When I write letters that focus more on my own creative practice or where things are for me personally (some of ya'll love when I reference shit about my divorce), I never receive so many personal responses back… and I also never have so many unfollows.
I talk to other creatives all the time about that delicate balance of sharing about yourself vs. about some other thing—whether it be your books, your offerings, or some content you create (educational, humor, whathaveyou). And I do think it is very hard to find that balance, especially if you are talking about yourself with no intent to pitch anything. I notice that a lot of content creators are only “vulnerable” when they are trying to make a sale. They teach this style of content marketing salesmanship out there that you find all over Substack and coaching TikTok and people forming “communities.”
I am a firm believer in connection over consumption and personalization over general. If someone wants general, they can Google search or ask ChatGPT for their stolen opinion. And I believe most people follow creators on social media and sign up for newsletters because they want to hear from that voice. They want to connect with that brain, and sometimes it turns out to not be a good fit and they unsubscribe, and that’s fine! But they originally are seeking a perspective. And you have to be willing to share it with them, which can also be scary. Some writers write fiction so they can take on different opinions. So they can make stuff up.
But as creatives, trying to connect with an audience, we can’t only share untruths, can we? (Though Robert Pattinson is doing a really good job at not letting on what his untruths are.) We can’t only talk about the end product, can we? So how do we pick what and how much to share about ourselves to keep the right people interested, and keep the casual “viewer” from dipping?
Well, if you are writing memoir, talking about anything in your life is often a good thing. Memoir writers are lucky there. But what if your audience are horror lovers? Romance readers? Military sci-fi explorers? Do they want to hear about your latest vacation? Maybe. Do they want to hear about your visit to a convention? Maybe. Do they want to hear about your dead dog? Maybe.
The only real way to navigate this is to watch your numbers and see if they correlate with the results you want. Because I am looking to connect with other creatives, I don’t care so much about the people that unfollow as I do about how many reach out after a letter. But I do care about silence. No engagement at all tells me no one deeply connected with what I was writing about either way. Your goal with the writing of your newsletter or producing vids on Instagram may only be to get the most clicks over to your Amazon page. Or your goal may be about how many people take the time to vote on your new characters name. You have to decide what your goal is and then watch how your numbers, however you gauge them, are reflected after the subject you talk about.
Maybe no one wants to read about your writing process because they aren’t writers themselves, but they love your take on the award season dresses because you write with a pop culture flair in your books. Maybe they want to hear about your vacation and see the sketches you made while on the train, but they don’t care what you ate there. Maybe they like hearing about your bucket list achievement seeing Backstreet Boys because they have a bucket list too or love that band, but they do not want to hear for the millionth time that your next novel is never coming out at this rate because that hits too hard. You have to try things and take into account what builds your audience, keeps your readers/viewers there, and what allows them to slip away.
I can’t tell you WHAT will work for you for sure, just that you have to take in the response.
Try to love the exploration of it all. If you can’t enjoy the journey, what’s the point?
Recommended Reading:
Not related to this at all, but because I have been doing this long enough to know that some of you are only here for my curated recommendations, I want to recommend you read this flash fiction piece by Elitsa Dermedzhiyska called The Keeper of the Last Bird Eggs.
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