Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

In last week’s Escape Pod (my group Zoom calls with subscribers), we told stories about our experiences with social media, culminating with one person asking a direct “yeah, but as a musician how do I exist without playing the Spotify game or being on Instagram?”

We all went around and chimed in, but sadly, we didn’t get them booked at Madison Square Garden by the end of the call.

On Friday, Cassidy Frost’s Weekly Live Q+A Sessions had much of the same vibes – we’re all trying to figure things out, bouncing ideas around and chiming in with suggestions, ideas, and concepts.

No one won a Grammy that day, but we all gained a bit from the collective energy and ideas in that group Zoom call.

Figuring out how to lessen our dependency on social media is a journey, there is no map, and it’s best to travel with others.

The people who run social media platforms would hope we isolate and try to figure this out on our own, which is why we need each other more than ever.

• We need groups of writers for every fathomable sub-genre. Silent co-working style, or groups to talk about self-publishing, or pitching outlets.
• I bet you could start a songwriting group. Bring un-finished songs to the group, and everyone shares their work at the end of the call.
• Photography groups, where people could get together and edit photos together, or go through a photobook together, or talk about styles and gear or anything else.

Fire up your favorite video chat service and get back to being people, making connections, and building each other up. Do this in person if you can.

Because I don’t think competing with the daily publishing schedules of the more prominent media outlets is our game. Instead of churning out daily “content,” what if we slowed down and hung out with the core people who appreciate the art we’re trying to make?

Is it scalable? Heck no.

But is spending 12 hours this week posting to Instagram and trying to lure people to sign up for our newsletter the best use of our time?

How many subscribers is enough? How many fans is enough? Do we ever find contentment? Is our thirst ever quenched?

When do we stop doing things we hate for people who don’t care and start doing things we love for people who already love what we do?

• “God, I hate posting on social media.”
• ”Making content for social media is so draining.”
• ”All the time I spend on social media promoting my work feels like such waste of time.”

We have people right in front of us – digitally, and in real life. 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?

Like Molly Ella says in ‘The hard truths of content creation” (emphasis mine):

“The community that I have grown online are the reason that I continue to do what I do. Their thoughtful messages and comments can lift me even on a bad day. I recognise the names that come back again and again and I’m so grateful for them.

I intend to continue to prioritise nurturing these existing relationships as opposed to solely focusing on attracting new people.”

Growing relationships isn’t just about subscribers or “fans,” either. It’s about the entire community that exists in the little world around us.

In the music world, this could include producers, label owners, painters who make album art, effects pedal makers, and/or the local record shop owner.

So instead of posting for “everyone” and hoping to get discovered, we build a foundation of great people in our orbit with intention. That community is how we’re going to untangle ourselves from the social media / creator economy shit show.

As Metalabel wrote, “The creative status quo has made us lonely content machines” (read the whole thing from their New Creative Era booklet).

Our individual Social Media Escape Plan gains momentum in backyards, and on Zoom calls with other creative spirits, without algorithims.

Let’s go.

If you get people to your website, do your best to keep them there. If you’ve got a new video or song to promote, embed it on your own website and link to it from your newsletter and social media.

Direct people where it’ll have the biggest impact – SALES.

Add the piece of multimedia to your site, where you control the branding and layout. Optimize and make it easier for people to pre-order your new product or service, or even to just find out more about YOU.

Because sending to people to YouTube just keeps people on YouTube, which benefits YouTube.

Sending people to Spotify or Apple Music keeps them in the streaming music world.

Get people to your site, give them a reason to stick around, and don’t let that attention go to waste.

Years ago, when I ran Noisecreep for AOL Music, we had the Deftones in for a studio interview.

My pal Gino DePinto took the photo below.

To set the mood, he brought along his CD boombox and put on the band’s debut album ‘Adrenaline’ (yes, this was before Spotify even rolled out in the U.S.).

After the shoot, vocalist Chino Moreno walked past the boombox and pretended to remove the CD and fling it away.

Nobody likes their early stuff, it seems.

What’s this got to do with you setting up a website for your work?

You probably still haven’t set up a website because you’re sure it won’t get 1,000 clicks a day (so what’s the point?), and getting 23 likes on Instagram is just easier (and makes Zuckerberg rich).

Better to skip the whole website thing until you’ve really made it.

