Category: MarketingCategory: Marketing

This from photographer Tom Bland, sharing a story of local promotion:

We have been leaving small homemade zines in our town’s info booth for the last year.

This week we had some visitors to our art stand who are based in Canada but frequently visit the Berkshires to meet up with family here. They had picked up one of our zines from the info booth last year but not opened it until they got home to Canada. Inside, they found information about our art stand and made a mental note to check it out next time they were in town.

Sure enough, almost a year later they came to the art stand and bought a copy of our First Frost / Final Bloom zine.

I happened to be home so we got to have a great chat. It really solidified for me how seemingly small local marketing ideas like this can stand out as being unique and make a connection with someone who is looking for something different/analog/human.

Social media is alluring because five minutes after you post something, they’ll probably be two likes, and someone left a heart emoji comment. Leaving some small handmade zines in your town’s info booth is a much slower affair, as you lose the near-immediate feedback.

Walking away from that instaneosus feedback loop is a challenge, for sure. But recognizing the mechanics of social media, and how they’re designed to suck you in, is one of the best ways to break up with these platforms.

It doesn’t have to be overnight. None of this is black and white. But putting your life’s work into the hands of companies who only seek to profit from your unpaid labor might not be the best long game to play.

This from Jésabel DC at Config 2026 (this quote at the 1:08 mark):

“Technology wasn’t better in the early 2000s because designers were more ethical or more thoughtful. It was better because they hadn’t yet be handed the business model that rewarded trapping the user.”

She says “in the early 2000s the internet was a place you visited,” and then you went on with your day. I like to say that I just want to visit the internet, I don’t want to live there.

I was asked recently on a podcast interview what I’m running from in regards to social media, and I’m not sure I gave the best answer but I’m still thinking about it (which is why we appear on podcasts and face questions we’ve never been asked before in real time).

But I guess I’m running from one thing – the idea the social media is neutral, when it’s in fact user-hostile, designed and built by people with multiple vacation homes ensuring I spend hours everyday scrolling, engaging, and filling my head with every last drop of drama, turmoil, atrocity, and outrage.

That’s what I’m running from, I suppose. As Jésabel DC says, I am running from “the business model that (rewards) trapping the user.”

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.

(more…)

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?