Sell Your Damn Journey

No one skips through all the episodes of reality TV shows to get to the final episode just to see who wins.

The dating shows, new movie releases, the latest books; while you could save a lot of time and skip to the end, why even bother?

We’re all in it for the journey. The story. And you should treat your project the same way.

Yes, it’s tempting to just Tweet “something in the works,” two weeks before you head into the studio. And then again the week before the release date, when you post some boring “hey, pre-order now” link.

Where’s the journey in that?

That’s like a dating show where you meet all the contestants in the first 20 minutes, then after the last commercial break they come back and they’re like, “well, congrats Joe and Sarah!”

No journey. No story. So sub-plots. No drama.

And there are syndicated TV shows that revolve around people baking cakes, and cleaning out storage lockers, sponsored by major brands that sell sugar water.

Mundane shows, sponsored by commodity items, and they’re all doing a better job at marketing themselves than 95% of the music world.

Do the dance on socials, drive people to your email list, then regularly connect with your fans with stories, photos, exclusive looks, and the occasional link to a record or photo print.

You can do this.

FOR YOUR NEXT NEWSLETTER:

Screen shot some recent press, or nice things that people have said and put them in your next email – like this:

Lisa and I work in music, and have followed each other on Twitter for many years. Then finally in 2021 it happened – I started working with her company Holdtight, and her wonderful team, doing email marketing for a few of their clients, and it has been am absolute delight!

See? Now you know a little bit more about me, and what I do, and the good folks I work with!

Remember those Spotify Wrapped graphics? You posted ‘em on socials and thanked your fans, but what about your email subscribers? They’re fans, too! Try adding a nice call to action to your Bandcamp, encouraging your fans to support you by buying a shirt or album (and I bet you’ll sell a few albums).

Oooh, behind the scenes photos! A perfect “lead magnet” to use for capturing emails. Think of using photos from your next show, video shoot, or recording session like this, and saying something like, “to see more photos like this, join our email list.”

Feeling lost but you know you need to get your email list going for 2022?