Category: sethwCategory: sethw

Q. SETH, WHAT DO I EVEN PUT ON MY WEBSITE?

A. Think of the 1,000 posts you’ve put on social media over the last decade. That. That’s what you’ll put on your site.

Those links you send to friends via text? Yeah, put them on your site and write about ‘em. Same with YouTube videos and albums you find on Bandcamp and Spotify.

All those “image assets” you posted on Instagram that 95% of your fans didn’t even see? Put those on your website.

The interviews, and bits of press you’ve gotten? Put them on your website.

Your videos can still reside on YouTube. But they can also sit on your website, surrounded by behind-the-scenes photos and stories about the shoot (and buttons to buy your things).

Stop shoveling all our best work onto platforms you don’t own and then wonder why no one visits your website.

I get asked this a lot via my Email Guidance offering, with a few variations:

I do multiple things, how do I bring them all together on my website?

This always reminds me of Seth Godin’s blog.

Everyday there’s a new post. On occaion Seth is working on something new – a new book, and event, something else.

And he writes about it, and links to it.

Yes, there’s a sidebar. But the main event is that big block of text that starts at the top with a headline.

That says “we’re starting here today. Come along for the ride.”

It’s not for everybody, and that’s the point. Your blog is the cool band shirt you wear on the first day of school, or the book you read on the subway, or the shade of green you dye your hair.

You’re not for everyone, but the people that can pick up on those cues? Those are your people.

“You need to trust your members enough to know they can decide what’s best for themselves. You’re not a mommy or a daddy—you’re an adult community leader.”

Wise words from my talk with Kristen Tweedale on how she runs community, but it applies to how you put your work out there, too.

Get people to your site, give them a starting point, and get out of the way.

We spent years putting our best “content” onto social media platforms, and wonder why no one visits our websites anymore.

• Copy and paste your posts to your own blog.
• Make a photo gallery on your site.
• Put the videos you post on your sales pages
• Embed the music players on your own site (right next to the stuff you have FOR SALE)

Becoming “top of mind” isn’t just for Coca Cola and Best Buy, it’s for everyone in the field you work in, or the art you make, or the magic you bring.

When I think Apple, I head to Daring Fireball.

And I hope when people think about “leaving social media,” they’ll know where to look.

Frederick Woodruff, on our recent chat:

I will also be moving more of my content on Substack into group meetings and Zoom talks. I want to create an astrological ‘node’ that is relaxed, intimate, and, yes, entertaining. To offer, what Seth called in our talk yesterday, “more realness.” And I’d love for you to be a part of that community.

Any new social media platforms that comes along needs to compete with the “realness.” Back in the day community and relationships were just called scenes, and well, we’re making a few of them in our own little pockets of the internet today.

As Frederick mentions, “relaxed, intimate, and, yes, entertaining.”

The future is real.

Maybe social media isn’t just a distraction like, while we’re making coffee, but a distraction from how we used to do business.

Years ago we’d set up at craft fairs, local markets, book tours, set up at zine fests and punk rock flea markets, open store fronts – all these wonderful things to enrichen our communities.

But then we’ve spent so much time trying to impress or reach 1000 people every other hour because it somehow worked for other folks who won the social media viral sweepstakes. “Hey,” we thought, “if they could do it, so can I!”

When in fact that viral-ness happened because the platforms were designed to bring in hoards of people and then focus the laser beam of attention on the winner each day.

It was never meant to last, or to benefit the artist. It was meant to increase shareholder value, nothing else.