On Monday’s Substack Live, I talked about lots of stuff, like putting the bulk of my work on my own site, and then when it comes time to send a newsletter, I never have a shortage of ideas to pull from. Something to consider with your own website, maybe?

On Wednesday, I had a conversation with label owner Michael Gilbride about the economics of leaving streaming platforms, why physical mail might be making a comeback, and how musicians need to think about learning business skills – woah boy!

On our Thursday call, we talked about Polymarket becoming a big thing on Substack, making promo stickers, the challenges of finding places to post our flyers, getting people from social media to subscribe to our newsletters, and lots more.

Then on this morning’s MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A we talked about the SEO game with Substack and our own websites. If people are searching for your specific project name (“Social Media Escape Club”), Google will usually surface it without big time optimization.

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From JA Westenberg’s “Communities are not fungible” piece,

“When a platform dies or degrades, its community does not simply migrate to the next platform, it fragments, and the ones who do arrive at the new place find that the social dynamics are different, the norms have shifted, and a substantial number of the people who made the old place feel like home are gone.”

This is what makes the “how do I move my social media followers to my newsletter?” a seemingly impossible task.

There are people that work at Meta who have multiple vacation homes because they are very good at their job, which is to keep users on their platform.

Make it addictive enough to keep people from leaving, and charge for things that used to be free, and you’ve got yourself a nice career.

Communities are not resources to be optimised and they’re not user bases to be migrated. They’re the accumulated residue of people choosing, over and over again, to remain in a relationship with each other under specific conditions that will never, ever recur in exactly the same way.

Some of your followers on Instagram are never going to subscribe to your newsletter.

Everyday, one of your followers logs into the platform for the last time.

Your followers are not yours, they are owned by the platforms who profit from your years of shouting “follow me on social media for updates!”

Making a living (or at least paying the rent) with a small, engaged email list is possible, even as people with massive social followings struggle to pay their phone bill.

As someone shared in our recent “BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA” Zoom call, a big social media following might look good (as in, vanity metrics), but “getting more followers” isn’t the answer, but rather making sure the thing you’re offering is something people actually want to pay for.

One thing about Substack is every newsletter you send is a “launch.” It’s to everyone, your whole audience! It can be intimidating, knowing that everything you write will be seen by 40% of the people you send it to.

Since I’ve set up this site, I find myself posting sometimes twice a day. It feels like my music blogging days, when I found an interesting band or quote, I’d dive into WordPress and just get something posted. That’s exactly what I’ve done today with this post!

Back in those days my music blog could get 5,000 visitors a day – hey, it was 2003!

Now, though, I can write on this site in relative “silence,” without thinking too much about typos or making sure each post is my absolute best.

So I was delighted when I found this quote from Tracy Durnell, (via the Josh Spector newsletter)

If you only write when you’re sure you’ll produce brilliance, you’ll never write. Blogs can help writers trick ourselves out of performance anxiety with lower stakes.

I think about it like this: you can do Morning Pages, which is private, and not for publication of course. Then there’s SENDING A NEWSLETTER. That’s public, that’s out there, it’s showtime!

The in-between is a blog.

It’s public, but… semi-public. Less public than let’s say Cory Doctorow, with his Pluralistic blog.

Have you seen him talk on stage for over an hour about Enshittification? He’s rattling off facts and figures and ideas like he’s reading from a script! Why? Because he writes so much everyday! He wrote a BOOK about it!

Go beyond the idea that you “need eyeballs” for your efforts to be worthwhile, and believe that writing about what you do in a lower stakes manner might be the best thing for your work.

Are you tired of working alone, shaking your fist at the internet in isolation?

MrBeast would spend 12+ hours a day on Skype talking with fellow YouTubers when he started out, hell bent on cracking the YouTube algorithm.

Those are two extremes, (isolation vs 12+ hour Skype calls) with plenty of room in between.

There are many ways to promote your work outside of social media. We promoted our work before the age of social media, and we’ll promote it long after those platforms are gone.

Who’s even on Twitter anymore?

Like, just a few short years ago it was practically law to be on Twitter, but now? Ew.

Same with Facebook.

These once mighty platforms are a laughing stock among the creative class.

“Post on the Facebook feed? AS IF!”

But nothing is black and white. If social media is working for you, and you have the bandwidth for it, great! Maybe you don’t need to be reading Social Media Escape Club, and that’s okay.

But if you’re tired, exhausted, burned out, if your mental health is affected by spending too much time on social media, it’s okay to make an exit!

You can have a career without social media! You can make art without posting!

Like Jes Raymond, who had an upcoming show to promote. Instead of posting about it on social media, she sent one email to a local paper and called a radio station.

“This past weekend, we had a little show up in a tiny town—St. Johnsbury. One of those places with a small newspaper. And I just decided that instead of making a bunch of social media posts about the show—especially to a town I don’t know—I’d do the human work.

I figured out who the journalist was at the local paper who writes the arts column. I wrote to them directly and sent them a press release. Then I found the local radio station—Vermont Public—and called them. I got our event on their calendar.

We ended up having about 150 people show up at this little church in a town I’d never played before.”

Is it easy? Nothing is easy! But its a big internet, it’s a big WORLD (not everyone is on Twitter! Or IG!), and I believe you can make a lot of things happen without ever posting on a social media platform again.

When you hear someone else doing something creative in a group setting, like painting, letter writing, or practicing their instruments, it gives you permission to start something similar for yourself, with people in your own creative orbit.

Hearing people talking about these gatherings on a Zoom call, or in person, is powerful, because you can hear the joy in their voice, and see it in their eyes. This is different than just reading about it, because you get to witness the energy in real time.

I started all this as music blogger in 2001. I’ve been flown (all expenses paid) to a music festival in Norway. Interviewed Slayer. Met bands before they blew up.

Below is a lightly edited Email Guidance reply to someone in the midst of promoting their upcoming book:

One of my favorite promos over the years for bands and musicians was the holiday themed round-ups.

Valentine’s Day, tell us about your worst break ups.
Halloween, tell us your favorite horror movies.

Everyone involved had a new album coming up, or a tour to announce, but this was a fun way to learn more about the bands, beyond “hi I have an album coming out.” ZZzzzz.

Now, you don’t need to talk about your favorite horror movies of course (haha), but whatever you’re into, other people are into probably, too. Not everyone, but that’s okay. It’s a busy crowded world out there. Maybe you’ve got a book coming out. Well, lots of people have books coming out!

But only you can talk about the book and your work and your life in the way that you can, so capitalize on that.

While everyone else is screaming “pre-order my book” (boring!), you can talk about that adventure on the river back in 1999, the bookstore you visited that had a cat named Wizard, or the meal that changed your life in Italy (your own stories may vary). Things that nobody else gets to talk about because they’re not you, but they’re tiny glimpses into who you are, which is the first step towards someone thinking, “this story is amazing – oooh, and they have a whole book coming out!?”