Digital Marketing for Creatives

The Ghost in Your Studio: Why Ignoring Your “Competitors” is Killing Your Art (And How to Actually Look at Them Without Vomiting)

Alright. Alright, settle in. So, I’m in the office, right? Prepping for a thing, and my brain’s doing that thing it does, the hamster wheel of dread. Not the “why am I here” dread, that’s a Tuesday. This was the “what is everyone else doing?” dread. The scroll-of-doom through social media. Seeing that painter get a gallery show, that author land a Guardian blurb, that podcaster with the smoother-than-yours voice and a sponsor for artisanal pencil sharpeners. And you just feel this… shrink. This deflation. Like your own work, the thing you bled into, is suddenly invisible, irrelevant, a sad little whisper in a hurricane of other people’s success.

And you know what your brain tells you? “Don’t look. It’s toxic. Comparison is the thief of joy. Just keep your head down in your own lane, you beautiful, pure-hearted creator.” Right? That’s the mantra. Be the monk in the cell of your own genius.

But here’s the thing I realised, hunched over the keyboard, sweating through a vintage shirt: That’s bullshit. That’s fear talking. That’s the part of you that’s afraid to see the marketplace of ideas you’re actually in. Because you are in one. You’re not a monk. You’re a weirdo with a product, your vision, and it exists in a world with other weirdos and their products.

So you gotta do the thing. The thing that feels gross, corporate, and deeply un-artistic. You gotta look at your so-called “competitors.” But we’re not gonna call them that. “Competitors” sounds like guys in suits drinking protein shakes. We’re gonna call them… The Ghosts in Your Studio. The other voices your potential audience is listening to. Your context. Your scene. You need to know who they are, or you’re just screaming into the void, hoping the void has good taste.

This isn’t about stealing souls. It’s not about becoming a derivative copycat. It’s about awareness. It’s about seeing the conversation that’s already happening so you can decide where to step in and say something new, or true, or differently. It’s the difference between being a stand-up who only knows their own jokes and one who knows the room, knows what Hacky McHackerton did last week, and can therefore twist the premise into something devastatingly original.

Step 1: The Existental Freak-Out (A Necessary First Step)

Before you open a single browser tab, you have to sit with the resistance. The artist’s brain will rebel. “I am a unique snowflake! My vision is my vision! The market is a corrupting force!” Yeah, I get it. I’ve painted that protest sign in my mind a thousand times.

But let’s reframe. Did The Beatles ignore the Stones? Did David Bowie ignore Iggy Pop? Did Joan Didion ignore Tom Wolfe? No. They absorbed their context. They knew the landscape. They understood what chords were being played so they could find the dissonance that was uniquely theirs.

You’re not a corporation selling soap. You’re an artist trying to communicate. If you don’t know what language people are already speaking, how can you hope to tell them a new story in a way they’ll understand? This isn’t selling out. This is showing up. It’s basic respect for the craft of connecting.

So take a breath. Make a coffee. Complain to your cat or dog. Do the freak-out. Then, let’s begin.

Step 2: Define Your Actual Alley (Who Are You, Really?)

You can’t see who’s around you if you don’t know what street you’re on. “I’m a painter” is too broad. That’s like saying “I talk.” What do you paint? For whom? In what style? With what materials?

Get a notebook, the analog kind, it feels less like spycraft. Answer these questions like you’re being interrogated by a very tired, slightly empathetic detective (that’s me).

• Core Thing: What is the primary medium? (e.g., oil painter, YA fantasy novelist, ceramicist making functional ware, narrative podcaster).
• Genre/Style: What’s the vibe? (e.g., magical realism, political satire, psychedelic folk art, cozy mysteries).
• Thematic Obsessions: What do you chew on in your work? (e.g., grief and memory, suburban absurdity, climate anxiety, queer joy).
• Target Audience Heartbeat: Who is it for? Not demographics, but psychographics. Who feels alone in the thing your art speaks to? (e.g., forlorn romantics, recovering evangelicals, anxious parents who love horror, people who miss the weird internet of the 2000s).

