I’ve seen some posts from people who understand the whole “social media is rigged” thing, going on about the unwritten rules of “don’t include links,” or “post often,” or “make videos.”

These folks buttered up the situation (“haha social media is horrible!”), but then they saw results – it’s a miracle!

No, friends. This is exactly how social media operates. As Cory Doctorow says, it’s the giant teddy bear at the carnival gambit.

At every county fair, you’ll always spot some poor jerk carrying around a giant teddy-bear they “won” on the midway. But they didn’t win it – not by getting three balls in the peach-basket. Rather, the carny running the rigged game either chose not to operate the “scissor” that kicks balls out of the basket. Or, if the game is “honest” (that is, merely impossible to win, rather than gimmicked), the operator will make a too-good-to-refuse offer: “Get one ball in and I’ll give you this keychain. Win two keychains and I’ll let you trade them for this giant teddy bear.”

Carnies aren’t in the business of giving away giant teddy bears – rather, the gambit is an investment. Giving a mark a giant teddy bear to carry around the midway all day acts as a convincer, luring other marks to try to land three balls in the basket and win their own teddy bear.

These posts entice folks back to filling up the feeds, always engaging, and replying to multiple DMs. This means that instead of writing your next newsletter, or working on your website, you’re back on social media throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Don’t fall for it. There are people on your email list, or reading your website, or subscribed to your RSS feed and they love what you do. Invest your time in those people.

And while you’ve got some downtime because you’re not spending 20+ hours a week on social media, I dare you to plan a weekly Zoom call with some weirdos in your creative orbit. I bet you’ll gain more in that hourly call than spending all that time trying to impress strangers.

Why does “promoting our stuff” feel gross? Probably because we see people doing it bad, and instead of just promising to ourselves we’ll never do it like that, we throw everything related to promoting into one big garbage back and leave it on the curb.

Which is wild, because there are so many different ways to doing “promotion,” just as there aer so many different ways of painting, writing a song, riding a bike, posting an essay, making a mug.

Last June Jes Raymond told us how she got people to a show in a town she never played before.

“This past weekend, we had a little show up in a tiny town—St. Johnsbury. One of those places with a small newspaper. And I just decided that instead of making a bunch of social media posts about the show—especially to a town I don’t know—I’d do the human work.

I figured out who the journalist was at the local paper who writes the arts column. I wrote to them directly and sent them a press release. Then I found the local radio station—Vermont Public—and called them. I got our event on their calendar.

We ended up having about 150 people show up at this little church in a town I’d never played before.”

Instead of “making a bunch of social media posts.” she reached out to two people who could help. Instead of her jumping up and down and trying to get the attention of strangers in a town she never played before, she spoke with the people who actually live near that town.

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​If the thought of “promoting” your work makes your skin crawl, or if you think the only option is yelling into the void on social media, you should join this call.

​Join me (Seth Werkheiser of Social Media Escape Club) and other creative people who are in the same boat, wanting to make good work without hiring ourselves to be full-time marketing directors.

​If you read my Social Media Escape Club newsletter, you should have an idea about the different ways we can promote our work that don’t include making short form video “content.”

​This is not a webinar.
No break out rooms.
This is a group discussion with people from different fields and skill levels – photographers, musicians, artists, poets, teachers!

Monday, June 29 at 9:00 AM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/a5lmsvqn
Thursday, July 2 at 2:00 PM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/igk63i3r
Friday, Jul 3 at 12:00 PM EDT – REGISTER → https://luma.com/na9nfjli

PJ Harvey’s latest newsletter links to her website, where you can “see draft lyrics and listen to Polly’s voice note.” Oh, and her latest music video for Voyager is there, too. On her website. Without linking off to YouTube.

Your newsletter is a delivery truck. Put cool things on your website, and then tell the people on your email list. Give fans a reason to visit your website.

The voice note is wonderful, too. It’s just under two minutes long, with Polly talking about the new single. No bright lights, no 4K cameras, no fancy editing, just a short audio message embedded on her website.

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It’s none of my business what the kid that sat in front of me in 10th grade science had for breakfast, and people working at social media platforms bought multiple vacation homes convincing us that it is.

Your attention is coveted by the social media platforms, along with the cell phone companies that will gladly take your auto-pay unlimited-plan payments. Heck, Tim Cook is saying iPhone prices are going up.

We don’t need better devices and apps and service plans to keep up, we need better systems and networks to continue making the work we’re called to make.

The other day on a recent Zoom call, someone was put on the spot. The classic, “wait, so what do you do?”

And for so many creative folks, it’s hard to explain. I’m not saying we need the perfect “elevator pitch,” but it with all things it helps to communicate what you do well.

Not perfect, not slick, but well.

Well enough, maybe. Just the right amount of spit and polish to explain what you do on a podcast episode, or in a Zoom room with a bunch of strangers, or at a backyard get together.

“Your work matters to you, but it’s hard to convince anybody that it should matter to them.”

Again, not as the elevator pitch to make the sale, but to help anybody understand why it matters to you. We’d love for other people, media outlets, etc. to spread the word about what we do, right? But how well are we spreading the word ourselves?

I hosted two “Let’s Break Up 💔 With Gmail” calls last week, and one guest mentioned this as we were wrapping up on Friday:

“This was very helpful if for no other reason than just to know I’m not the only nut in the room.”

It’s such a relief knowing other people are facing the same challenges. That we’re not alone.

Because, at the end of the day, it’s not just about email, but also the lock-in with Google Calendar, collaborative docs, and photo management. This makes a move look harder to manage, and so then we never start.

And we landed on two big points:

1. The replacement will never feel “perfect” because Gmail feels so familiar – some of us were beta-users of Gmail back in early 2004!
2. Do we want to replace one “all in one” soultion with another? What will some of these companies look like in ten years?

A good place to start? Stop researching and just sign up for a free trial with another email provider like Fastmail or Proton (affiliate links) or Hey. Get a feel for them, because if the vibes are off, you’ll never switch over.

Start small. Switch something like your Netflix account first, then maybe a store account. There’s no need for a big announcement, to tell everybody about your move. Just update your email here and there as you migrate, and leave the critical accounts (like banking, work stuff) for later on.

For the last decade we’ve put our best work on social media – videos, images, hot takes – you name it! But with so much time and energy devoted to publishing on so many platforms, our websites and newsletters just became digital brochures; static and boring.

So it was refreshing to hear Natalie Brite on Amelia Hruby’s Off the Grid podcast talking about where we limit our imagination.

“For so many entrepreneurs and micro businesses … this total dependency, where there’s no imagination outside of social media, it’s like my imagination stops at social media marketing and it’s like there’s so many other ways, right?”

I’ve seen this for decades. I was one of the first 3,000 people to sign up for Twitter. I’ve subscribed to a lot newsletters since I began this journey in 2001.

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