I saw someone marketing their music production services in text, outlining the discount, the expiration of the offer, and who might be interested.

No evidence, just details.

Their website showed the albums they worked, a display of musicians who trusted them with their art, their vision.

That’s evidence.

Along the same line are folks who offer 1:1 coaching calls, which is something that’s built on trust. It’s hard enough to get on a Zoom call with someone you know, right?

That’s why I put a video on my 1:1 booking page, and I tell clients to do the same.

Show evidence of how you talk. Your cadence. Your tone. Make it wonderfully obvious that you’re someone they can trust enough to hit “book a call.”

You don’t need more details, you need more evidence.

From “Don’t Build an Audience,”

“There are two ways for your content to gain immediate traction: somebody references it or an algorithm serves it. Both provide liquidity to your content, distributing it to interested consumers.

If you write something amazing, a few emails to some key people in your field is all you need to start this process.”

You can make things that people want to share with their friends, but don’t fall into the trap of making work just to please an audience.

Just make sure the work you’re making is warming your soul, first and foremost. Then, just keep making cool stuff, show it to your friends, over and over again.

Someone asked me via my Email Guidance offering about how to get more people to their site without social media, and how to get more sales (I’m paraphrasing), and this is a lightly edited version of my reply:

I’m going to push back on the “growing your audience” or getting more “eyeballs” thing and jump into TRUST, and how we build that online.

Because like, social media sorta made it “easy” to build trust because we could just take our phones and make videos and then people could see those videos and they heard our voice, they saw our face, they saw the expressions, and social media made it possible for us to put on display who we were. That was wonderful. 

And so I go to your website, and I see your many offerings, but I don’t see you.

Sure, I see photos of you, and I see lots of text, but I don’t see you. Who are you? Why should I hit that BOOK HERE button?

If I’m just a random visitor from the internet that happened to come across your site, your site looks just like everybody else’s with great pictures, nice writing, and a book now button. Where’s the trust though?

For me, it’s all about the trust, and I think the video aspect that we got from social media is something that’s so vitally important on our own websites. 

So, what if instead of trying to build all these new ways to get people to our website (that’s not converting), we poured more of ourselves, our true authentic selves, into making videos that fit into the places on our websites that make and build trust? 

I’m not saying we have to become YouTube influencers by any means, but I think even something as low-tech as recording a Zoom-style video that shows people what it’s like to show up on camera with us can go so far in building trust.

it’s scary getting on a Zoom call with someone you don’t know. But it’s easier to get on a Zoom call with someone you do know.

How many of your friends, if they asked you right now to get on a Zoom call, would you be easily to say yes to?

This is where I think the magic lies is moving away from social media, from Olivia Rafferty:

“What I’m really toying with is the idea of quitting Instagram for all of 2026, as an experiment. This kinda frightens me because I want to do another crowd finder this year, and Instagram was surprisingly useful and getting some pledges last time I did it. But I just feel like my creativity and headspace will be the better for it?”

As I’ve spent less time on social media over the last few years, I had time to host weekly Zoom calls with my subscribers.

I am a better person because of it.

If you would have asked me in 2023 to moderate a panel about artists leaving social media, I woulda said no way – I’d be terrified! But now? I’ll do it this afternoon on Zoom, let’s go.

Sure, if I stayed on social media I could have gained more likes, potential subscribers, some opportunities, but I’d have been the same Seth.

Today I am a better communicator, writer, person because I’ve put my time and energy into people instead of platforms.

From a Substack Live I did on Sunday, Nov 30th. Welcome to a very serious intellectual exercise, where I open postcards on the internet.

Okay, yes… it’s a live “unboxing,” but really it’s a peek into how Noah Kalina treats his Patreon supporters, and why his whole setup is basically a masterclass in how to make the internet work for you instead of draining your soul.

We use Noah’s approach as a launchpad to talk about other questions from creative people, like selling online with Gumroad or Big Cartel. And then we get into how a beginner can spin up a clean, one-page CV site with Carrd or Notion.

We work to impress algorithms in hopes they’ll share our stuff, when we should be working to impress our readers so they’ll share it with other humans.

And Dr. Julie Kellogg reminds us; “AND, we must ask people to share our work.”

Even Seth Godin asked readers to share his original ‘Unleashing the Ideavirus‘ PDF back in the year 2000.

Stuff we covered from a recent Office Hour Substack Live:

• The “boring stuff” that actually moves your career, like emailing people, following up, doing the unsexy work that compounds.

• Stop worshipping social platforms. Algorithmic reach is terrible, 90% of your audience doesn’t see your posts, email beats everything. RSS is even better.

• Audience-building for musicians. Embed your music, play live, collect emails in person, nurture your actual fans, don’t drive traffic to Spotify or YouTube.

• Let people pay you in multiple ways. Use Patreon, Ko-fi, PayPal, Stripe links; don’t make anyone jump through hoops to support you.

• Local, in-person proof builds trust — photos of real events, showing up in the world, and letting that strengthen the online side of your work.

I wrote that maybe you don’t need more subscribers in early 2024:

“Setting a timer for 15 minutes and communicating with real people five days a week will probably get you more results than the hour you spend making one Reel for 153 “people” to see (and which will never be seen again after 12 hours).”

I re-sent this post to my email subscribers a year later (here), and someone replied that they were going to start reaching out to some people directly. A week later, they left this update:

“To report back ten days of scheduled reaching out to people every single day. I might have a job? Also new contacts and fun things to look forward to? What?!”

We’re always seeking new, getting more, growing, expanding, but there are so many people in our creative orbit, and most of them don’t even know about your latest work, your new project, or the big offering that you rolled out last week.

Following up is a strategy. You’re not trying to cast a large net, you’re focusing on who’s already in your world.