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!?”

From strategist and facilitator Caitlin Mayance,

Hey brands, why you still sending out storyless emails in 2026? You have direct access to a personal inbox – no algorithmic nonsense – and you’re leading with a promo or tiny lil ad?! Come on

When the bare minimum is copy and pasting your pre-existing marketing materials and hitting send to ALL is your strategy, expect bare minimum results.

Some of the most fascinating stories are being told on rented platforms, while email newsletters are filled with recycled social media images and [$NAME] placeholders.

Doing the work is hard, so why do it alone? We had some great discussions this week on our Escape Pod Zoom calls:

• Building in-person communities in new towns through volunteer work.
• My talk with artist David Speed about small scale IRL events, starting a podcast (and more).
• The weaver’s handshake?!
• Unstructured time at conferences can be more valuable than the speakers.
• Inviting authors onto a podcast despite being nervousness about it!
• Do podcasts really need to have a video element?
• “How to make your website your hub with AI taking traffic away from us little people?”
• Someone said out of 50 podcasts they subscribed to, four were active a year later

Can’t make the calls, but wanna be involved? Join our tiny email circles, made up of Social Media Escape Club members! Easy reply-all email conversations with great people. Reply to this email if you wanna join.

THIS WEEKEND!

◾ BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA DAY – SPECIAL EVENT!
Delete an app or two (I’ll be deleting the Substack app) with others. Already deleted all the apps? Great – come support those who are just starting their journey!
ALSO: special treat for everyone who attends live
Saturday, February 14
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
REGISTER: https://luma.com/sime7eyi

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From Lincoln Michel’s “Surf’s Up in Slop City,”

If the old institutions are crumbling, that is also the perfect time to build new ones. I’m not saying this is easy. But, what choice do we have?

This is response to the Washington Post gutting their book coverage.

Building our own networks and platforms to promote books, or music, or art is hard, as mentioned above, but who else is gonna do it? And if we don’t, the vacuum will be filled by the next venture back techbro operation, then we’re right back to where we started.

Start a website around something you love. A blog. Buy a domain name (affiliate link). Reach out to my buddy Tom to set up a WordPress site.

Write about the things you love in the way only you can. Don’t worry about getting traffic yet. Update the site every day. Every week. Month after month.

When people discover you, it’ll feel like finding a magical bookstore down a moss-covered alley with string lights, the opposite of a flashy ‘content hub.’

Artist David Speed from today’s Substack Live:

“From all of these brilliant minds that I’ve had on (the podcast), the overwhelming thing that comes through is just keep making stuff. Because through the things that you will make, you will process the world around you. You will learn what resonates with people and what doesn’t. You’ll find your niche. You’ll find your groove. You’ll find your people. And you’ll get better at what you do. So just keep making stuff. I think make is the most important word that we have. And it is my mission on this planet to encourage people to make stuff. Make as many things as you can. Leave behind a legacy of beautiful things that you’ve made. Make, make, make.”

Listen to the full interview to hear us talk about:

• How 3K email subscribers is mightier than 160,000 Instagram followers
• Small in-person events build trust
• David’s monthly free studio paint sessions in London
• Start a podcast (and listen to David’s Creative Rebels Podcast)
• Plant flags everywhere
• AI slop makes people want to get back to real human-created work

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According to Ken Klippenstein, “the government is building a sociological profile of political discontent.”

Homeland security field agents are scouring the social media site Reddit, monitoring the communications of law-abiding Americans critical of the agency.

And if they’re scouring sites like Reddit, you know damn well they’re scouring Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and everywhere else.

Raziq Rauf from Running Sucks wrote about how some running clubs are choosing to not post about their events on social media because they don’t want to tip off ICE.

“I learned about all these run clubs from Instagram, but we’re doing a new thing where if you wanna get with South Central Run Club, you have to be in our Signal chat. South Central deals with hyper-policing. Most of our runners are Black and brown and you never know when ICE is gonna pull up. Instead of broadcasting our runs and making us vulnerable to surveillance, we stopped putting it on Instagram to make people feel safer to come and hang out.“

Exercising our legal right to free speech and protest (or just run with our friends) is hard without some of these digital tools, especially when those tools are owned by the very forces we oppose, but as Priya Parker says, “connection is the antidote to fascism.”

Jazmin Jenay started HATTIE MAGAZINE, a “Black TV & Film PRINT magazine because I want generations after us to know who we are, and what we created beyond the digital timeline.”

“After working as a social media manager for the past few years I became extremely digitally fatigued but I couldn’t force myself to log out. The next casting, next connection, next opportunity most likely rested in me scrolling my thumb on social media. That left me wondering — what will they know of us if the apps shut down tomorrow? We need something that can be held, a physical record of our brilliance.”

Wow, this line: “what will they know of us if the apps shut down tomorrow?”

This is why we build websites, start magazines, and build creative communities. Yes, setting up a website is hard, but so is starting a magazine! We do these hard things because they are worth doing.

As Casey Barber said in a recent Escape Pod call, having a website is, “an investment in your sovereignty, and your autonomy, and your you-ness, honestly.”

This question came up on a recent live stream: “how to make your website your hub with AI taking traffic away from us little people?”

For the last 15 years we’ve been putting our best work on every other platform than our own. It’s no wonder that people don’t think to look up our websites, right?

So let’s start.

Start putting your best work on your website. Make it the one source of truth on the entire internet.

If you’re still on social media, tell people to visit your website (but manage expectations). Put a link in your newsletter. Put it on a flyer with a QR code.

Then get YOUR biggest fans on your email list, or tell them to follow via RSS, so you’re reaching them directly regardless of what AI does with your public content on a search engine.

Get YOUR people used to the idea of looking up YOUR website, because even though AI might scrape your work, it can’t build and nurture relationships. It can’t inspire them to keep coming back for more. That’s your job.