One third interview, two thirds group Q&A with AMELIA HRUBY, PHD – feminist writer, prolific podcaster, and founder of Softer Sounds!
📅 Thursday, September 11

🕑 2:00–3:00 PM EDT

This hour-long call is part interview, part community Q&A. 

Together we’ll talk about what it looks like to leave social media, build cozy websites (and blogs?!?), and keep making magic without relying on big platforms to spread the word.

This is for paid members only, but you can get a trial membership for just $10 and get all this:

▪️ Access to 3+ live calls every week with creative folks curious about leaving social media – community!
▪️ Personalized email feedback from me (two rounds included)
▪️ Free access to my upcoming MAKING COZY VIDEOS PIZZA PARTY (normally $50)
▪️ Stay connected between sessions in our members-only Discord.

Get your 30 day trial for just $10 here

You’ll get an email with the Zoom link right after you sign up.

On Monday’s Escape Pod Zoom call we dared to believe that we could put work into the world without bowing to the algorithm gods. That our work could stand on its own, and build a sturdy foundation for what’s ahead.

In our workshop on Wednesday we shared stories of grounding our projects in local communities, with real people, and working through procrastination. We also got talking about Patreon and “extra offerings,” and a member mentioned this:

“In the UK, people really love to visit gardens and houses, and they’re just so happy. They will pay the ticket, and they’ll wander around, and they’ll stare at things. And it’s because, you know, it’s not a house that they could own, or a garden that they could have. So, if you’re a creative person making stuff, that’s super interesting to people who don’t. Is there a way that I could just provide a window to my world? You pay your entrance fee, you come and look around a bit, and I don’t have to do anything extra—just share some of what I’m already doing.”

AI was definitely the theme of our Thursday Escape Pod Zoom call. I don’t think we really “figured out” how we’re gonna beat it, but I bet adding more of our own humanity to the work we’re making will probably help.

(more…)

Are you asking people to “subscribe for updates” to get people on your email list? Maybe promising a 10% discount?

Remember, you’re competing with Netflix, social media, family, new albums, holiday plans, and a million other things – rework your pitch.

“Say, “follow our adventures as we leave for tour in a month. Sign up so you don’t miss a single photo of our adventures. Sign up so you don’t miss out on all our crazy tour stories.”

There’s a reason media outlets ask, “got any crazy tour stories?”

It’s because stories sell.”

Max Pete and I had a nice talk about chasing tech dreams, the rise (or comeback?) of offline community, and how creatives can find balance between being seen online and actually living their lives.

Some solid quotes from Max during this talk:

“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.”

“As a community professional, we often put ourselves on the back burner… it leads to burnout. My next talk will be about how to take care of yourself while taking care of others.”

It’s okay to be forgotten and not know everything or everyone. You don’t need to be famous or popular or known by everyone to do good work.

Hardly anyone knows about your latest project, let alone something you did three weeks ago (or three years).

Send a link to three people and let them know about it. Doing this takes minutes and is probably more effective than posting on socials for 95% of your audience to miss. Send via email, text, or DM. Just be cool about it.

I got this question from Leslie recently:

I recently started on Substack after being inspired by Mad Records’ experiment of releasing music outside Spotify. I have a small following and want to build a community I can keep, even if I eventually move platforms. Connection is important to me, but I’m unsure how to offer value or grow my audience. As I explore Substack through tutorials, I’m seeing a lot of concern about the platform shifting towards social media-style features (ads, algorithms, etc.) that may not be ideal for creatives. I’m feeling discouraged. Do you think Substack is still worth the effort for building a community?

First off, as an artist, you are not offering value or growing an audience, you’re making magic and pulling people into your creative orbit.

Second, yes, Substack is veering into social media territory for sure. But right now it’s an effective tool for letting curious visitors sign up for your email list.

So, all that said, time spent on Substack doing anything to attract any amount of readers is time well spent. Finding fans is one thing, but being able to reach those fans is another. If Substack allows you to build an email list of 10 people, well, you get the email those 10 people for the next several years. Every bit of effort here is worth it because of the foundation you build with an email list.

If you’re still using one of those Link In bio services, now is the time to clean it up. My god, I’ve seen some artists with 50+ links in those things. Do you expect fans to dig through all those? More choices just means your fans aren’t even going to click anything.

Consider putting all the things you’re linking to (YouTube videos, music, upcoming appearances, store) on your own website, then just simply linking to your website. One link to rule them all.

Our work doesn’t need perfect duplications on multiple sites and platforms, our work needs to have a place where the final version resides.

As Professor Pizza said years ago on one of our first Zoom calls, “Stop giving your best work to social media.”

Everything is a billboard – your YouTube descriptions, your email footers, your newsletters, even what you say when the podcast interviewer asks “where can people find you online?”

Don’t rattle off the 3-5 social media platforms – those are places where you can’t reach all of your fans when you post something!

And sure – those social media profiles are exciting because you update them 12 times a day.

But imagine if you spent the same amount of time updating your website rather than uploading free content to a social media platform so your fans… can just stay on a social media platform (and not see all your posts).

Next year is always right around the corner, and it will never get any easier to reach your existing fans on social media. Time to set up a website and send out some good email newsletters.