Category: Email GuidanceCategory: Email Guidance

In a recent Email Guidance session, someone told me about spending too much time on social media promoting their podcast.

Promoting our work on social media leads to likes and replying to comments and responding to DMs.

Thus, our marketing efforts on social media lead to more work on social media; we keep feeding the machine, and the machine gives you more busy work.

Eventually our work suffers because we’re also cos-playing as a social media manager.

Instagram and Facebook love all the time that we devote to promoting our work, all while we’re spending less time doing the work. We’re on their platforms engaging and interacting in the hopes of getting more likes, views, impressions. Pull the lever, win a prize!

But the prize we’re looking for rarely comes. We’re hoping for the click, which could lead to the subscribe. We engage, we like, we spend another 20 minutes interacting, hoping for the elusive click.

Let’s stop hoping and realize the truth: RSS exists.

Podcast players pull in new episodes via an RSS feed, and “feed readers” like NetNewsWire (my favorite) let us subscribe to blogs (even Substack newsletters and YouTube videos).

So when we publish a new piece, people get it without interference from algorithms, spam folders, or promotions tabs.

And if we devote time to making great work instead of feeding social media platforms, it would seem that our work could grow by delivering it directly to the people who care.

More on RSS:
“In defense of RSS” by Seth Godin

“The ancient technology of the RSS feed” by TK (YouTube short)

From a recent round of Email Guidance, talking to someone about how to get their music featured in video projects:

My buddy Nolan Green writes about one of his songs being used in a Netflix show, “Twenty-one years after the track was recorded.” Over TWO DECADES, and all because someone working on the show was a fan of his work.

Get your work featured in projects that are at your current level. Learn how to email the video makers and game creators who’ve only been at it for a year or two.

Learn how to communicate and work with the people at your current level.

Social media has us believing that if we start something, with enough finesse and cold emails and crossing our fingers people will be begging to work with us, but the fact is so many people working on the big projects already have people in mind, and chances are you’re not one of them.

So go work on projects with other people. It’s not “fake it til you make it,” it’s “do the work you want to get hired for.” Prove you can do it by already doing it.

This from a recent Email Guidance offering (where I answer people’s questions):

You have the permission to do absolutely anything you want and you can do it outside of the confines of the social media attention stealing industry. Just get in front of a few people and do the thing. By doing that, you put up the flag for all the fellow weirdos that want to do the exact same thing. They say “yes, I want to do this!” Lead the way for them. 

You’re not creating a tribe because the tribe already exists., they just haven’t met. So be the one who makes the introduction and pulls people together.

Then three years from now. you’ll look up and know exactly what to put in your newsletter, and what your website needs to look like.

If you’re doing work that feeds you, and resonates with other people, they’ll be no doubt what goes into your next newsletter, your next album, your next painting. Everybody is doing what they want, and you can, too.

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.

A musician with some impressive Spotify numbers wrote me for a bit of Email Guidance, asking how to get people from streaming music platforms to a paid Substack or Patreon. Here’s part of my reply (lightly edited):

Open a Substack account TONIGHT and start filling it up with stories. Give your fans a place to DIVE INTO. You can build a real website later.

Get 10 posts up there. Twenty.

Buy a domain name at Hover.com, point that domain to the Substack.

Stop using LinkTree. Stop driving everyone to platforms where you can’t reach them. 

Get them to your Substack, where you can still embed all your music, and your videos. And that’s where everyone can SUBSCRIBE to your email list. Be RUTHLESS about it.

Get people to YOUR SITE FIRST. That is your mission.

Then go play shows. Have a clipboard and a pen to get people on your email list. Hand it out before your third song to someone in the crowd so people sign it while you’re playing (inspired by this story from Jes).

Send a newsletter once a week, or twice a month. Subscribe to other musicians on Substack and see how they do it. “Steal like an artist,” like Austin Kleon says, and develop your own rhythm and style.

Make your newsletter something that someone wants to open, and not just “hey I’m playing somewhere next week,” or “listen to my new song.”

There’s lots of shortcuts in the online music world, but that just means that everyone is taking them, too. You gotta be where they can’t be, and that’s strumming a guitar in front of 15 people on a Tuesday night. 

Community is your unfair advantage. Whether you’re a musician, a writer, a photographer, whatever – you need other people in your corner. You need fans and friends more than you need funnels and lead magnets.

Yes, you can play the streaming music lottery and maybe hit it big. That’s because the casino has to pay out on occasion, otherwise people stop going to the casino.

The choice is yours; keep playing the lottery, or make better bets.

“It’s absurd how we’ve come to think that reaching thousands of random people will be more impactful to our lives more than meeting a handful of people with whom we share interests and goals.”

That’s from Matilda Lucy (from ‘What do you measure when the metrics don’t matter?’), and it’s spot on – meeting a few people every week and pulling them into your creative orbit is what’s going to build the foundation for your work for the decade ahead.

That reply above was just a snippet. I usually write 1,000 words to folks reaching out for Email Guidance. I’m not saying I got all the answers, but I can put you on the path to finding them. The first email is free, too.