The Importance of a website
And the death of social media as we knew it
Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.
This week, instead of the usual updates, I wanted to give some quick thoughts on the importance of having a website for an artist or creator of any kind. We’re witnessing social media entering a new era and relying solely on its platforms to ensure your visibility and online presence is, in my opinion, a big mistake.
There are obvious differences between social media a decade ago vs today and websites, something that almost seemed to be unnecessary, are truly the only reliable place to expose your work.
Changes in Social Media
First of all, this is all coming from a very personal point of view. I’m not trying to come up with a generic take that fits all, only to talk about my specific needs as a solo artist from a small country, which depends mostly on internet to make and maintain connections and work. Some of you will have a lot of similar experiences. Others less so, but I believe anyone will be able to extrapolate something from this.
When social media came around, particularly Twitter, it was an incredible thing for me. All of sudden, an architect student who thought that someday, maybe, just maybe, he’d do some comics, suddenly had a direct path to connect with writers, artists, editors.
It was an era of simple, organic networking. You could easily reach out and create your own circles of engagement. Posts would appear chronological and it was easy to follow conversations, leave them and find them again later on. The logic behind it all was parallel to the real world.
A very different reality
But now this is an unrecognizable reality. Algorithms dictate what you see, things are shuffled all the time, you see promoted posts or people you don’t follow constantly and the immediacy it all had crumbled with the pressure to make all social media as a force feeding machine of publicity, anger and rage. Even if you try to avoid any of these, you will not succeed because it is programmed to throw it at you at every opportunity.
This means that on Twitter or Instagram (the ones I use more), the chances of your posts and your account finding an audience organically have been completely shot. Everything I post on Twitter does 10% or less of the numbers it used too. Instagram has pivoted to video, but it’s all about the algorithm - you can only have something doing big numbers if you’re being trendy with the music, the editing, the subject, etc.
But even before, social media was not very good at making people money. I remember noticing a constant after a while: people with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers complaining that nobody was clicking on links with free things, let alone with paid stuff. So numbers never meant much in terms of money directly speaking.
And whatever little they brought usually doesn’t last long.
The benefits of an online presence
There were and are many benefits of a regular, updated and professional looking online presence though. It lead and still leads to jobs, as simple as that. Before the current state of social media, editors would search and hire from Twitter, Instagram and even Tumblr and Deviant Art before that.
Now it’s much harder for them to do that because of how unreliable all the apps are when it comes to tracking people. You can follow someone and then never see their posts in your feed. And this is bad because people may follow your account because they liked your work and want to someday, maybe, offer you a gig. But the randomness of feeds means you might never be seen again by those with interest in your work. And if you ain’t seen, you’ll most likely be forgotten.
This all to say that I found it to be very beneficial to my work to have accounts on Twitter and Instagram, but I cannot rely on them anymore as somewhere where I can be easily found. I still maintain them and I love talking to readers there and having people discovering my work. But I’m on them much less time because it simply doesn’t work very well in the terms I enjoyed it.
So, if you’re a creator in a similar position to me, I’d HIGHLY ADVISE TO GET A WEBSITE.
MAKE A WEBSITE
Why? Because it’s one of the few reliable places that people can find you and get in touch with you. Aside from all the problems with social media nowadays, it is important to remember one thing: a lot of people do not use it. And some people that use it, do not get it touch about work through it. Not even through DMs.
But they do it through email. And if you have a website with a clear contact button they can easily get in touch. If you google my name, one of the first things (if not the first) that appears is my website. For people interested to get in touch is as easy as it gets: you type my name, click on the first link, click the contact button and you’re in. None of that “hey, I’m editorX/producerY, can you follow me? I’d like to DM you about something” is needed.
And I cannot tell you how many gigs I’ve gotten through my website. As an example, I never post about opening a commission list because I regularly get emails through the website with enquires about them, so I don’t need to publicize it.
Do you remember when I wrote about selling complete issues of original art? The client got in touch with me through the website. And I just got another email about selling more issues from a different person this week.
I did conceptual work for video games and movies because of my website. More recently a cover because of it. And a bunch of you got in touch through it last week about the Righteous Thirst Deluxe editions with commissions.
And these are just some examples.
How hard and expensive is it, though?
Not much. For less than 200 usd per year you can have one like mine:
And it’s from Squarespace, which means it’s very, very easy to do. I did mine in an afternoon. Is it the most amazing website ever? No, but it’s functional and gives me a place I can be easily found and reached.
Bottom line: get one if you can afford it. Whatever your business is. Any minor gig pays for it and it requires no maintenance. I’ve seen some websites which are just the name of the person/business, a phone number and an email. If you’re a creator of some kind, I’d encourage you to put a bit more effort to it, but you get the point.
This is great, but I don’t see no pretty pictures here
Well, thanks for the nice words and worry not: you’ll get plenty of them next week with a deep dive into grey tones. For this week I just wanted to write some lines about the subject as it is of huge importance to me and maybe it will help some of you. Again, this is all from a very specific point of view but you might get something useful from the conversation.
I’ll see you next week!
André