Category: Promotion
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What can you point to?
In Studs Terkel’s Working, a steel mill worker named Mike Lefevre says, “Picasso can point to a painting. What can I point to? A writer can point to a book. Everybody should have something to point to.” Sometimes, the work isn’t as concrete as a building. If your contribution was suggesting a change in direction…
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“Please make some noise!”
You’ll often hear a recording artist, or their hype person, say this at a show. When people make noise, it’s easier for the artist to believe that everyone there is interested in what they’re doing, and to bring 100% to the performance. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy; the audience, in turn, is energized by the…
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You can just do stuff, you know
Yesterday, Pharrell Williams released an album. He also turned 51. It’s on a WordPress website. It’s not available through streaming platforms. If you want, you can download all of the songs in .mp3 format with one click. It’s delightfully straightforward. He also didn’t promote it, not even on his own social media channels. Not that…
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“I saw your latest project…”
“Can you do that for us, too?” If you’re struggling with sales, figure out which part of the process you’re stuck at.
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Monthly hackathons, but for writing
A couple of years ago, I asked a group of experienced developers if engineering blogs had ever made them want to join a company. I received an interesting response from someone who worked at Incident.io, “We see so much ROI that we run monthly content days for the entire company, getting everyone to draft posts…
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The case of the stolen smell
I recently saw James Blake tweet, “The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.” Then, a couple of days later, I read this story: In the days of old Yedo, as Tokyo was once called, storytellers told wonderful tales. Many of the stories were about the wit and wisdom of Ooka Tadasuke. Ooka…
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Essentials week: Bill Watterson, Picasso, and HN on self promotion
My next post from essentials week, a short collection of the best posts at this blog. Here’s an excerpt: Moreover, when self-promotion is done right, it never looks like self-promotion. The most obvious examples of self-promotion we see are also the often the ugliest ones; a link pasted here, spam there, and Twitter threads of…
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Write it down for someone else
Whenever you can, however you can, stored and published in some digital and searchable format for posterity.
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Three things about competition
It’s awards season. In between discussing who should’ve gotten what, it’s also a good time to consider the relationship between competitions and creative work. In many ways, it’s always awards season—30 under 30, weekly funding announcements, grants and fellowships, Olympics, etc: Competitions pay the bills Competitions take place because we value stories, drama, and craft.…
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Three things about Dan Runcie building Trapital
Dan Runcie has built something really special with Trapital. Chenell Basilio breaks down how he does it. Some notable points: Write what you want to live: “Dan didn’t start Trapital because he was the most experienced, knowledgeable, Hip-Hop insider. He became an most experienced, knowledgeable, Hip-Hop insider because he started Trapital.” (via Jay Clouse.) I’ve…