(Opens mic, adjusts it. Leans in. Sighs heavily.)
Okay. Look.
We need to talk about marketing tools. I know, I know. Your eyes just glazed over. You’re an artist, a writer, a creator, not some… social media strategist in a Patagonia vest sipping a $14 matcha latte. The thought of learning another platform makes you want to throw your laptop into a ravine. I get it.
But here’s the deal. You’re already doing the work. You’re making the thing. The marketing part? It’s just sharing the work in a slightly smarter way. And you shouldn’t have to pay some Silicon Valley ghost $30 a month to do it when you’re just trying to buy nicer paper or cover an editor.
So I found a couple of things. Not hype-train, guru-peddled nonsense. Actual tools. They have good free tiers. They work like a simple machine. They take what you’re already doing and make it work a little harder for you while you get back to the actual work. Let’s talk about them.
Tool Idea 1: The “Digital Hub & Welcome Mat” – Carrd or Linktree (But Actually Useful)
The Problem: You have an Instagram for sketches, a Twitter for complaining, a TikTok you feel pressured to be on, a website that’s a pain to update, and an Etsy shop. Someone hears about you and asks, “Where can I see your stuff?” You panic. You don’t want to send them to your messy Instagram with 47 highlight bubbles. You don’t want to just say “Uh, everywhere?” You look like an amateur. You lose the connection.
The Tool & The Free Tier: Carrd.co or Linktree. But we’re not using it to just list social icons like a 2005 MySpace page. That’s useless.
- Carrd’s Free Tier: Lets you build ONE gorgeous, single-page website. That’s all you need. You can connect a custom domain (yourname.com) for like $10 a year, but the free tier gives you a
yourname.carrd.colink that’s perfectly fine. - Linktree’s Free Tier: The basic linking tool. It works.
The “Andy’s Method” for Using It (This is the key):
This isn’t a link dump. This is your controlled, curated front door. Build it once, update it quarterly.
- Your Hero Image/Video: A killer, recent piece of art or your book cover.
- A One-Sentence Bio: “Oil painter of lonely highways.” “Author of weird, quiet horror novels.” Not your life story.
- The Big 3 Links, in this order:
- Link 1: “My Shop / Where to Buy the Book.” Direct link to your Etsy, Gumroad, Amazon page. The primary action.
- Link 2: “See My Full Portfolio / Read an Excerpt.” Link to a more permanent gallery on Instagram (your ‘Featured’ posts) or a PDF sampler on Google Drive. This is for the curious.
- Link 3: “Join the Studio Newsletter.” This is the golden ticket. This link goes directly to your email signup form (from Mailchimp or ConvertKit’s free tier). This is how you capture people and bring them home, off the algorithm’s plantation.
- Then, and only then: Your social icons. Instagram, maybe TikTok if you must. They are supplemental, not the main event.
Why It Works: You now have ONE LINK for everything. It’s in your Instagram bio, it’s on your business cards, it’s in your email signature. It looks professional, it guides people gently toward supporting you, and it captures emails. It works 24/7. You built it in an afternoon and you barely touch it again.
Tool Idea 2: The “Set-It & Forget-It Content Recycler” – Buffer or Later
The Problem: The pressure to be “consistent.” To post every day. So you find yourself at 11 PM, exhausted, trying to think of something clever to say about a painting that dried three weeks ago. It’s torture. It makes you hate your own work. This “always-on” expectation is a creativity killer.
The Tool & The Free Tier: Buffer or Later. These are social media schedulers.
- Buffer’s Free Tier: 3 social channels (e.g., Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Page), 10 scheduled posts per channel. That’s it.
- Later’s Free Tier: 1 social set (Instagram is their jam), 30 posts per month.
The “Andy’s Method” for Using It (This is the mindset shift):
You are not “doing social media.” You are documenting your process and curating a vibe, on autopilot.
- The “Monthly Content Sprint”: Pick one Sunday afternoon a month. That’s it. Two hours.
- Gather Your Raw Material: Look at your phone’s camera roll from the last month. The messy desk. The color palette tests. The first scribble of an idea in your notebook. The finished piece in good light. The stack of research books. That’s 10 posts right there.
- The Lazy-Creative Caption Formula: You don’t need 10 unique essays. Use these templates:
- “A detail from yesterday’s session no one will ever see…”
- “Three books that inspired the mood of this piece…”
- “The view from my desk right now. Back to work.”
- “From sketchbook to final. The journey was weird.”
- Schedule & Abandon: Write the captions, pick the images, and use Buffer/Later to space them out over the next 30 days. Hit “Schedule.” Then close the tab. You are done. For a month. The tool will post for you. Your job is now to go live a life worth documenting for next month’s batch.
Why It Works: It kills the daily performative anxiety. It turns social media from a needy pet into a quiet, dutiful robot. It creates consistency without your daily mental energy. The content is authentic because it’s just slices of your real creative life, pre-packaged. You get to be in your life, not just posting about it.
(Leans back, rubs temples.)
Listen. These aren’t magic. They’re levers. Simple machines. They don’t create something from nothing. They take the energy you’re already expending, making the art, living the life, doing the work, and they amplify it just enough, on a delay, so it doesn’t consume you.
Use the Hub to capture interest.
Use the Scheduler to broadcast without burning out.
Then turn off the computer. The real work, the only work that actually matters, is waiting for you in the studio. In the notebook. In the quiet.
Everything else is just a tool to protect that.
Now get out of here. Go make something. I got stuff to do.
I rock up here twice a week at least, with dynamite for the creatives who hate to market. It’s ideas, tools, strategies to make you market effectively so you can spend time being creative. That’s what we need right now: less marketers and more creatives. You can subscribe to the blog and get notifications (that magic box below – no spam), and/or you can do me a solid and buy me a coffee for being here for over two years giving away my pearls of wisdom. Yeah, I’m selling at you, right now.
Digital Marketing for Creatives 
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