me a fucking bio. Where are you even from? What other bands were you in?
Stop posting every god damn bit of promo, behind the scenes, and assorted other photos on social media platforms and put that shit on your website.
Let people fall into your world and get lost in how damn cool you are.
Uploading all your cool vibes and good taste to fucking Facebook? In 2025? For 96% of your “followers” to never see?
In this economy?
From One Thing’s ‘The new rules of media‘ from December:
“Rely on nothing you can’t take with you. For now, Substack email lists and Stripe charges are still portable. If they weren’t, I would move to Ghost, because Substack’s incentive is to get you as locked in as possible. (Patreon still keeps your Stripe info, therefore fuck Patreon.) The same goes for audiences: Direct traffic, through homepages or email inboxes, is the most reliable because no one can take it from you, but it’s the hardest to cultivate.”
Discoverability is a myth propped up on social media’s legion of bots and active users. Yes, some people won, but that had to happen, so other people could see the lottery winners and believe they could win, too.