This is your alley. It might be a well-lit main street or a niche, cobwebbed back lane. That’s fine. Own your alley.

Step 3: The Recon Mission (Finding Your Ghosts)

Now, go find the other people in your alley. But don’t just look for the biggest names. Look at everyone, the ones just ahead of you, the ones right beside you, the ones you admire who are miles down the road.

Where to Look:

• Social Media: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. But search deep. Don’t just follow hashtags (#contemporarypainting), follow the rabbit holes. Who are they following? Who’s in their community? Look at the comments. Who’s engaging?
• Physical/Digital Spaces: What galleries show work like yours? What indie bookstores champion your genre? What podcasts or blogs are the hubs for your scene? Who’s getting reviewed in Hyperallergic, or Electric Lit, or It’s Nice That?
• Awards & Residencies: Who’s winning the grants, the fellowships, the residencies you drool over? They’re your ghosts.
• Algorithmic Suggestion: Let Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, or your favorite indie marketplace recommend “if you like this, you’ll love…” They’re often brutally accurate.

Make a list. 10-15 names. These are your Ghosts.

Step 4: The Autopsy (How to Look Without Your Soul Dying)

Here’s the delicate part. You’re not just looking to feel bad. You’re conducting a respectful, curious autopsy. You’re asking: How does this thing live? How does it connect? For each Ghost, open a doc or a page in your notebook and ask:

The Art Itself (The “What”):

• Formal Qualities: For artists: palette, composition, scale, texture. For writers: voice, pacing, point-of-view, sentence style. For creatives: aesthetic, medium, production quality.
• The Content: What are their recurring subjects? Their motifs? What story do they tell over and over?
• The “Hook”: What’s the one-sentence thing you’d tell a friend about them? (“She paints giant, sad interiors of empty museums.” “He writes noir mysteries set in a sentient, crumbling city.”)

The Business of the Art (The “How”):

• Presentation: How do they present their work online? Is their website clean or chaotic? How do they photograph their paintings or books?
• Pricing/Offers: What do they charge? Not just for the final piece, but for prints, commissions, e-books, Patreon tiers, workshops? What’s their “entry point” for a fan?
• Platform & Voice: What’s their social media personality? Are they poetic and cryptic? Are they vulnerable and process-heavy? Are they funny and abrasive? How do they talk about their work?
• Audience Engagement: How do they build a community? Newsletter? Discord? Livestreams? How do they make their fans feel seen?
• Distribution & Partnerships: Where do they sell? Etsy, their own site, specific galleries, independent bookshops? Who have they collaborated with?

The Gap Analysis (The “Aha”):
This is the gold. As you do this, you will have two crucial reactions:

1. “Oh, wow, that’s brilliant.” Note that. That’s a tactic or an approach that works. Maybe it’s how they format their newsletter, or the perfect price point for a small print.
2. “Huh, they’re NOT doing X…” or “They’re doing Y, but it feels off.” THIS IS YOUR OPENING. This is the space between the Ghosts. Maybe no one in your niche is doing long-form essays about their process. Maybe everyone uses moody photos, and a bright, graphic style would stand out. Maybe all the authors in your genre are doing standard blog tours, and a weird, serialized audio drama promo would be insane and get attention. The gap is your potential home.

Step 5: The “So What?” (Turning Insight into Action)

Data is useless without a nervous breakdown… I mean, a conclusion. Now, synthesize.

