Internet, newsletters, design, music, etc.
Photo by Seth Werkheiser
There are so many distractions, so many shiny objects to chase. A splash of inspiration came way this morning, but had a good grounding call this afternoon to set me straight, a reminder to stay true to my own mission and style.
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?
Photo by Seth Werkheiser
All the hours spent on social media over the last several years – it stings. Hours I could have spent walking around town with a camera, or just sitting on a bench thinking about nothing.
Nothing, space, the void. Right now these are the most important items on my daily to-do list. Mind you, this doesn’t mean I spend 75% of my day in meditation, or staring at the walls while ignoring my cat, or my work stuff. I just mean capturing moments of nothing / space / the void when I can get it.
This means hour long runs with no music. Walks around town when I’ve completed work tasks. Leaving my phone outside of the kitchen when I’m making and eating lunch.
The goal each day is to grab as much nothing as posslb.e
Photo by Seth Werkheiser
The more I think about the marketing machine, and the how and the why and the strategies involved, the more it all seems impossible.
Like, everyone who wants to “get the word out” about their thing is competing with a million other people doing the same thing. Some of it rises to the top because it’s what everyone is talking about – tech reviews, AI, sports, Star Wars, etc.
Other folks who do stuff that’s not quite as “big,” well, they’re lost in the fray, unless we’re talking about BookTok, of course.
But like, do “we” need to be in all these popular online places to make it? Is it required?
I think about the tiny Chinese restaurant I visit in Palmerton, PA. They’re not on social media, nor do they need to be. People in that town (or people passing through, like me) want Chinese food.
They have it. That’s a simple and direct choice.
And I feel like when you have that immediate want, say, for Chinese food, you’re going to look locally.
And if the grass is getting too high in your yard, you have to get someone to cut it.
But a lot of other things – how to draw, people who talk about email newsletters with creative people (that’s me!), how to write better… there are a zillion options for everything out there, and no real guarantee that any of them are going to help in the end.
Chinese food? That’s simple. You can solve that problem in an hour.
All the other creative / strategy / marketing stuff? Endless variations of possible solutions, directions, and options.
LinkedIn is awful, and for some reason I’m still on there, and they keep sending me emails. One today asked this, and I’ll answer it here, and not distribute it anywhere, thank you very much.
Q. How can you distribute content effectively across multiple platforms?
A. Don’t. Stop distributing content. Go for a walk instead. Talk to your neighbor. Read a fucking book. Take a picture. Knit a scarf. Learn karate. Ride a bike.
Everyone is distributing content. It’s all the same. We’re all taught to believe that if we just write enough “content,” and distribute it enough places, then we’ll be like Justin Beiber and someone will discover us and hire us and we’ll be rich.
I’m not saying it never happens, but come on – if everyone is doing this thing, and obviously it’s very easy to “distribute our content,” then why aren’t more people killing it?
If we’re all so smart, and all our friends are smart, then why aren’t we all over employed and speaking at big conferences?
There are only so many podcasts to appear on, to share our leading-edge thinking.
Do we think the people in positions to hire us are hanging out on LinkedIn all day? That they have the time to read everyone’s 500+ word posts about productivity and how AI will help the music industry?
Get outta here.
Thanks Itay Dreyfus for bringing this to my attention:
“The internet makes me blind to the scale of things. If I write a blog post that is read by 2000 people that feels like crickets (these days). But last night we had 200 people come to the opening of a new exhibition at the gallery. It was overwhelming.”
Henrik Karlsson
Let’s not forget why 2,000 people on the internet don’t feel like a lot: cost per thousand ad impressions (Cost per mile [CPM]—mille is Latin for thousand).
As that CPM rate went down, more ads went on the page. Two display ads. Three. A pop-under.
It wasn’t that 2,000 people reading your work was bad. The CPM rate was “bad,” so something that got read by 20,000 people was considered “good.” After all, we have to keep the lights on!
The problem was, as more corporate interests crept in, we didn’t just need to keep the lights on. We had to pay the salaries of lots of dude bros in sports jackets and the electric bill for keeping 27 LED TVs running day and night in the office.
Listen to this quick clip with Scott Perry (of Creative On Purpose), where we talk about how best to spread your work in a way that feels comfortable for you, and to figure it out TOGETHER, with other people, rather than just trying to white-knuckle the perfect solution.
Thinking about a section of Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work,” which is “You Can’t Fing Your Voice is You Don’t Uset it.”
We find it by using it. We find out photographic style by taking more photos, we find out guitar style by playing guitar, we find out our artist style by… by being ourselves and being present in the world, sharing what we do.
The chapter talks about the movie writer Roger Ebert, and how he lost his voice so he then found his voice through writing online.
For any lone artist in a small town, whos prime disadvantage is that they live in a small town, well, here was a movie critic who lost his voice – such a loss! Such a “disadvantage.”
Write, post, talk, discuss. Do it online, do it often, seek out your weirdos, and make sure you have a website where all your weirdness resides (like this blog).
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).
“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.
This is just one person’s account, of course, but I think we’re going to see more of this.
In March 2024, I ran an experiment in my Portuguese-written blog: I stopped distributing its content on social media (Mastodon, mostly) and messaging apps (Telegram and WhatsApp channels). It has a small following in a few places — ~2,9k on Telegram, ~450 on WhatsApp and three Mastodon profiles (two with autopost) that sums ~5k followers.
The result was that… little has changed.
From Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media
Yes, if you do the bare minimum and “just” post when you have new stuff, new things, new projects – sure – some people may find your stuff. The alorithimic gods may show your post to 5% of your followers, and you’ll get two clicks, and that’s nice.
If you want more, though, you gotta give more. Show up, engage, maybe “create content” just for the platform by way of vertical videos and other multimedia assets.
Then you’ll get seen by 8% of your followers, and maybe get four clicks. Great.
Or – what if we made the best fucking work we possibly can, and instead of spending 100% of our “marketing budget” on posting to social media, what if we spent 80% of our time reaching out to our contacts? Emailing galleries, venues, agents, etc.? Spending time in places where we want to spend more time in, surrounded by people we want to be around?
What if that was our marketing budget? Time and care in the creative world that’s already around us.
The “creator economy” existed long before tech-bros came along and tried to squeeze it for every last 3.5% surcharge.
We’ll be here long after they move onto the next market to destroy.