---

Now, I thought of putting together a list of 20 creative folks with their cool websites, but that’s like me putting together a list of 20 photographers and saying, “here, make your photos look like this.”

You’re the artist here, right? The writer? The poet? The instructor? The musician?

Years ago you closed your eyes and imagined your magic in the world.

You’ve created your artistic vision from nothing but imagination, refining your taste and becoming more comfortable with your creative output over the years. Decades.

Now, do that for your website.

Buy a domain at Hover (affiliate link), and try something fancy like Squarespace, Cargo, or Wix.

Just log in, make a free account, and mess around!

Try something weird like Straw. Make a simple one-page site with Carrd. Publish a Google Doc (or Slides) to the web, or a Miro board.

Grab some friends, learn some HTML, and upload your site to site44, Yay.boo or GitHub Pages.

Get together with a friend and build a website! COLLABORATE! Maybe hire or barter with someone to make it?!

Experiment! Play! Try things (you know, just like your art)!

Fill it with your bio, ideas, and videos. Include your wins, press hits, and the nice things people say about you.

“We post all our most interesting photos (on social media), the imagery that shows off our unique, creative spirit, the videos that capture our spontaneous, magical energy.

We won’t put any of those cool images on our website, then we complain that nobody goes to our website.”

You can still post all your work to YouTube and Spotify of course, for the D i S c O v E r Y, but once you have a direct connection with your fans, you can stop sending them to the food court at the mall – a world filled with distractions, cheap snacks, and flashing lights.

“When you drive someone to YOUR site, you control the branding, the vibe, the links, the experience.

When you drive someone to YouTube, your video is now competing with content that is algorithmically alluring to your fan!”

It’s standard practice to send out email newsletters with prominent links to watch videos on TikTok or YouTube, destinations owned by corporations that aim to show as many ads as possible.

They are optimized for this lone purpose, making sure your measly text link in the description or bio is obfuscated, as these companies don’t benefit when sending your fans to anything off-site.

Put your magical, delightful items on your own website. Let people discover you in a space that is purely your own, without hammering yourself into profile pages that just don’t fit right.

Is setting up a website easy? Heck no, but the art and magic you create isn’t easy either, and I believe that if you’ve come this far the hardest part of that equation is already done.

Get off social media if it makes you feel bad.

If social media is killing your creativity, stealing hours of your day (and night), making your mind race, bringing up feelings of “compare and despair,” making you second-guess your work, stealing joy, robbing you of sleep, leaving you depleted, disrupting your relationships, your work, and your art, then maybe it’s time to develop a social media escape plan.

Is being a shell of yourself worth a few likes or sales?

“I’m deleting most of my social media accounts (some of which I’ve had for over a decade) because I noticed they were repeatedly hurting me. And I was letting them,” writes S. Grohowski

Worry less about being “forgotten,” and envision a future when you re-find yourself.

“After two months away from (social media), I feel much less distracted and more grounded, present, and focused on what matters most.,” writes Ashley Neese

Trust that the universe will help you get your work in front of the right people without making dance videos or keeping up with the latest trending audio.

“How much hustle do you have to put in before you decide it isn’t worth the grind? There comes a point in every phase of business when you realize that some things simply don’t work—for us, our businesses, and our mental health,” writes 

Jamie R Cox in ‘Am I The Girl Who Deleted Instagram?’

You’re reading this right now, aren’t you? How could that happen if I didn’t post about it on social media?

One of my favorite albums of the last year was introduced to me from an old friend via email.

I wrote about the anniversary of the passing of an old friend in NYC. Their former neighbor found my blog post when they Googled their name. Read that again, friend – they found my blog post. From a search engine. In 2024.

“Lately I’ve been considering leaving (social media) and not looking back, and calling it what it is—an addiction (that’s probably the hardest part as someone who struggles with addiction). It literally adds nothing to my life, other than fleeting moments of “connection” with friends who probably wouldn’t contact me if it weren’t for the 30 second reels,” writes 

Kaitlyn Ramsay

If you don’t want to go to networking events, or play shows in noisy bars, or set up at busy markets, or start a YouTube channel or a podcast, then don’t. Just because other folks are doing it, doesn’t mean you have to follow their lead.

Set your own path, make your own luck, and if social media makes you sick, start dreaming of a life without it.