Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

Social media can’t wait. It needs your posts now, several times per day.

Photographer Noah Kalina explains his belief that “it takes at least six years for a photograph to start getting interesting again after the day it was taken.”

As artist Tim McFarlane said in one of our recent Escape Pod Zoom calls:

“When I think about posting or blogging, I usually start visually. The photos come first, and that’s what gets the story going for me. I’ll remember where I was, what was happening around me, what I was thinking at the time — everything tends to spin out from the photograph. And it’s nice looking back now, having all this material that I can move into other things if I want to, because nobody’s seen it already. I also have a different way of talking about it now.“

Isn’t that magical? That nobody has seen the image yet? And our thinking of the image, the art, the photo – that you’re a different person today, different from when you made the image last week, or a year ago.

Social media begs us to share quick and often, but we’re allowed to distance ourselves from that urgency.

Today I did an hour long “Office Hour”, and we got into doing Substack Lives, how to show up for the people who already read your work, why lives aren’t an audience-growth hack, building community, running Zoom calls, starting tiny email circles, ditching Instagram/TikTok, and creating offerings for your audience.

I warned that we shouldn’t think of Substack Lives as an audience builder, but rather a way to let your existing audience get closer to you.

“Use Substack Live to show up for the people who already know you — not to chase new subscribers. Don’t treat it like some growth hack or algorithm play. Think of it as getting closer to the folks who are already here, the ones who actually read your work. Show them your vibe, how you talk, how you think. That’s where the trust comes from — not trying to perform for a crowd that isn’t even watching.”

When setting up a Substack Live, you’ve given the option to send an email to your subscribers to let them know. Someone asked if I do that or not.

“Send the email. If people get pissy about it, bye. Hit the road. I’m doing things, and I’m going to tell people about them. You’re either along for the ride or you’re not.”

On building offers when you don’t really know what your audience wants:

“Stop overthinking your offers. Don’t send a giant survey asking people what they want — most won’t fill it out anyway. Just say, ‘Hey, I’m doing this. Come along if you want.’ If no one shows up, cool. You didn’t waste time building a whole thing no one needed. Show up, do the work, and let people join or not.”

I’ve been saying we should be get back to blogging and updating our websites for awhile now. Here’s some feedback from a recent Email Guidance client who added a blog to their site:

“Literally within one week (of adding the blog) this led to an invitation to give a talk (you know the old-fashioned way, you introduce yourself to someone cool, they look you up, find your website and boom).”

If someone needs an account to see your work, it’s not really public, so make sure your best work is available for everyone to see on the world wide web.

Someone asked me via my Email Guidance offering about how to get more people to their site without social media, and how to get more sales (I’m paraphrasing), and this is a lightly edited version of my reply:

I’m going to push back on the “growing your audience” or getting more “eyeballs” thing and jump into TRUST, and how we build that online.

Because like, social media sorta made it “easy” to build trust because we could just take our phones and make videos and then people could see those videos and they heard our voice, they saw our face, they saw the expressions, and social media made it possible for us to put on display who we were. That was wonderful. 

And so I go to your website, and I see your many offerings, but I don’t see you.

Sure, I see photos of you, and I see lots of text, but I don’t see you. Who are you? Why should I hit that BOOK HERE button?

If I’m just a random visitor from the internet that happened to come across your site, your site looks just like everybody else’s with great pictures, nice writing, and a book now button. Where’s the trust though?

For me, it’s all about the trust, and I think the video aspect that we got from social media is something that’s so vitally important on our own websites. 

So, what if instead of trying to build all these new ways to get people to our website (that’s not converting), we poured more of ourselves, our true authentic selves, into making videos that fit into the places on our websites that make and build trust? 

I’m not saying we have to become YouTube influencers by any means, but I think even something as low-tech as recording a Zoom-style video that shows people what it’s like to show up on camera with us can go so far in building trust.

it’s scary getting on a Zoom call with someone you don’t know. But it’s easier to get on a Zoom call with someone you do know.

How many of your friends, if they asked you right now to get on a Zoom call, would you be easily to say yes to?

This is where I think the magic lies is moving away from social media, from Olivia Rafferty:

“What I’m really toying with is the idea of quitting Instagram for all of 2026, as an experiment. This kinda frightens me because I want to do another crowd finder this year, and Instagram was surprisingly useful and getting some pledges last time I did it. But I just feel like my creativity and headspace will be the better for it?”

As I’ve spent less time on social media over the last few years, I had time to host weekly Zoom calls with my subscribers.

I am a better person because of it.

If you would have asked me in 2023 to moderate a panel about artists leaving social media, I woulda said no way – I’d be terrified! But now? I’ll do it this afternoon on Zoom, let’s go.

Sure, if I stayed on social media I could have gained more likes, potential subscribers, some opportunities, but I’d have been the same Seth.

Today I am a better communicator, writer, person because I’ve put my time and energy into people instead of platforms.