You need a website, not another social media account to manage
Your work deserves a real home on the internet
Spend time setting up a new social media account, and in five years you’ll be right back where you started.
I’ve seen this song and dance before. We’ve learned nothing from the days of Xanga, MySpace, and Facebook. What was the name of the app that’d replace Instagram?
“I'm wondering if another social media network is really the answer we need.”
It’s time to build something that lasts - your own website, a homebase on the internet that becomes the primary source of all the work you put out into the world.
A place where casual fans can turn into bigger fans of your work.
Now, most “build your own website” services make websites that are good enough, but your work deserves so much more.
“We are the creative professionals who base our entire careers on making things look interesting.
Why would we stop with our branding, our collateral material, and - for the love of God - our website?
We are in the world of visual excellence. We should make visual excellence the priority feature of our brand.” Photographer Don Giannatti
- made a micro-site for his comic, and Diana Pappas & Tom Bland made a site for their photo & video shoot location titled Meadow, both using Cargo.
- uses Notion to explain their upcoming classes.
My interplanetary commuter music project (Hunterthen) needed a website, so I built one using Carrd. MMM is another website builder, but weirder.
You could upload HTML files to YAY.BOO, made by
(they make Pika, too, which is a neat little blogging platform).Get even more lo-fi by forwarding your domain name to a public Google Doc, like this: http://goodbye.social
I have a WordPress guy, and they set up my blog sethw.xyz in 2018, and I’ve been manually importing photos and posts dating back to 2004. I can introduce you.
You can do whatever you want!
Q. BUT SETH, WHAT DO I EVEN PUT ON MY WEBSITE?
A. Think of the 1,000s of posts you’ve put on social media over the last decade. That. That’s what you’ll put on your site.
Those links you send to friends via text? Yeah, put them on your site and write about ‘em. Same with YouTube videos and albums you find on Bandcamp and Spotify.
All those “image assets” you posted on Instagram that 95% of your fans didn’t even see? Put those on your website.
The interviews, and bits of press you’ve gotten? Put them on your website.
Set up a private blog for your friends and family to share photos of your kids instead of putting them on Facebook for Zuckerberg to monetize.
Your videos can still reside on YouTube. But they can also sit on your website, surrounded by behind-the-scenes photos and stories about the shoot (and buttons to buy your things).
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
said years ago, “Stop giving your best work to social media.”Everything is a billboard - your YouTube descriptions, your email footers, your newsletters, 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 yes - those social media profiles are exciting because you update them 12 times a day. 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 your posts).
It’s almost 2025. 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.
We leave social media together
Quitting social media is scary, so start your adventure with other creative folks on the same journey.
Want to learn more about domain names and building websites, and how it can support your escape from social media?
Become a paid subscriber and join our next Zoom call (Thursday, Nov 21 at 2pm ET) and you’ll probably walk away with 2-3 good ideas, concepts, and/or strategies that you can apply to your own work.
“We all get together,” I told Thought Enthusiast about our weekly Zoom calls, “and we get to exhale and talk about old school word of mouth marketing, and getting back to things that have worked in the past, and hearing what has worked for other people, in other industries. That’s the stuff I look forward to every week.“
“Someone's got to win the lottery because that gives hope to other people,” I told Madeleine Dore for their piece ‘To post or not to post things online,’ “It leads everyone to think, well, I can win too, I just have to play the game. I just need to post 13 times a day, or do this, do that. It's a lot of hard work, which I think then takes away from our art or our practice.”
I spoke with the legendary
about email marketing! The full 25-minute video is available here for paid subscribers.◼️ Ditch Gmail and switch to Fastmail (I’ve been a customer since 2014): get a free 30-day trial and 10% off your first year here (affiliate link).
◼️ Let’s skip the Zoom call and work together via email. Send backstory and a question or two here: free-trial@socialmediaescape.club
To niche or not to niche?!
How do I write better?
Can you build an email list without social media?
Should you use Substack Notes or not?
Make videos? GO LIVE?!?!
Should I update my About page?
Go paid?
I’m tired of Mailchimp. Now what?
I basically write you a personalized newsletter, responding to your initial questions and quandaries.
If it resonates, they’ll be a payment link to book a 10 day Email Guidance package.
Try me: free-trial@socialmediaescape.club
I usually dread working on my biz website because I feel like I’m transforming all the time and I still have the residual 2013-flavored angst about “branding” myself correctly. But you just made something click for me — the website doesn’t have to be meticulous & glossy, it can be whimsical & real. Those are the websites I like to hang out on anyway. Whew! Thank you for that reframe!
“ Set up a private blog for your friends and family to share photos of your kids instead of putting them on Facebook for Zuckerberg to monetize.” - this has been on my heart lately. I want a place to capture thoughts and memories for a legacy. Not 100% sure which site will works best for me. Substack makes sense, but I like how other blogs have tags on the main page.🤔