Digital Marketing for Creatives

You know what I’m addicted to? The spike.

The little dopamine hit when you refresh and the number went up. The notification. The “oh, people are seeing this.” It’s a drug. And like any drug, it works great until it doesn’t, and then you’re just standing in your kitchen at 2am refreshing analytics like a lab rat pushing the lever, wondering why the high doesn’t come anymore.

I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when “going viral” meant someone passed your zine around at a coffee shop. Now it’s this beast. This monster. This thing we’re all chasing like it’s going to solve our problems, fill the void, make us feel seen.

Spoiler alert: It won’t. It really, really won’t.

I had a thing blow up once. Years ago. A clip from a TV show, someone clipped it, put it on whatever platform was the platform at the time, and suddenly… numbers. Big numbers. Millions of people saw my face, heard my voice, watched me do the thing I do.

And then the spike was over.

And what I had was… the same void. The same questions. The same 3am dread. Plus a bunch of new followers who didn’t really know who I was or what I did, they just liked the clip. They liked the moment. They weren’t there for the work. They were there for the spike.

That’s the difference between reach and resonance. Reach is a crowd. Resonance is someone who stays.

Reach is a thousand people walking past your window, glancing in, moving on. Resonance is the one person who knocks on the door and says “me too.” Resonance is the email from someone who tells you your words made them feel less alone. Resonance is the person who’s been reading for ten years, who knows your catalog, who shows up because they actually give a shit.

And here’s the thing about resonance: you can’t fake it. You can’t optimize for it. You can’t hire a consultant to find it for you. You just have to do the work, do it honestly, and trust that the right people will find it.

There’s this old idea, the “one thousand true fans” theory. Kevin Kelly wrote about it years ago. The premise is simple: you don’t need millions. You don’t need to go viral. You need one thousand people who genuinely care about what you do. One thousand people who will buy your book, come to your show, support your work, tell their friends.

One thousand.

That’s it.

That’s a full theater. That’s a viable career. That’s a life’s work supported by people who actually want it there.

But we don’t want that. We want the millions. We want the spike. We want to be validated by people who will forget us tomorrow. Because the spike is easier than the work. The spike is luck. The spike is the algorithm smiling on you for reasons you’ll never understand. The spike requires nothing from you except being there when it happens.

Resonance requires everything. It requires consistency. It requires showing up when no one’s watching. It requires being real when it’s easier to perform. It requires doing the work even when the numbers aren’t moving.

What actually lasts when the spike is over? The connections you built when no one was looking. The people who were there before the spike, who’ll be there after. The work itself. The satisfaction of having made something true, regardless of how many people saw it.

The spike is a party. Resonance is a home.

I want a home. I want a thousand people who actually give a shit. I want to know their names, their stories, their reasons for being here. I want to build something that exists whether the algorithm notices or not.

That’s why I started the blog and that’s why I started the newsletter. I know, I know, another newsletter. The world is drowning in them. But here’s the difference: the blog is me talking at you. The newsletter is me talking with you. It’s quieter in there. Less performance. More connection. It’s where the resonance lives.

If you want the spike, stay here. The blog will be here. I’ll keep yelling into the void, pacing the stage, doing my thing.

If you want the resonance, if you want the stuff that doesn’t make it to the blog, the thoughts at 3am, the conversations that actually go somewhere, there’s a link. It’s right here. Click it. Join the thousand. Or don’t. I’ll be here either way, doing the work, hoping the right people find it. If you join in March (2026), I’ll put your name in a hat for a chance to win a copy of my book.

Because that’s what lasts. Not the spike. Not the number. The work. The connection. The thousand true fans who make it all mean something.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go not check my analytics for the next hour. It’ll be hard. I might need a sponsor. But I’m gonna try.

---

I post here on my blog twice a week at least, with strategies & advice for the creatives who hate to market, or the creatives who just want to market effectively. It’s ideas, tools, strategies to make you a successful marketer so you can spend more 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, guaranteed), 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 in service to the creator community.

You know, I used to think putting stuff out there into the void of the feeds was enough. You post a thing, a few likes roll in, it disappears. It’s like screaming into a hurricane. But this newsletter thing, it’s different. It’s not just me blasting my thoughts at you while you’re half-paying attention, scrolling past a picture of a sandwich someone ate in 2014.

This is a conversation. It’s me sitting down, taking a breath, and actually digging into the weird, terrifying, and hilarious mess of it all without worrying about the algorithm gods striking me down for going long. It’s more in-depth, it’s unhinged, it’s the stuff I’m actually thinking about at 3 a.m. that doesn’t fit into a tidy little box. So yeah, this link will take you to the sign-up page. It’s not spam, it’s just two people connecting over the fact that we’re all hurtling through space on a rock and trying to make some sense of it. But with marketing.