Digital Marketing for Creatives

So I’m sitting here in the office, staring at a blank page. Again.

It’s not even a page, it’s a screen. A glowing rectangle that’s judging me. The cursor is blinking like it’s got a nervous tic. And I’m supposed to be a “creative.” A writer. Someone with ideas. Right now my biggest idea is to check if the coffee’s done.

This is the thing they don’t show you in the movies about artists. The sheer, deafening silence of your own brain when you need it to make a sound. You’re just sitting there, waiting for the muse to show up, and the muse is probably stuck in traffic or something. Or she saw the state of your desk and left.

So you start digging around in your own head. “What should I paint next?” “What should I write about?” And all you hear is an echo of your own desperation. It’s like trying to have a conversation with a guy who only knows how to repeat your questions back to you, but louder and more panicked.

Then I found this thing. AnswerThePublic.

Sounds like some kind of dystopian surveillance program, right? “Answer the public, citizen!” But no, it’s a website. And what it does… it’s kind of horrifying, but in a useful way.

You type in a word. Something you care about. “Oil painting.” “Short story.” “Ceramics.” “Character development.” You hit enter.

And then it vomits. It vomits a visual wheel of every question real, live, confused humans are typing into Google about that thing. It’s like putting a stethoscope to the internet’s chest and hearing its anxious, curious heartbeat.

“Can oil painting be therapeutic?”
“Is oil painting expensive?”
“Why is oil painting so hard?”
“How to oil paint for beginners who are scared?”
“Oil painting vs. acrylic for depressed people.”

Okay, I made that last one up. But not by much.

This is the benefit. The first, massive benefit. It shuts up the echo. You are no longer talking to yourself. You are suddenly, violently, connected to the global muttering of people who are interested in your thing but don’t know where to start. They’re asking the questions you’ve forgotten are questions because you’ve been in the cave so long.

As a writer, you stop asking, “What should I write?” and you see: “how to write a morally grey villain,” “can a protagonist be too unlikeable,” “why do I hate my own writing.” There’s a blog post in every one of those. There’s a connection. Someone out there is hunched over their laptop, typing that exact phrase, hoping the algorithm gods send them a lifeline. You can be that lifeline.

For an artist, it’s even more direct. “How to find your art style when nothing feels right.” “What to paint when you feel empty.” “Cheap alternatives to gouache.” You’re not just getting topic ideas; you’re getting a direct line to the struggles of your people. You can make art about that. You can make a tutorial about that. You can make a piece called that.

The second benefit is the language. We get precious in our caves. We start talking in “artist statements” or “literary prose.” The real world doesn’t search for “ontological explorations of medium in contemporary mixed media.” They search for “why does my watercolor look muddy?” Or “how to describe a smell in a story.”

AnswerThePublic hands you the dictionary of how people actually talk about your craft. It’s raw, it’s unedited, it’s full of misspellings and genuine pain and curiosity. Using that language in your title, your description, your blog post—that’s how you get found. That’s how you stop shouting into the void and start having a conversation in the alley behind the bar where everyone actually is.

The third benefit, and maybe the most important, is it kills the preciousness. You’re not waiting for a divine, unique idea that has never been had before. That’s a trap. That’s the trap that keeps you staring at the blinking cursor. This tool shows you that the ideas are already out there, swirling in the anxiety of the collective consciousness. Your job isn’t to pull a rabbit from the empty hat of your soul. Your job is to pick one of the thousand rabbits already running around, grab it by the ears, and show people how you see it.

It turns creative work from a sacred, solitary ritual into a service. And that’s a good thing. A humbling thing. You’re serving the public by answering their public, whispered questions.

So now, when I’m stuck, I don’t just sit here and argue with myself. I go to this weird, slightly creepy website. I type in a word. And I listen to the noise. The beautiful, confused, human noise. And somewhere in that cacophony, I find a single, clear sentence that someone needs to hear. And I realize, oh. That’s what I’m supposed to do today.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go write something about “how to overcome writer’s block when you feel like a fraud.” I know a guy who’s searching for that.

He’s me. I’m the guy.

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