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The case for creating memories over content (by a content creator)

(Playing The Long Road Festival, Leicestershire UK, with Brandy Clark last week)

I don’t really do social media when I’m traveling for my music work.

When I’m home I have a detailed strategy linked to whatever goal I’m working on at the time. But when that tour bus rolls… my post schedule goes out the window along with my hope of a good night’s sleep.

The more distance between me and my own pillow, the more my focus shifts away from creating content and towards creating memories.

I re-post a live photo occasionally and some days I’ll see something cool when I’m out and about and share it on my stories, but my marketing strategy gets abandoned, my engagement drops off a cliff, and honestly - I couldn’t be happier.

This probably sounds odd coming from someone who espouses proactive music marketing, but the truth is - if you don’t look up from your phone camera occasionally to actually experience your life, you won’t have anything to write, sing, talk, (or post) about later.

Relentless social-media-ing without space for inspiration and experiences can turn your music and life into a creative echo chamber.

Before Covid, I forced myself to take pictures and videos at every show I played, whether I felt like it or not.

When my band, Tattletale Saints, was on tour I’d be the one saying “we need to get a photo of this” or “do that again so I can video it this time”. Ruining magical tour moments and potential memories for the chance to post a watered-down “second take” version of something.

I’d scour venue location tags and artist hashtags after each performance searching for fan-posted content, and I’d strive to share the journey with my social media followers in real time.

But then along came several years of barely getting to play any shows at all courtesy of one global pandemic.

The absence of performing has made me absolutely relish every second of any chance I get to play music with other humans, in front of other humans, in any location other than my home rehearsal studio.

My immense gratitude for every opportunity to travel, play gigs, and generally just be a performing musician again, took over my obsession with the simultaneous experiencing and posting of it.

It’s true that as a side player, the success of our shows isn’t determined by my personal presence on social media.

But it’s also true that - as an artist - the day of your album release or show, isn’t the time to be building your online presence.

If you wait until the day of a show or a song release to start thinking about your fanbase, it’s already far too late.

Building an audience for your music is a slow burn that happens by sharing your creative journey with like-minded people over a long period of time. Not by sharing one thing at the eleventh hour on the day of an event and then forgetting about it again until the next show, 2 months later.

Showing your fans behind the scenes helps build your connection with them, of course, but you can do that at the time, or later on. The sharing doesn’t have to happen at the time of the experience - I would posit you feel exactly the same way about the photo I shared above of The Long Road Festival as you would if you’d seen it last week at the time of the event.

Independent musicians are all too aware of the multitude of hats we have to wear, but until you have a manager or social media team to help you take care of the marketing side of your music, you have to find a way to balance it with protecting your creativity.

And creative inspiration is a fire fed by life experience.

The term narcissistic comes from the Greek mythological story of Narcissus, a hunter known for his beauty who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it until he died.

There’s something horrifyingly similar in that story to our phone cameras’ selfie mode and the cultural shift we’ve made in recent years to share every minute detail of everything we do in real-time via our own reflective pool of pocket technology.

For me, actively choosing to focus on staying present over constant posting means touring becomes less about uploading videos of everything to make sure everyone else sees what I’m doing, and more about actually experiencing everything I’m doing so that I get to deeply absorb it.

The more consciously I designate specific periods of time for content creation and allow myself blocks of time to simply enjoy the experience of being a musician, the happier I feel.

There are a lot of hats to wear as a musician, but leaving the marketing hat in the closet to gather dust because you prefer the fit of the performance hat is less strategy for creative success and more a guarantee you’ll probably never have any.

But the real lesson here is that you don’t have to wear all the hats, all day, every day.

There’s a time for wearing the planning hat, a time for wearing the content marketer hat, and a time for wearing the “human who is staying present and enjoying their life” hat.

I believe that during the show or tour is the time for the latter.

Seeing the various hats you need to wear as a collection that you alternate between depending on the circumstances might help alleviate some of the overwhelm you feel in trying to balance them all on top of your head at the same time.

Be smart about how you create your audience-building content. Learn the skills you need, create a plan you feel good about, and get in and out quickly so you can actively set down the content creator hat and put on your musician-hat, or friend-hat, or partner-hat, or inspiration-seeking hat again.

The reason I encourage musicians to create a content plan isn’t so they’ll think about content more, it’s so they can get the most bang for their buck with the time they spend on it, and find a way to put the least amount of effort in for the greatest results.

Finding a way to make content creation something you do at set times, not something you’re constantly thinking about and distracted by, will help you reclaim the enjoyment of the shows you play and tours you embark on.

Because honestly, if you’re not enjoying actually doing the thing you’re trying to build an audience for, what is the point of any of it?