COLLABORATION IS HOW YOU’LL GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

Instead of being lonely content machines, we can do cool stuff with good people to help build a vibrant community of people around whatever we’re doing.

In a recent Social Media Escape Club hangout, 

Beth Spencer discussed her method of collaborating with artists.

Beth’ Introvert Drawing Club welcomes a guest co-host, the community grows, and everyone has fun – it’s perfect!

This isn’t a “growth hack” or shortcut, though – this is work.

It’s getting away from the “follow me” game, and getting into the “let’s do cool stuff together” mindset.

Because cool people doing cool stuff together can lead to fun things.

For example, I met Laura Kidd earlier this year on Twitter. We connected over our shared appreciation of email lists and a disdain for social media (ironic, I know).

Laura suggested we do a video interview, so we set up our cameras and microphones and made it happen.

Laura shared what she’s learned as an independent artist and emphasized the significance of maintaining an email list. I talked about my experiences with newsletters and online music marketing.

This one interview led to my largest bump in subscribers in the two-year history of this newsletter (thank you, Laura).

Again, bring good people together, make fun stuff, and watch what happens.

Marisa Dabice of Mannequin Pussy talks with Karly Hartzman of Wednesday on the Talkhouse Podcast.

In this chat, these two friends talk about touring, and specifically about how unusual it can feel to perform—and how that can lead to actual tears on stage, not the most fun experience. They chat about the difference between Mannequin Pussy and Wednesday fans, and about the pressure to enjoy your success while it’s happening.

Fans of Mannequin Pussy are going to read that and find out all about Wednesday, and vice versa. See how that works?

Kathryn Calder (of The New Pornographers) talks about making music with Mark Andrew Hamilton (of Woodpigeon) as Frontperson:

What I love about writing together with Mark, is that he always has really interesting ideas, I really trust his taste, and he comes up with ideas I wouldn’t think of. I used to be a little bit more strict about what I wanted things to sound like, and Mark loves keeping the character of sounds, and something I’ve learned to embrace more from working with him is just because something isn’t exactly perfect, that doesn’t mean it needs to be redone. Sometimes the small imperfections are part of what makes something really special.

Dancer and musician Mikayla Geier dropped a short film to accompany her latest single.

She had help making this film from a director/cinematographer, someone scored it, someone else did the animation, and she had help writing it.

And while I don’t think anyone reading has aspirations of being the next Mr. Beast, I think it’s interesting to hear how obsessed he was about figuring out YouTube with a few like-minded people.

I’m not saying you need to Skype your pals from 7am to 10pm everyday, but a 30 minute Zoom call with a few people to “figure things out” couldn’t hurt (see below).

Bring good people together, make fun stuff, and let’s see what happens.