TOMORROW!
◾ MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A #32
Got two spots open – come ask me about websites, sales pages, building an email list!
Friday, March 13 from 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM EST: (Members only, start your first month here)

NEXT WEEK!
◾ CO-WORK ESCAPE POD
Work on taxes, your website, your scales, your paintings, your opera, your ballet.
Tuesday, March 17 from 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST: https://luma.com/74xh39db

◾ SUBSTACK LIVE WITH MAX PETE

“The tech dream is a nightmare… more people I talk to that are in this industry want to leave and do something else—like work at the coffee shop, work at Trader Joe’s—but don’t know how to do that or feel like they can’t.”

That’s from my talk with Max Pete last year – tune in next week!
Wednesday, March 18 from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST (just be on Substack)

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If you want to get started making a simple landing page, a Linktree clone (like this one), or a portfolio sites, InfinityFree might be good if you’re just getting started.

A website doesn’t need to cost $25/month via Squarespace, or bog you down with admin duties tending to a dozen plugins.

Let your website tell your story. People hate being sold to, but they love buying.

Let people buy in to what you’re doing with your website.

A very common set of benefits kick off this post, “Is Social Media a Necessary Evil?”

• It’s where my friends are
• I have a community I’m a part of through a few different groups
• I can keep up with some extended family members easier
• Groups are a great tool for my personal business
• We can share our travel adventures and build a community for not only friends/family but other travelers as well

It’s great until its gone.

It’s great until you get locked out your account, or your friend’s account gets hacked, or a family member falls down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole because they spend too much time on a platform.

If you lost access today, you’d have to come up with a plan real quick to replace all that, so plan your escape from social media while you still have access.

Carly Valancy was our guest on a recent Escape Pod Zoom call, talking with our community about the art of reaching out.

This isn’t about cold emailing, or bulk mail, but gentle, direct, thoughtful messages to people for the various desires you seek (“would you write a blurb for my upcoming book?”, or the blessings want to share (“I love your work”).

Some take aways from the 75 minute Zoom call:

Your subject line can be direct: You don’t need to beat around the bush or be fancy. Your email is competing with 1,000 other emails in someone’s inbox, so stand out by being 100% you, which can include asking for the thing you want. Managing our inboxes takes time and energy – make it easy:

“Go for it. Just say what it is that you want, because it’s okay to want something. When you’re asking for something in an email, you’ll often try to make the subject line dance around the thing you actually want. What if you just said it?” Carly Valancy

Be honest. Someone on the call admitted that they hold back from reaching out because they’re not on social media, so they’re worried they might not appear to be “legit.” Carly’s advice is to just just say that. Write something like, “I almost didn’t reach out because I’m not on social media,” and then show your work.

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The idea of “saturation” is one of the many ways you can play the game on social media, from Nikita Walia’s Thinking Out Loud:

“Algorithmic feeds reward velocity, recency, and conversational density. Under these conditions, singular excellence is insufficient. Cultural dominance requires saturation. As dakota rae lowe, Director of Brand Social and Influencer at Nordstrom noted, “By my observation, users scroll past so much that it’s a frequency game. You’re only going to drive lift if you can get in front of someone 7-8 times minimum, so it’s a numbers game.“

People make descions everyday, every moment. When they pick up their phone, they make a choice of which app they open. If it’s social media, it’s usually to be on social media.

Your message is one of hundreds they’ll see over the next 15 minutes, so capturing anyone’s attention is a miracle. And as you’ve read above, “singular excellence is insufficient,” writes Nikita Walia.

So “saturation” is one way to play the game – “velocity, recency, and conversational density.” Post often, and keep posting, engaging the audience right there on the app, and crossing your fingers that you might impress anyone enough to find the link in your bio and leave the platform.

As Dakota Rae Lowe writes in “the answer to “social media is dead,” there are other ways to play the game:

show up in ways that are additive, participatory, and aware.

it’s not about reaching the most people. it’s about reaching the right ones.

Get the right people on your email list, into your creative orbit. You don’t need a million, you just need enough people who love your work.

Busy week here at Social Media Escape Club!

On Tuesday I did a Substack Live with photographer Noah Kalina. You might have seen his recent work with the New York Times, photographing an old school Pizza Hut here in PA.

Find out how he landed that gig (and so much more) in the replay video.

After that call I hosted Tuesday’s CO-WORK ESCAPE POD – every Tuesday at 12pm EST, you should come!

This week we had nine creative people editing video and writing newsletters and more. Register for our next one here and get some work done!

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I talk about “having a website” a lot, so I’m often asked, “what’s the ideal creator website service?”

I’m not so sure anymore.

The more I look at platforms like Squarespace, Cargo, Wix, Framer, Weebly, I can’t help but think of the square peg / round hole problem. That there’s no really “one size fits all” solution, and sometimes these “easy” website builders are complex – even to seasoned web professionals.

I started Social Media Escape Club in 2021 here on Substack. It wasn’t until 2025 that I finally landed on WordPress for my website because what I discovered is that I wanted a blog, and I wanted it to work in a familiar way and that was WordPress, the other blog set ups just don’t feel right to me. But I didn’t know in 2021 that I would end up at just “doing a blog.”

So it really helps to nail down what do you need the site to do, and how does it need to feel? Because if you hate using it (like I did with Squarespace), you’ll never use (I didn’t).

I was asked “What does online presence look like for a producer who has a busy schedule?” on Substack Notes, and I figured I’d share the answer with the world wide web, in hopes it may be helpful to someone.

I think the online presence for any creative professional is trust building. Day in, day out, how do you put on display the things you know, the ideas you connect, the people you work with? And do that in a sustainable way?

Because if you start making 30 second polished vertical clips to get shared on platforms for people that just love scrolling 30 second clips, that might get eyeballs, but does it earn trust?

Or does having an archive of work, a body of things you produced, arranged in a refined manner in your corner of the internet, work better? Something that maybe doesn’t “get eyeballs,” but is hand delivered as a link to people who matter. Something passed around from people who know, with a “you gotta check out the work this person is doing” nod.

So I’m hinting hard at the “have a good website” angle, of course, but I think that more aligns with where artists can land, and soak in what you’re doing, and how you operate. Fill it with the occasional nice video talking about your work, a collection of albums you worked on, ideas you’ve discussed with people in and around your creative orbit… make it as cozy as the studio space you’d like to share with an artist, rather than frantically handing out flyers on a busy intersection.