Category: WritingCategory: Writing

From Dan Blank, in “10 things I wish every writer knew about marketing.”

“What if instead of redesigning your website, you reached out to one person each day for three months? Where your goal was a meaningful conversation, a generous act, or a thoughtful reply.

I have seen writers not only learn so much in this process, but create wonderful connections and opportunities. Besides, wouldn’t it be nice to spend your days talking with people who love to read?”

I say do a little of both, but with a twist.

Let’s stop redesigning our websites, or rather, let’s just strip them to the bones and get back to the writing. I’ve had enough of the Squarespacification of what a website should be.

The blog format has endured because it works. One of the most popular websites in the world uses the blog format. Just a photo, followed by a block of text. Then another photo, with a block of text.

It’s called Instagram. Look it up.

Magazines, newspaper articles… photo, then text. Photo, then text.

THEN… then share some of those posts with people from time to time. That doesn’t mean blast it to “everyone” on social media. Instead, send one link to a person from time to time.

“Here, I wrote this is a bit ago and was thinking of you…”
“Hey, remember that time we did this thing?”
“I know you’ve been struggling with X, and I just wrote something about that.”

Our website is the library in our cozy cottage in the woods – not everyone visits, but for the right people it’ll feel like home.

I’ve said recently “your newsletter isn’t your permanent address, it’s a delivery truck.”

It’s tempting to build on a platform, but as we know platforms come and go. They can lock you out. Lose your data. Shut down in the middle of the night.

I recently hosted a “let’s work on our websites together” virtual co-working session (next one is Tuesday, May 20 – it’s free, but RSVP here). We’re updating our bios, moving stuff around, setting up Now pages.

We’re re-using the videos we posted on Instagram (that 95% of our audience never saw), and putting them on our sales pages. We’re making videos that inform and build trust, and putting them next to our BUY NOW buttons.

Videos on our website recreate that vibe of the friendly shop owner who says hello when you walk in. Embedding voice notes to our About page lets the internet traveler know a bit more about who you are.

With our own website, our own zine, our own videos, our own voice – we get to fully show up as who we are, instead of twisting and contorting ourselves onto social media platforms, trying to fit in and appease algorithms.

It’ll take a minute to get people at large to return to websites. Lots of people are happy to just scroll on social media all day, and that’s fine. Maybe they’re not your people.

But if you’ve got a dozen people on your email list, you can send them a newsletter and tell them about the great new exciting work you’ve got on your website.

Because writing on your own site a few times a week isn’t all that different than posting seven times a day on multiple social media platforms. You’re just focusing your energy on your platform instead of someone else’s.

And when you’re constantly putting work on your website, when you sit down to write a newsletter once a week you’ll have no problem thinking about what to send, because you already wrote it.

You’ve already made the meal, now you just need to serve it to people who gave you their email address and said, “yes, let me know what you’re working on from time to time.”

Great post here: ‘If nothing is curated, how do we find things?’

“Before, you could reach for a magazine once a month or a watch a show once a week, but now you have to browse Vulture every day and read all 20+ articles they publish, even on the weekends. Who has time to read all that? Who has the time for any of this? Technology is making our lives harder, not easier.”

Everything is a mess right now. There’s never been a better time to be a curator, to own a niche, to be the source for certain sorts of music or media.

(link via Brad Barrish)

I’m part of Alex Dobrenko’s BAT CAVE. He writes Both Are True on Substack… BAT, get it?

Anyways, I started following Alex a year or two or three ago, and always looked forward to his newsletter showing up in my inbox.

Quick note: I don’t know that it shows up on a regular schedule (I have other things to worry about), like so many email marketing gurus say you have to do. When Alex’s email shows up, I read it. That’s it.

Okay, back to what I was saying; Alex now does group Zoom calls with his paid subscribers, which he totally stole from me. Just kidding, but no really… group Zoom calls with your paid subscribers is so good. Not everything needs to be a paywalled posts, or extra “content.” Hang out for an hour with the people who love you work once a week and see what happens.

Back to Alex: he starts off these group calls like a damn performer. Oh, that’s right, that’s because he is. It’s hilarious, and funny, and wonderfully over the top. There are SLIDES.

Lots of jokes and silliness throughout, because that’s the world that Alex creates. But then… shit gets real. People get deep.

Not in a, “okay, let’s be adults now and talk about REAL stuff.”

No, it just sort of eases into the room, because space was made for it to come into. The room was filling with fears and doubts and fart jokes, so then there’s room for all sorts of emotions and feelings.

So that’s just a thought on creating a Zoom room hangout with your members, through the lens of how Alex is doing it, and I think it’s great. Find out more about the BAT CAVE here.

We used to blog a few times a week, and update our websites. But then we started shoveling our work onto the social media platforms by the truck load. At some point making billboards for our work became the work.

Those platforms would then reward us views, likes, impressions, comments, and most importantly – FOLLOWERS. The whole system was optimized for this: make it easy to post often, and then reap the so-called rewards. Some posts would “hit” because the casino had to pay out – otherwise, people stop playing.

Some of us left social media is various forms, shuttering one account, but maybe holding onto another. We leave, we go back. It’s like a toxic relationship we seemingly can’t quit, because there are conference rooms filled with highly paid people fighting for their livelihoods, doing whatever they need to keep people locked into their platforms.

As Alex Dobrenko says, “the casinos are very good at commodifying all attempts to leave their grasp.”

So when we consider untangling from the idea of, “well, that’s just the way things are,” it feels isolating. This is mostly because when we hit publish on a blog post, nothing happens. We run back to social media to get that one LIKE in the first few minutes. Someone will drop a “nice” comment, or a heart emoji.

When we send a newsletter we just get open rates, and how many people clicked. Or in the case of Substack, we get likes and re-stacks and views.

Some of those numbers tell stories, like a 10% open rate, sure. But we can’t lose sleep when our open rate drops from the week prior. There are real people on the other side of those numbers. People with jobs, family emergencies, break ups, and dentist appointments. Sometimes our work is not the most important thing at that very moment for our audience.

And it’s important to remember all this metric-gazing didn’t happen overnight.

The three tech overlords played a part in all of this; the phone makers, the data suppliers, and the platform barons. Their influence has become the technological equivalent of micro-plastics, embedded deep in our brains and culture.

Avoiding the influence of this unholy trinity will take time, but we’ve got to start somewhere. New rituals, new habits. Hit publish and go for a walk, or call a friend. Get some space between ourselves and the work. Otherwise we allow our work to sift through the never ending filter of commerce and metrics, and that’s not how we want to operate.

Someone said in a recent Escape Pod Zoom call that back in the day a writer might finish their new book, and… that would be it. No social media to check, no unending feed of six second video clips to get lost in. No followers or view counts to monitor.

The work was done, and then it was quiet. Maybe it’s supposed to be quiet.