Mastodawn

Zumbador Aug 4, 2023

(this is not a sub toot aimed an anyone in particular)

Hey creative people. When you write a post about your work on social media, no need to put in a disclaimer like "shameless self promotion" or to lead with an apology.

1) You made a thing. That's amazing!
2) You're allowed to tell other people about the thing you made.
3) You're even allowed to say it's for sale.

You're not forcing your message on anyone - especially not here, where there's no algorithm - and you're not manipulating anyone, or lying to anyone, or spamming anyone.

You made a thing, it's available for sale. No need for apologies or guilt about letting us know.

#WritingLife #Drawing #Art #Music

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Unwoman

@Zumbador I started feeling this way really strongly after a person on Twitter a couple of years ago tried to shame me for some actually brilliant self-promotion I'd done (hand out matchbooks at parties promoting my album called "The Fires I Started") when I realized... rich people can hire others to do that promotion for them, and are they ever ashamed?

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Zumbador Aug 5, 2023

@unwoman yes exactly. It's considered impolite to promote yourself directly, you're supposed to draw a veil (of money) over that part and make it seem as if the promoting is just magically somehow happening.

But that "magic" needs visibility algorithms and advertising and data harvesting to happen.

So as a matter of fact, self promotion is the opposite of all that advertising / influencer crap.

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Unwoman Aug 5, 2023

@Zumbador 100%! And there was a time, 10-15 years ago, where recommendations from fans on social media could give actual boosts to sales and popularity, but the algorithms limit those so hard on corporate social media now that it feels helpless. So, back to self promotion, and tbh im scraping by decently with it (Being contrarian, I'm more ashamed to be considering hiring a PR firm than I've ever been of self promotion, because I remember those days of organic growth unsquashed by money)