Category: MarketingCategory: Marketing

What if the people receiving your emails forwarded it to friends? What if they copied the text from it and posted it on social media? What if your words traveled from the inbox into Facebook group chats and meeting rooms?

When was the last time you sent a newsletter that got 10 replies?

If none of those things happened — not even close— maybe getting more subscribers isn’t the answer.

From social media to Substack Notes, people post in the void. No comments, likes, or engagement of any kind.

Hey, sometimes things don’t work!

Your “questions to everyone” or “open invites” have good intentions, but after a dozen or so attempts, it’s time to reassess your strategy.

Stop asking “everyone” and start actually asking people.

➡️ Reply to someone else’s post. Go into the comments section of another post, or another Tweet, and reply there. Be the person that people love seeing in the comments section by being insightful, gracious, and / or funny.

➡️ Email someone directly in your network. If you’re hoping those people even see your original post and take the time to reply is a long shot. Instead, reach out and ask them. Say you’re looking for their insight for an upcoming post.

➡️ Invite someone before inviting everyone. If you’re just getting started in hosting video hangouts, live sessions, or workshops, consider inviting a few people you know directly. See if you can get three people to commit before announcing to “everyone.”

➡️ Go beyond “just sharing” and make it a big deal. Make a whole post about it. Go deeper than typing “THIS,” and explain why this piece resonated. Don’t just “curate your feed,” rolling the dice hoping that 10% of your audience might see it. Take the time to write about something (or make a video or an audio snippet), and share it directly with your audience in an upcoming newsletter (where 99% of your subscribers will see it in their inbox).

“Yeah, but Seth, I just want to post my thing and go do other things,” you might say.

Well, you see the results that “just posting” gets you.

Also, how can talking to your fans, audience, and readers be a waste of time?

Setting a timer for 15 minutes and communicating with real people five days a week will probably get you more results than the hour you spend making one Reel for 153 “people” to see (and which will never be seen again after 12 hours).

Does it scale? Fuck scale, do the work.

The strategy of “just posting” ain’t working, and it’s not going to get any easier to reach your fans in that way as we roll into the second half of 2024.

You can get away with sparse details about your latest album when you’re BEYONCÉ and you’re riding a white horse and holding an American flag.

Compare that to a post I saw recently on a social media platform:

“Just updated my site, and added some extra goodies. Subscribe!”

Updated your site with what? Photos of fish? Paintings of barns? Poems about frogs?

Extra goodies? Videos of balloon animals? Clown sculptures?

If you’re not telling me what I’m getting, why the heck should I click? Or subscribe?

Remember, you’re up against BEYONCÉ, TMZ, brands with social media teams, Netflix, and Mr. Beast.

If all you can muster is “I updated my site,” lower your expectations. The algorithms are cruel, but it’s nothing personal. Is this fair or kind? No. But playing this game is a choice, and hardly anybody wins.

There is hope, though.

When we put BEYONCÉ on one side of the spectrum and “hey, new song” on the other, there’s a vast expanse in between. A whole realm of possibilities.

I said previously that maybe tossing promotional paper airplanes into the cyclone of digital content isn’t the best use of our time.

Building our work or brand on rented property is risky business, and for years we’ve been uploading content for free on social media platforms.

Then I heard Michelle Warner say recently to take 85% of the things we make “off your platform” and redistribute it in other places (listen here).

“Whether it’s a group of five people or landing some media, just get it off your platform so people don’t have to find you there.”

The answer was right there the whole time, in front of my dumb face.

“That’s where I break marketing into three stages; awareness, engagement, sales. People need to know you exist, then they need to like you, then they need to buy something from you.”

The podcast host, Jay Acunzo, then suggests that we parse out some of our content in ways that I feel like a lot of us have seen or have done in the past, like appearing on a podcast or seeing artists contribute to blogs or host classes.

As Michelle says, and I think this is the money quote, is to “get awareness off your plate and onto other platforms.”

Platforms in this case don’t have to be Instagram or TikTok, but trusted outlets with an established audience. Or a writer or artist you admire.

(more…)

The video above was in response to this wonderful quote I found via Substack notes from Elissa Altman:

If you’re not gonna talk publicly about your work, plenty of other folks will. People can’t fall in love with your work if they don’t know about it.

Tell people about your work in only the way that you can, because if an unpaid intern (or an AI prompt) could write your self-promo copy, you’re toast.

🚫 Hey, new song! [LINK]
🚫 I just posted some new art. [LINK]
🚫 New items added to the store. [LINK]
🚫 New interview – we talked about art stuff! [LINK]

Those can work if you’re Radiohead or Beyonce or Rolling Stone or Best Buy.

Which you are not.

Let’s learn from Austin Kleon, who says to learn to steal like an artist (buy that book right now, dammit).

✅ Look at how Jeff Tweedy explains a new solo acoustic track he posted:

“It’s Super Bowl Sunday, that’s what I’m told. I have tallied the results of all your requests, and opted to do an acoustic version of “King of You” from the album Star Wars. Which was an unlikely favorite. Or at least it got two votes. It’s from an album that’s meant to be full of nonsense, because I think nonsense is good for us.”

No way an AI bot or record label intern could write that. And a lot more interesting than “new song, click here.”

✅ If you interviewed someone, get out of the way and put them front and center, the way Sari Botton of Oldster Magazine does here:

In this instance above, Todd Boss is the focus, the center of attention. Get the heck out of the way and let their words champion the piece.

✅ Artist Marie Enger opens her recent newsletter like this:

“Friends, this week? It fucking sucked.