• Refine Your Own “Hook”: Now that you’ve heard the other voices in the choir, how does yours sound different? Can you articulate it more clearly? “I also paint landscapes, but mine focus on the eerie silence of climate change, whereas Ghost A does pastoral nostalgia.”
• Identify Tactics to “Steal” (Ethically): Not their style, but their strategies. “I like how Ghost B uses Instagram Stories to show failed sketches. I’m going to try a version of that.” “Ghost C has a simple ‘Commission Info’ PDF. I need one of those.”
• Spot the White Space & Lean In: This is the big one. Where is the gap? Is there an underserved sub-genre? An audience craving more humor? A platform (like a specific podcast or magazine) none of your Ghosts are engaging with? Go there. Plant your flag in the empty lot.
• Price Yourself Sanely: Now you know the range. You’re not guessing. You can price with confidence, whether you choose to be at the emerging level, or value yourself at a premium because your work is more complex. (A side note I learnt recently: don’t price just for materials and hours spent, but factor in the value this brings into the customer’s lives.)
• Build a Better Bio: When you apply for that residency or submit to that journal, you can now clearly situate yourself. “My work exists at the intersection of X and Y, drawing on the tradition of [Ghost A] but introducing elements of [Z], filling a gap in the current conversation about…”

The Nightmare and the Liberation

The nightmare is doing this and becoming a hollow mimic. Paralyzed by what you see, trying to be a perfect amalgam of all the successful Ghosts. That’s death. That’s the protein-shake guy.

The liberation is in the knowledge. It turns the amorphous “art world” or “publishing industry” from a terrifying, monolithic they into a collection of individual people, some more successful, some less, who are all just figuring it out. It demystifies the process. You see that the painter with the gallery show has been consistently posting for five years. You see the author with the blurb has built a genuine, weird community online.

It also, paradoxically, frees you to be more yourself. When you know what’s already out there, you can consciously decide to not do that. You can push further into your own weirdness, because you understand it as a deliberate contrast, not just an accident of isolation.

So yeah, you gotta look at the other guys. Not to compete, but to contextualize. To understand the ecosystem you’re trying to grow in. To find your people, not just your audience, but your peers, your future collaborators, the people whose work makes you say “Oh, this is the conversation I want to be in.”

Otherwise, you’re just the ghost in your own studio. Muttering to yourself. Wondering why no one hears you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see what every other mid-50s, anxiety-riddled, office-dwelling writer is talking about this week. And then deliberately talk about something else.

Alright. Take care of yourselves. And your work. Go do the thing. See you next time.

---

You read this whole thing. You wrestled with the Ghosts. Maybe you even opened a notebook, wrote down two names, and then got a wave of existential nausea and made a sandwich instead. I get it. Progress is not linear, people.

But if this… this little rant, this anxious autopsy of the creative marketplace… if any of it clicked? If it didn’t just make you want to crawl back under the covers, but actually gave you a flicker of that “oh, maybe I can figure this out” feeling?

Then listen. I’ve got a book. It’s called “Digital Marketing for Creatives.” I know, I know. The title sounds like something you’d find in a hotel lobby next to a fake plant. I almost didn’t write it because of the title, but what am I gonna call it? “Screaming Into The Algorithm Until It Loves You Back”? (Actually, that has a certain ring to it…) Anyway, it’s on Amazon.

The whole point of the damn thing is to get you from being paralyzed by this stuff to just… doing it. Not for eight hours a day. Not turning you into some social media husk. To do it effectively, so you can get back to the actual work. The painting, the writing, the weird clay sculptures of your own inner child. The stuff that actually matters. It’s basically a guide to building the shelf so you can put your art on it, without spending your entire life sanding the wood and questioning your life choices.

Anyway, you can find it here. Or don’t. I’m not your manager. I’m just a guy in a back bedroom I hilariously call the office.

And look, if you want more of this… this specific flavor of anxious, caffeinated encouragement-slash-dread? You can subscribe to this blog. I’ll let you know when I post. No spam. I don’t have the energy for spam. I barely have the energy to write the posts. It’ll just be a notification, you’ll sigh, maybe read it a week later when you’re procrastinating. It’s fine. We’re all fine.

Alright. Take care of yourselves. Go make something. Or just stare at the wall productively. I’ll be here, probably doing the same thing.