I have a great podcast recommendation for you this week that also tied into three big things I've had on my "to talk about" list: marketing goals, the line between positivity and negativity and gatekeeping creativity. Hope you all enjoy!
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
I have a great podcast recommendation for you this week that also tied into three big things I've had on my "to talk about" list: marketing goals, the line between positivity and negativity and gatekeeping creativity. Hope you all enjoy!
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Speaker 1:
Hello, welcome to a brand new subscriber only episode of the podcast. This is the March episode and, as always, I just want to say thank you to all of you for continuing to financially support the podcast. It really truly does mean a great deal to me. So thank you, thank you to all of you. This month's episode is a bit of a mixed bag. I don't have one particular thing that I'm going to be talking about, but I had a lot of thoughts this month, and so I thought I would put them all into one episode and hopefully artfully weave them together, so it seems like they were destined to all be in the same episode. We'll see how that goes. The first thing I wanted to do was actually give you all a podcast recommendation. So this is one of my favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1:
It is the Under the Influence podcast with Terry O'Reilly, and it's a marketing and advertising podcast. Terry is a bit of a legend in the Canadian marketing and advertising sphere. He's been doing what he does for over 40 years, and the podcast is a fairly recent addition to his projects, although it's been around for quite a while as well. I first met Terry met. I didn't meet him. I first heard Terry speak at a conference that I was also speaking at. Actually, funnily enough, I was speaking at that conference with my semi-regular co-host, heather Travis, in Ottawa. We had been asked to speak on, I think, influencer marketing. I can't remember, but Terry was the keynote and Heather had seen him speak before, but he was new to me and I just found him very entertaining and so I knew I had to check his podcast out when he mentioned that he had one, and it didn't disappoint. So the show is a mix of marketing, advertising, pop culture and history, and it's extremely well done. It's very well written, produced and entertaining. It's just an entertaining podcast, so I really enjoy listening to it.
Speaker 1:
And the particular episode that I wanted to share with you all is one that he did recently I think the publication date was March 11th and in this interview he interviews Max Kerman, and Max is the lead singer for the Canadian rock band Arkels, and if you listen to the podcast, you probably know that I love Arkels. They're one of my favorite bands. I've been a fan for many, many years and Max was on the show for this particular episode to talk about how the band markets themselves, particularly with social media. So this is a little bit of a change for Terry. He very rarely interviews somebody on his show and I thought it was interesting that he chose Max to be one of those interviews. It's a great interview to listen to. Both of them have very podcast friendly voices, they're both very chatty and so I'm very well spoken, and so it was just a really pleasant episode to listen to. But there was so many tidbits in there for creatives when it comes to marketing and building a community, and I think it is well worth an episode.
Speaker 1:
The influence episodes are not long they're about 30 minutes, so it's not going to take up a ton of your time. But, as I said, the Arkels are one of my favorite bands and I've been following them for a long time, and I think I started following them on social media like maybe three, four years ago, probably around the time the pandemic hit, and one of the things that struck me almost immediately was how savvy they were at marketing, and I hate I almost hate to use the term savvy, because it sounds kind of cold and calculating, and that is something. Well, I do think that probably a lot of what they do is calculated. It doesn't come across as being cold, it comes across completely opposite. It comes across with a lot of warmth, and I've said many times on the show that when it comes to grassroots marketing and building a fan base and building community, I always look to the music industry, because I feel like they are the ones that always get hit first in a meaningful way by technological change, and this has been happening to them for probably close to 30 years now.
Speaker 1:
Back in the days when Napster came on the scene, it was so easy for people to bootleg music and create CDs and things from it, and so musicians and bands. They don't get the same support from their record labels that they used to. There's a lot more opportunities for independence now, but it's still a slog for them to to make money, and I feel like what hits them first tends to trickle down to us all later. So I really do pay a lot of attention to what smart bands and smart musicians do, and I feel like RKLS is one of those bands, and so it's a great episode. I highly recommend you give it a listen, because I think there's lots of takeaways in there that we can all use. You don't need to be a musician to get stuff out of it.