But my buddy Ray Nadine (who you might know from the 2024 GLAAD nominated comic LIGHT CARRIES ON, Raise Hell (with our good friend and yours too, Jordan Alsaqa), and SOMETHING HAS CHANGED) reminded me yesterday as I was spinning out–

The horrors persist, but so do the little treats.

Then they sent me a slurpee.”

✅ Back to Austin Kleon – he promotes a recent newsletter on Substack notes like this:

“I don’t know what it is about my brain, but as long as I can find the right image to put at the top of the newsletter, the rest just flows out. (I started this letter last week but didn’t finish it — remembering Kate’s image helped everything snap into place)”

Not one of these asks for a click, a signup, or a “buy now.”

They all attempt to draw you in with story, delight, oddities, weirdness – you know, art. Magic!

The newsletter or the song is the vehicle, but the creative spirit behind the work must provide the energy to move it forward.

We need to get away from thinking of our offerings as commodities.

We are not promoting just a new song, a new thing to read, or another piece of content.

You’ve already done the hard part; you’re an artist, photographer, teacher, musician – you know how hard it is to play the piano?! IT’S IMPOSSIBLE, I TRIED, OKAY?

But promoting your work? That’s much easier than trying to sight-read sheet music, which is another impossibility – how does anyone do it?!

Let your creative wisdom inform how you talk about and share your work. Literally spend more than 12 seconds on it, instead of banging out “hey click here” and expecting anyone to give a fuck about it.

✅ BONUS: You can also go in the opposite direction.

Think about how you’d start a comedy show. What’s the expectation?

Even if you’re not a comedian, we’re all so familiar with the process that if we had to, we could at least do the introduction part, right?

“Hey everyone, I’m Seth. So great to be here!”

But it takes an artist to spend the first three minutes wrestling with the mic stand, dropping the microphone, and yelling at the production crew to turn the music off.

But note when the music stops, and Tim Heidecker abruptly says, “Thank you, okay, all right.”

That took some work. That was magic.

Those first three minutes are rough. I got a little bit of anxiety from watching it, but it was like a car wreck; I couldn’t look away.

Like – why go through all that?

Because it sets the stage for what’s to come.

Why did I pack up my camera gear and use a wired microphone and go into the woods to make a video about hyping your work?

Because this is my art, my project, my work.

Some people will get that video. Some people will be like, “That guy is weird, and I’m not subscribing.”

Great. This is what I do, this is how I work. thank u, next.

Make people feel something. Stress, tension, release. The hero’s journey.

These are all things you can learn and study and steal ideas from (and a much better use of your time, instead of spending 2+ hours a day scrolling social media).

Time for another walk in the woods.

Craig Lewis of Running Tales left a comment recently, and I wanted to answer it for everybody so we all benefit (though I did post a note about it here):

How do you practically make that move to talking to those closer to you/simply putting out quality content if no-one is seeing/interacting with it?

If you never post on socials etc, no-one ever sees what you do. If you have an audience already, it’s cool to get stuff out to them and they will hopefully do you a good turn and shout about it for you.

But if you’re still building an audience… back to shouting into the void?

Imagine you play the game, and you get 100 new followers on whatever social media platform. Big win!

But the next time you post something, only 10-20% will see it (probably).

That’s 10-20 people – out of that 100!

This is why getting “just” 10 new email subscribers is worth celebrating – because you can actually reach them!

So, where do you find those ten people?

• They’re in your DMs, or Discords, Messages – send them a link to one of your latest posts in a cool and chill way
• If you sell something online, you have email addresses! Send them a link to subscribe (DON’T just add them to your list, let them opt-in)
• There are people you talk to every day who have no idea you even have a newsletter (I’ve been doing this one for 2.5 years and some friends still have no idea)
• You can collaborate with someone and make something together, expanding your work to a new audience.
• Ask to be a guest on a podcast (via Astrid Bracke)
• Take online courses relevant to your field and expand your network of cool people
• Start your own online video chats (like Raz from Running Sucks), or Discord hang outs, or streams based on things adjacent to what you do and build a community (musicians do this a lot with video game streams)

These ideas require some thought to get your point across in a way that feels good.

It’s hard work.

But it ain’t “make video content that you hate doing four times a week” hard.

That said, it’d be way easier to forget all this Social Media Escape Club nonsense and upload a new piece of content to social media and get that dopamine rush when it gets four likes in the next 10 minutes.

This is how social media rots our brains.

They’ve convinced us that the only way to market our work is by using their platforms, every one of them optimized to get you to spend more time using their products.

Do you have time for more unpaid work?

Are posts not doing well? Try a carousel (which is more images you have to make).

Are carousels not working? Try making short-form videos!

No, thanks.

The power lies in our networks, our communities, our scenes – things that social media has done its best to rattle apart, but they still exist.

“Are we so powerless to change the current situation that we sit back and hope somebody else fixes everything?

And then what? That person will sell the company to a Nabisco+Tide hedge fund subsidiary, and we’ll be back where we started.

Maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.”

Here’s an example: every week, a friend of mine emails creative people he sees making things he enjoys.

He’ll cold email the person who did lighting on a music video he saw on YouTube, or the person who edited a great essay.

No agenda, no pitch, just an appreciative note to say good job, keep it up.

Does it lead to work? Sometimes, but most often it doesn’t.

Did I mention this friend has a Grammy and an Emmy award?

And he’s not on social media anymore, either.

Don’t just follow other cool artists; BECOME FRIENDS. Creative partners. Support one another. There is strength in our collective magic.

Make cool stuff, and show it to your friends in casual ways without social media.

Get to work.