The Shame of Self-Promotion

When artists have to become their own marketing department

“Without promotion, something terrible happens… nothing.” - P.T. Barnum

Here’s another recent reader-submitted question:

I’m in the mixing process of two new songs, and up next is truly the hardest part: actually promoting them. Not because there’s so much out there for such limited attention, but because I hate annoying my friends – and anyone, really – with my silly little creative outlet. What’s the threshold for posting about it before people tune it out or mute me entirely? Have you dealt with the existential dread that comes with promotion, of feeling like you’re annoying people with your art?

This immediately made me think of two friends of mine. Both of them have new films they’re promoting and both of them are using the same social media platforms to accomplish this. I frequently stop to read and engage with Friend #1’s posts. Friend #2 has been muted. Here’s the difference…

I learned about Friend #1’s film when he created a separate page for it and used his personal account to invite his friends to follow it. That initial post had some intriguing images, a compelling story about how much he’d sacrificed to get this made, and a little bit of info about what else he’d be sharing on this other page.

So I clicked “follow” and now I see his posts two or three times a week. He shares a lot of stories from the production, behind-the-scenes photos and videos, and any press the film’s been getting. At first, I just wanted to support my friend. But his posts have done a really good job of making me feel like I’m part of his film’s journey. I now find myself invested in its success. But most importantly, I made the decision to follow that project.

Then there’s Friend #2. He uses his personal account to post the same trailer and poster again and again and again. Often multiple times on the same day. Sometimes without any text. The repetition and low-effort nature of those posts made them feel like spam. So yeah, I had to temporarily mute him.

If you already have separate social media accounts for your music, good news — the people following those want to hear from you! They’ve already made that decision. But I would still take a page from Friend #1’s playbook and spend some time thinking about how to make that content more engaging. Here’s a quick example…

With my previous podcast, we used to make two posts for each episode: one to announce whatever was coming up next and another to remind everyone that it had been released. That was it. And it worked well enough for us. But when my co-hosts and I started Rogues Gallery, we wanted to try and have more fun with the social media side of things.

Since that show is about iconic film & TV villains, instead of just announcing our next subject, we post a different clue on each of our three accounts and let our followers see if they can piece it together.

After they’ve guessed what the next episode is going to be, we’ll make another post a day or two later for a game called Ultimate Match Up. That’s where the listeners tell us who’s most qualified to take down that week’s villain and why. The responses are so creative and hilarious that even followers who aren’t leaving an answer of their own might stop just to see what everyone else is saying.

We then read through our favorite submissions on the show, so some of our existing listeners get a shout-out and new listeners get an incentive to follow us on social media. That was all by design and it started with us asking ourselves how we could make that stuff more interesting. For them and for us.

I know it’s nothing revolutionary, but the benefit is two-fold: we get to keep our listeners up to date and they get to feel like they’re having a more personal and interactive experience with the show.

I used to treat social media posts more like press releases, but that’s the content that’s impersonal and easiest to ignore. You should absolutely have fun and get more creative with it. I’m telling you, treating it like an art project will immediately change the type of ideas you start to generate.

But what if you don’t have a separate page for your project and you are running everything through your personal Facebook or Instagram page? That’s okay too! But in that case, what I just said becomes even more important.

Here’s the thing though — when it comes to promoting your art through personal accounts, unless you’re egregiously posting half-hearted content like Friend #2, annoying your friends & family might not be your biggest obstacle…

It might be their complete indifference.

Which can feel personal (believe me, I know), but it isn’t. Most of them are just mindlessly scrolling and ignoring 90% of what’s in their feeds.

So how do you get them to stop and pay attention? How do you make them care?

I’m going to be really honest here — a lot of them probably won’t. Ever. But don’t be discouraged by that. Just accept it. Because I promise it’s not a reflection of your project’s quality.

You have to take into consideration that a lot of users just like staying right in that main feed of whatever platform they’re on. Anything that requires the additional step of clicking a link and opening a new page is a non-starter. When you’re the person sharing something, it’s easy to feel like, “What the hell? It’s just a click!” But (and I know this sounds ridiculous, but every creator needs to understand this) for the person receiving it, listening to your song or watching your video is a whole different level of commitment than perfunctorily liking a picture of their co-worker’s kid.

So something you might want to try is to start paying more attention to your own behavior on these platforms. What sort of post grabs your attention? What links are you compelled to click on? Is there a lesson there that you can apply to your own posts?

My wife is a painter and follows a lot of other artists on social media. So there’s a lot of artwork that shows up in her feeds. Even though these are people she’s chosen to follow, it winds up being a lot of noise to try and cut through. She realized that she really enjoys the time-lapse videos that show someone taking their painting from a blank canvas to a finished product. That’s more likely to keep her engaged than just showing the end result. And now that’s something she can try with her own art.

Along those same lines, take note of what never works. Have you ever bought an album from a band you’ve never heard of because they were advertised to you on Facebook? If the answer is no, don’t buy Facebook ads to promote your music. Instead, ask yourself how or where you discover new music.

For instance, I know for me that’s Spotify. And hey, look at that — did you know Spotify has an entire system for getting your music placed on curated playlists to help you get discovered?

But maybe your aspirations aren’t that ambitious. Maybe this is just a fun side project. Either way, I want you to know I completely understand how you feel. All of this is still hard for me too. Like a lot of artists, I’m not that interested in the business side of things and any sort of self-promotion makes me queasy and uncomfortable (I have to really force myself to include links when I use my own projects as case studies). A lot of that has to do with insecurity. I tell myself I’ll get more serious about promotion once I make something worth sharing. And since you mentioned “the existential dread that comes with promotion”, I suspect you might be able to relate to some of that.

But as I said earlier, you can have fun with this. Looking at promotion as its own creative challenge has made it so much more tolerable for me. One of my favorite examples of this is a short film called Softcore. It’s nine minutes long and it isn’t until the very end that you realize the whole thing was made to advertise a band’s new album. Seriously, everyone should watch this. This is how you make someone desperate to hear your music.

I’m not saying you have to come up with something as elaborate, it’s just to illustrate how creative you can get with this. One of my favorite pieces of writing advice has now also become my favorite piece of marketing advice: follow the fun.

And even after all of that, people may still ignore it or be annoyed by it. Some of what I’ve suggested here might help mitigate that, but it’s still ultimately out of your hands. But please, don’t be too frustrated by that. I think it’s actually pretty freeing.

Here’s the last thing I want to say about all of this. I know it can feel unpleasant to try and sell yourself, even if we’re just talking about sharing something we made with friends on social media. But here’s the thing — as you scroll through their posts, I want you to realize almost all of them are trying to sell you something….

The image of how happy they are, how great their life is, their perfect family, etc. The subtext of 99.9% of social media posts is the same: “Validate me!”

I’m not being shitty! And I’m definitely not excluding myself from this. I’m just pointing it out to hopefully help you relax a little bit. Your music has just as much right to exist there as anything else.

The fact that you’re even concerned about the frequency with which to post means you probably have to force yourself to do a little bit more, not less. And I know a lot of readers will relate to that. So this goes for everyone: take notice of what gets your attention, figure out how to apply that to your own self-promotion techniques, and then experiment and have fun with it.

Take care, friends. Talk to you soon.

---

If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover or a question you’d like to ask, send a message to chrisfightsdemons@substack.com. If it’s something I think other readers will be interested in, I’ll add it to the list and respond in a future post.