Speaker 1:
I felt like I should have been taking notes through the whole episode and I probably will go back and listen to it again and take notes, but there's two things in there that Max said that I really wanted to focus on and mention to all of you, and the first one was, as he was talking, he mentioned quite casually that the goal of the band is always to sell tickets. That's their end. Goal of their marketing is to get people out to their shows, and in order to do that, they need to sell tickets. And I thought it was really interesting that he said this and that he said it so casually, because I think this is where so many of us struggle.
Speaker 1:
If somebody were to ask us what our end goal is when we show up on social media, we'd have to think about it. We might just say, oh, to sell more stuff, and that's a completely valid end goal. But how often do we lose our footing and get suckered in by the vanity metrics and I'm talking about the follower counts? How often do we say my goal on social media is to grow my followers, my goal on social media is to get my content seen more, but how is that a goal that forwards your business? Heather and I did an episode a couple months ago on what happens when you go viral, and the results of that episode from two very different case studies, if you will was that it really didn't move the needle for either business, and so I think we really need to step back and think about what am I actually doing on here? I'm spending an awful lot of time on these platforms Instagram, tiktok, possibly Facebook and X, depending on what you do and what am I getting out of it? Like, what is it I really want to do here?
Speaker 1:
And Max was just able to sort of say off the tip of his tongue we're here to sell tickets, we're here to get people out to our concerts, and if you watch their channel, at no point do you feel like it's a hard sell to buy a ticket to a show. In fact, if they're not touring, they're rarely even talking about selling tickets. When they are promoting a tour or a series of concerts, yes, of course they talk about it, but what they do do all the time, every single day, is they try to build an emotional connection with the people who are already following them, because they recognize that the people who have an emotional connection to the band are the ones who are going to buy the tickets. I don't think musicians out there please correct me if I'm wrong I don't think it's necessarily that hard to get somebody to listen to your music on Spotify or to even pay to download a track, maybe on Apple Music or whatever the case may be I don't think that's particularly hard.
Speaker 1:
But getting people to actually shell out money for a ticket and let's be honest, concert tickets are not cheap To take the time to get themselves to the venue, which for some people could be driving for hours. For some people it might just be hopping on a bus and going to the venue that's 10 minutes away. But for a lot of us, if we live in the Burbs, we got a plan a night out. We're thinking about the cost of parking, finding parking and, let's be honest, the cost of parking on an event night in most major cities in Canada is exorbitant. But there are also people who get on airplanes to go see them play.
Speaker 1:
In order for people to do that, to shell out that kind of money, there has to be an emotional connection to the band. There has to be a reason that you really want to go see them in concert, and so what I do think their social media is all about is really forging that connection, giving people every single day another reason to fall in love with this band, to become emotionally connected, so that when tickets do go on sale, they are like here's my money, take it. I can't wait to see you guys. I'm so excited. This is my first concert, or this is the first concert I'm bringing my kids to, or I've seen you guys six times, but I've never seen you here and I can't wait. That is what they are trying to do, and I think that's what we kind of forget on social media, and I fall into this trap at least once every three or four months, of like I just need to get more followers. No, I don't. What I need to do is continue to forge those really strong emotional bonds between myself and the work I create and the people who already follow me.
Speaker 1:
And we've talked about this on other shows. We've talked about how, when it's really irritating when your phone company is willing to give everybody in their dog a deal to move over to their mobility service and yet you, the loyal customer for the last 10, 15 years, gets nothing. I feel this deeply with Adobe and their products. They run deals every Black Friday, and here I am. I've been using their product for close to 20 years now and I still. It's just like I would just love a break. Just give me a deal for a year, it would be so nice.
Speaker 1:
So, anyway, all that to say is that I think this episode was a really good reminder to me to just take a step back and ask myself Am I really using social media in a way that's productive for my business? Like, do I really know what the goal is? Why am I showing up every day? What? What's the point of it? Why am I doing it? And am I doing it in a way that is actually beneficial for me and the people who follow me? Because if you're spending hours creating reels and videos and creating your feed and all of that and it's not resulting in Moving your business forward in a productive way, then why are you doing it? Like your time would be so much better spent doing something else. So, yeah, take a moment to think about what your goal is on social media and then, as as I listened to the rest of the episode, you know it was very obvious that what our cows do, and I know this because I follow them is really working hard to forge those connections, and it isn't necessarily fancy things that they're doing, sometimes it's just very simple stuff, but it really resonates with their people, so I think that's really important.
