Category: MarketingCategory: Marketing

1. Skip the self-checkout

This came up in our Escape Pod Zoom call this week, as a way of breaking away from our isolation and the ease of “not talking to others.” If you’re able, stand in line and wait (maybe without looking at your phone), and make small talk with the person helping you. I did this a few hours after our call and it was a delight.

“Buying things in stores is a simple trick I use to spend more time offline and increase my chances of chatting with real humans. Win-win. Nobody said real life would be easy.”

From Mehret Biruk’s ‘How to live without social media.’

Q. Could making small talk help us get better and talking about our own work in bigger settings?

2. About Page collaborative workshop?!

I’m thinking of making a collaborative workshop, instead of me just blabbering on for an hour.

Talk for a bit, we work together, talk for a bit more, share our work… if that sounds like a productive use of your time, click here to add your name to the wait list and I’ll let you know when it’s ready to launch.

P.S. this will be for your about page anywhere, not just on Substack. Your website also needs a nice about page!

3. Trust that the kids are alright

Kamilah Jones of Hard Decora passed along this video after this week’s Escape Pod Zoom call, basically telling me “don’t worry, the youth got it!” I’m a believer.

Q. Are you comfortable saying you’re an artist, and not a content creator?

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Next call is Thursday, January 16, 2025 at 2pm EST– click here for more info.

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4. Make it easy for people to contact you

This advice might not be for you you, and that’s fine – skip this and have a great weekend!

Sending an email to someone whose work you admire feels good, and it can sometimes lead to opportunities.

But I bet if you start doing this you’ll run into a common problem – most people don’t list their email address anywhere.

There may be reasons for this, notably avoiding harassment from creepy men (SIGH), but… if you’re up for it, try to have an email address that can receive inquiries from other artists, companies, art directors, and more.

Yes, DMs on social media can work, but not every artist, company, or art director is hanging out on social media everyday, but they’re all checking their email around the clock, I assure you.

So, be reachable. Have an email address. Make it easy for people to say they like your work, give you money, and/or hire you.

We have people right in front of us – digitally, and in real life. On our existing email list. In Zoom rooms, and Discords.

Imagine if we spent our time and energy on them, instead of spinning our wheels on social media trying to impress everyone and no one?

This from Kinda Conquering Creative Fear with Caroline,

“I made a list of every single person I had ever interacted with that seemed remotely interested in hearing more about my music. Then, I contacted them directly via emails, text messages, DMs and face-to-face. I was going to make sure that everyone I could think of was invited, personally, by me to my show.”

Instead of posting into the void of social media, make direct contact. Reach out to people you can reach out to.

In the past I might have called this hand to hand combat, but we don’t want to think of our interactions with fans as combat, or fighting. Inviting people just feels so much better.

A decent ChatGPT prompt could write you some copy for a new product, an upcoming tour, or a fancy new thing. Sure.

“Hey, new podcast episode!”

It just lays out the facts. The dates. The logistics.

But friends, there’s enough safe, dull, dry text out there, and we don’t need more.

Your work comes to life from your magic.

Don’t stop using your magic when talking about your work.

As Courtney Romano wrote recently:

“If you’re not creating an experience (aka something that has ups and downs and richness and depth and confusion and friction and tension and delight), then no one will pay attention. There are just too many other things to do.”

I hate to say you’re competing with other artists, authors, musicians, photographers… but… the people you’re trying to reach are busy watching Netflix, going to shows, walking around bookstores, going to exciting restaurants, swimming, kissing!

You don’t need to buy billboards or hire an agency to get the word out. You don’t need to make “video assets” or use trending audio.

But you must do better than “new thing!”

Paul Rudd doesn’t go on late-night TV shows, say, “Hello, my new movie comes out this Friday,” and walk off set.

He tells stories that aren’t even related to the movie. This comes easy for him because he’s been making movies since the early 90s, but still – HE IS USING HIS MAGIC.

In fact, he started a running gag with Conan O’Brien by not showing a clip from the movies he’s promoting. Instead, he’d show a clip of 1998’s ‘Mac and Me’ over and over again, for many years.

Only Paul Rudd could do that Mac and Me thing because he’s Paul Rudd. No computer – no other human – could provide the magic he brings.

You don’t need to perform outlandish stunts and hacks to promote your finished work, but you can do better than a dumb computer.

As an artist, you’ve got the same spark, the same magic inside you, just waiting to be set free. It probably won’t look like what other people are doing, but it can still resonate with the people you’re trying to reach because it’s 1000% you.

The days of posting to social media and a million “things” happening are ending. It was all a house of cards, smoke-and-mirrors.

Yes, there were winners along the way (even today, I know), but the casino has to pay out occasionally, or else people stop visiting.

Writes Kening Zhu in ‘the internet as a creative practice’:

“You cannot truly embody a creative practice in an environment that exploits attention for profit, where you’re pushed to measure your “success” according to metrics of validation. This system encourages that the creative act, not be embodied and lived, but performed and pantomimed.”

I don’t think we set out to optimize, hack, and short-cut our way to more subscribers, shares, likes, and comments.

I wanna run in the woods. You might want to go on more photo walks, or set up a studio, or write a book.

These things take time, so why must our work happen at top speed? What if we slow down, instead?

What does it look like if downshift our efforts and seek deeper connections with just a few great people, more so than growing audience at all costs?

Look at this London Creatives meet up that artist David Speed recently led:

The tech bro pipe dream marketing machine wants us to believe that their platforms are the creative epicenter, but look at that photo above – not an algorithm in sight, just vibes.

What would that look like for you? Maybe not an in-person gathering, but an occasional video call? An accountability group but with postcards instead of daily check-ins? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination

Because look – posting to social media is so easy our parents can do it. Organizing a time and location to meet with other creative folks and share your wins and challenges? Now, that’s hard, and that’s precisely why you should do it.

I know, I know – social media is right there. Just so easy to post. Hit like. RT something.

We’ll just keep hitting those buttons and pulling the levers, along with the 10,000 other artists and musicians and photographers, every minute of every day, around the clock.

“The next post will be a winner, I can feel it!”

Or maybe instead of posting that meme for “everyone,” we share it with one or two people in our contacts list.

Could some of our connections grow deeper if we just made that effort? Instead of “engaging” in another comments thread, what if we sent a DM or email to one or two people this week?

And what if we stopped obsessing over our stats?

There’s always one more goal, metric to measure, and level to reach. Capitalism is about constant growth and the pursuit of more.

Stop looking at your stats and seek good energy instead.

Opportunities can come from the people we already know, the connections we make today, and the relationships we’ve had for decades.

Let’s slow down our desire for more and realize what’s right in front of us.