Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

In a recent Email Guidance session, someone told me about spending too much time on social media promoting their podcast.

Promoting our work on social media leads to likes and replying to comments and responding to DMs.

Thus, our marketing efforts on social media lead to more work on social media; we keep feeding the machine, and the machine gives you more busy work.

Eventually our work suffers because we’re also cos-playing as a social media manager.

Instagram and Facebook love all the time that we devote to promoting our work, all while we’re spending less time doing the work. We’re on their platforms engaging and interacting in the hopes of getting more likes, views, impressions. Pull the lever, win a prize!

But the prize we’re looking for rarely comes. We’re hoping for the click, which could lead to the subscribe. We engage, we like, we spend another 20 minutes interacting, hoping for the elusive click.

Let’s stop hoping and realize the truth: RSS exists.

Podcast players pull in new episodes via an RSS feed, and “feed readers” like NetNewsWire (my favorite) let us subscribe to blogs (even Substack newsletters and YouTube videos).

So when we publish a new piece, people get it without interference from algorithms, spam folders, or promotions tabs.

And if we devote time to making great work instead of feeding social media platforms, it would seem that our work could grow by delivering it directly to the people who care.

More on RSS:
“In defense of RSS” by Seth Godin

“The ancient technology of the RSS feed” by TK (YouTube short)

Q. How will I hear new music, find new things, see new art if I’m not on social media?

A. Did we not do those things before social media? Of course we did! Ask your friends, subscribe to newsletters, look up bands you see on flyers, read interviews with artists and see who they’re talking about!

See some fun answers from the community here!

I saw Substack’s latest post, Demystifying the Feed, and figured I’d rant about it on a Substack Live!

Here’s some of the stuff I covered:

• The lottery effect: I compared Notes (and social media in general) to a lottery—someone wins big to keep the rest of us playing, but most people don’t.
• Algorithms ≠ strategy: I talked about how algorithmic feeds will always disappoint. You can’t game them, and they don’t owe us growth.
• Don’t outsource your audience: I reminded everyone that Substack is useful, but temporary. Platforms crash, change, or ghost. An email list is portable and ours forever.
• Real-world examples: I shared a story about a musician who skipped social media promo, reached out to a local newspaper and radio station, and played to 150 people in a new town—plus 30 new email signups on a clipboard. You can read that post here.
• Offline matters: I talked about how flyers, zines, and conversations still work. My own punk rock flea market table proved it—people still want to connect in person.
• Community ≠ platform: I said Substack makes great tools, but the “community” belongs to them, not us. Real community happens off-platform.
• For quieter creatives: I encouraged folks to stay authentic—slow growth, not performance. I’d rather grow as myself than pretend to be louder or slicker than I am.
• Blog and email > Notes: I emphasized that everything I post on Notes should also live on my own site.
• Let unsubscribes go: I reminded everyone to stop watching unsubscribe counts. I don’t track them either, it’s better to just focus on who stays.
• Final takeaway: The way I “demystify the feed” is by not relying on it. I’d rather build small circles, reach people directly, and keep the internet human-sized.

Yonder Surf Zine sums it up pretty well (get a copy here):

“For years now, we’ve been giving our words, thoughts and images to a $100 Billion tech company. It feels like we’ve lost control of our cultural narrative to a social media algorithm.

We’ve handed the very essence of our culture to the Silicon Valley tech bros and we’re losing our own minds in the process. We do it to justify our existence as surfers or creatives; in an eternal battle for online attention. It’s not good for us; it’s not good for surf culture and it’s not good for future generations.”

Why don’t people visit websites anymore? Because we put all our best work on someone else’s website, namely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, YouTubeetc.

If we put all our best work on these various platforms that we don’t control, what incentive is there to visit our websites?

And remember – these platforms monetize our work. We are the product, the never ending feed of text and images and videos and hot takes. These companies cram all this “content” into a feed, throw in advertisements, and make money.

Guitarist Steve Vai knew this years ago, saying (as the artist) “I get paid the most.”

(Yonder link via Looking Sideways)

Sam Altman is building a technology that will cure cancer, but it couldn’t help him write a Tweet more interesting than most tech-influencers.

As Manuel Moreale says in his post, “Look, another AI browser,”

“The thing I found more interesting about the whole OpenAI announcement was Sam Altman tweeting: “10 am livestream today to launch a new product I’m quite excited about!.” This is coming from someone who’s allegedly running a company that’s building a tool that should usher in a new era where computers will replace most of human work, where we’ll all have a super intelligence always available in our pockets, ready to dispense infinite wisdom.”

Releasing a new song and then Tweeting, “new song” is void of context. It’s boring, bland, a race to the bottom. Sam Altman can’t seem to figure out how to write a better pitch, but I bet you can.