Speaker 1:
The other thing that max mentioned and this was in the context of I think Terry was talking to him about the Juno Awards so Arkels have won more Junos than other Canadian musical act in the history of the Junos and he was asking something along the lines of I should have gone back and re-listen to this before, but it was something along the lines of did he feel comfortable Sharing the wins of the band on social media? Or something along those lines. And max is something that really made me think. He said that he feels that good news brings good news. So when you share things that have happened to you that have been good, they tend to bring new good things, because people hear that and they want to be involved in the thing that brought you good news and so they'll come to you with other things. They want to be involved with you, they. And I thought that's really interesting because I think I think On social media we have like this push pull thing.
Speaker 1:
I think that we don't want to sound like we're bragging every day or being boastful, and I think also, we've all followed those creators who make it sound like what we do every day is Living in a perfect storybook fairyland and it's all you know rainbows and unicorns when we all, as small business owners no, that's not the truth. We know there's really hard days, but I do think it's okay to share those good days. When you're coming at it from a place of excited enthusiasm and I think that's something Arkels and a lot of other Creators who do this well do they come at it from a place of like like every time they get a Juneau nomination, it's exciting for them. It's not like another one We've won so many of these like big deal. It's there's there's genuine excitement and enthusiasm for it, and I think when we come at it from that direction, people want to be involved in that excitement, enthusiasm. They want to celebrate with us. They want to be involved in our, in our joy with it. And I think the other thing that Arkels do is that they never make it just about them. If you watch their channels channels regularly you'll see that they are constantly Promoting other creatives that they work with. So they talk about their music video directors. Frequently they talk about their band manager. They talk about other creative individuals that they would love to collaborate with or that they have collaborated with. They celebrate the successes of people that they know and that they're friends with and I think Sometimes we forget to do that on social media is that there's a whole community and village around us that we're part of and it's important To boost each other up.
Speaker 1:
It's not just about liking our friends or other creative friends and businesses, liking their posts and commenting on them. It's sharing them. Like we know how important it is when people talk about us, so we need to remember to talk about the people who really bring joy and warmth Into our world, whose work we love, whose work inspires us like. Share that. Think about that. If you shared one person every week who you connect with on some kind of level, whether it's their work, whether you've collaborated with them, whether you've bought something from them and you just share it and you tell your audience why you share it, that's one less post per week you don't have to think about and at the same time, you are Making somebody's day so and in a way. That's a good news thing, so I think it's okay.
Speaker 1:
I think he made a really valid point there. It is okay to celebrate those wins, it is okay to be proud of them, it is okay to talk about them, because I think the flip side is we often fall into the trap of the oh whoa is me, and I have been seeing this so much on on Instagram and threads lately, and I think this is something. This is such an easy trap to fall into, because I think that social media platforms reward this kind of behavior and so we see that it does well and so we continue to do it, whether that's consciously or subconsciously, and I've noticed this a lot. I have seen, I find this particularly on threads, and these are always the threads that are recommended to me by Instagram. This is why you have to be careful.
Speaker 1:
Instagram picks these things up. This is the kind of content that feeds out there, and it's not good content. But the threads that I get fed are the ones where it's artists or creatives either gatekeeping or shaming other artists for something they do. I've seen this so much lately People freaking out or getting upset or saying how much they hate when a painter holds up a canvas with the painted side facing them to do the big reveal and then they turn the canvas around and how. That is such a huge pet peeve of so many artists out there, and I had never in a million years considered this something that might be a pet peeve. I actually kind of enjoy those posts and even if I didn't, I certainly wouldn't be ranting about other artists doing this. It just seems kind of sad and I think we need to be careful of how that can happen.
Speaker 1:
I noticed this with an artist I follow on TikTok, who had an issue with a printer that they were using and they called out the printer company and the post went. The video went viral, and so all the videos now that I see of them in my feed are related to this unfortunate incident with this printer, and I very rarely see that person's art or their new projects or any of that anymore, because what is paying off for them are these videos complaining about the printer company, and so a couple of weeks ago I stopped following them. I just I told TikTok I was no longer interested, because I just that's, that's not why I'm there, and I think we have to remember that. We have to remember that the people who see our content the most are the people already following us and the people who want that emotional connection with us and they don't necessarily want to hear us being negative all the time or calling other people out or gatekeeping or calling out their customers. Please be careful when you do this. You never know who's watching and you never want to feel like that. A client or a customer is being called out, and even if you do it from a place of anonymity I have a very hard time saying that word anonymity and by that I mean you are keeping the customer or the client anonymous. Sometimes that's even worse, because anyone who's ever bought from you or worked with you is going to be wondering if it's them that you're talking about, and that's going to make them feel very uncomfortable. So I think we have to be very careful with that.
