Marketing Yourself

Apologies if the title sounds more interesting than what I'm about to say.  It sounds like you might come away with some new tip or an exciting idea for how to market, and I'm not sure that will be the case.  I'm more wanting to take a moment to share what I've observed so far, to possibly engage a conversation and, in fact, to see what I can learn from those with more experience.  There's no doubt I'll increase my own as I continue my personal journey.  There's also little doubt I'll look back later and wonder how I ever made it when I knew so little.  :-)

Let me start by saying the world is filled with creators.  This is a good thing, and I think it's also only natural, as this has always been the case -- we're all artists and creators -- but it's only just now, at this moment in history, when it has become impossibly easy for every artist -- which is all of us -- to find an audience.  In fact, it's become so easy we can now do it out of pure boredom.  We almost can't NOT do it.  We've all got access.  Extreme access.  We can make a little doodle and, potentially, share it with a billion people if they'll look.  And if we've all got access, and we're all creators, who's the audience?

It's us, of course.  We're sharing and consuming around the clock, and while there's still the big sensations, the Taylor Swifts of the world, the David G McDaniels (just checking if you're paying attention), there's also tons and tons of smaller groups, niche bands, poets, filmmakers, furniture designers and origami masters you'll never hear about ... yet they have a following and fans, and how do you find them and how do you, as an artist, get found among the sea of noise?

I wish I knew.

Marketing ourselves is a game we're all playing.  How do others find you?  How do you make it stick, and grow?  There's no screening process like there was decades ago and everyone's clamoring.  You can immediately get to anything and everything and it's all there and you've mostly got to sift through it to find what you want, and while you're doing that you're also putting your own stuff out there into the same process ...

For me it's been an eye opener.  I suppose I knew, intuitively, how much action I'd be diving into, but part of me thought -- probably like everyone else thinks -- Oh, once I start ... of course people will notice.  Fans will come and it will all unfold beautifully into everything I imagine.

I wonder if that's actually happened for anyone just getting started.

Maybe it has.  Probably it must have.  Just by the law of averages a few of us must hit it big right out of the gates.  But for the rest, even the ones that go on to become hugely successful, there's work to be done.  Lots of work.  And my struggle has not been with the effort -- I'm more than willing to put in the time, and I do -- but where to actually focus that energy.  I keep getting these Ah ha! moments where I think I've figured out the exact right thing ... only to discover it's a waste of time.  Or has very low returns.

And so my quest continues.  Part of me thinks it's a numbers game, and that may be true.  Continue to network, I tell myself, continue to learn, continue to apply, continue to post (the sum total of the world's servers must be massive, truly, to hold all our crap), continue to persist (is that redundant?) and don't give up.

I'll close with that.  For all you fellow artists out there, and by that I mean everyone, I believe this:  We never fail.  We only give up.  We might quit, but I don't think we ever fail.  This is just my opinion, but it kind of makes sense, right?  How can you fail if you never give up?

#TeamStarAngel