Speaker 1:
Good news brings good news, but bad news tends to do exactly the opposite Bring more bad news, bring people down. It can very easily turn into a pity fest that continues on and it can be very hard to switch up from that. It can be very hard to go back to being positive when you're building a brand around being negative, because that's essentially what you're doing. So it's not to say that you shouldn't share the bad moments. I do think it's important for the people who follow us and who are emotionally connected to what we do to understand that, yeah, there are bad days. You know, there's this fine line between I've heard it being called toxic positivity, but there's also toxic negativity, and we want to just sort of go down the middle of those two and I guess, be real. Be real about what happens, but don't be afraid to show when you're excited about something or when something's gone bad. It's okay to also show that you're disappointed, but come at it from a genuine place and don't make that the focus of what you do.
Speaker 1:
When you want to focus on positive things, there's so much that you can focus on. On social media. You can focus on forging those emotional connections and creating and making sure that they become a little bit stronger every single day. You can focus on spreading the wealth. You know what? Even if you only have a couple hundred followers, you can still spread the wealth. You can still talk about other artists or other people that have inspired you, or something great that you bought, or something that makes you happy. The more people you have following you, the more joy you can spread.
Speaker 1:
So I think what I got out of this episode, and what I've hopefully been able to weave into this episode, is that we have to think really carefully when we use social media and we really need to know what our end goal is, and we need to make sure that what we're doing on social media is all about getting to that end goal, and your end goal should not be to have more followers, like that's. It's okay having that as a goal, but what is the goal when those people are following you? Because the people who are going to buy from you, the people who are going to come to your shows, read your books, pick up the newspaper that you're featured in or the magazine or read an article online about you or buy tickets to your show the people who are going to do that are the people who are emotionally connected to you. They are going to be your fans. So, while it haven't, growing your follower base might be your goal, one of your goals, the end goal should be what do I do with those followers when they're there? Because if your goal is just to bring these people in and not nurture those emotional connections. That follower base doesn't mean anything. If you get the first, the next ten followers and then you just ignore them and go after the next ten followers and you keep doing that. Eventually you just have a lot of people following you who really aren't that interested in what you're doing and they'll unfollow you and then you wind up having unfollows in droves.
Speaker 1:
So that's what I wanted to say about all of that. It's a great episode. They talk about a lot more stuff and, like I said, lots of great tidbits in this show, but I just thought it was interesting because the the negativity that I'm seeing and the gatekeeping that I'm seeing in the creative community in the last couple of months was something that I did want to talk about, and the forging and building community on social media was also something that I wanted to talk about this month and I felt like max called those two things out really loud and clear in this episode, amongst all the other juicy little nuggets that the two of them talked about. So great episode to listen to. It's under the influence with terry O'Reilly and max kerman. I think the publication date was March 11th, so pretty recent. Highly recommend giving it a listen. I highly recommend add adding under the influence to your regular podcast rotation, because it's just. It's just a really entertaining podcast, particularly if you do like marketing and pop culture and history, and I've learned a lot of really cool trivia bits from that show. But it's a fun show to listen to.
Speaker 1:
So that is it for this month. I hope that you all found this interesting at least, and, as always, if you have something that you'd like me to tackle in these subscriber only episodes, please message me. I would love to hear from you. Like I said, the hardest part of doing these episodes for me is not actually sitting down and recording them. It is coming up with things to talk about that I think might be of interest to you. So If you have a suggestion, please send me an email or DM me on social or, if you are on patreon, you can also, I believe, leave a comment on any of the Posts that I have already put up there. So that is it for this month, and I'll be back in April with another Premium subscriber episode. And, as always, thank you so much for being here. Your support Truly matters and is very important to me, so have a great rest of the month.