If your creative releases keep flopping on social media, this one’s for you.

Over the last few years, I’ve been helping musicians release creative projects online. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s digital products or services.

I’ve also released my own creative products, and gained a lot of social media experience along the way.

During this time, myself and the musicians I’ve worked with have seen some big wins and losses.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the losses hurt.

And while they can help us learn a lot about ourselves, we want to reduce them, right? At least when it comes to releasing important projects.

So why do some releases flop?

Well, there are factors like the quality of the project, timing, relevance, bad strategy.

Or sometimes it just doesn’t click in the way we’d hoped.

But there’s something much bigger (and simpler) that causes releases to flop.

It’s a pattern I’ve noticed in a lot of the musicians I speak to, and it’s something I’ve experienced myself.

I’m talking about the lack of love and energy we put towards the release process.

That’s the biggest thing.

I’ve seen more flops due to this than any other factor.

And while we can’t ignore the roles great strategy and great creative work play in the success of a release…

…far more often it’s some form of not showing up that kills it. At least as it relates to creatives on social media.

The single biggest mistake you can make is to finish the project itself and assume your work is done.

If you want your release to be a big deal to others, you’ve got to treat it like one yourself—including after you finish it.

Today we’ll talk through three major reasons creatives aren’t doing this. We’ll also talk about how to fix it.

I’ll be attempting to change your mind on certain aspects of releasing a creative project.

But even if I can’t, I hope this will at least give you some clarity and perspective on the topic.

I’ll use mostly music releases as examples, but a lot of this will apply to other creative projects too.

Let’s talk about it.

Three big reasons releases flop.

In my work with musicians, I’ve seen three problems repeatedly arise when it comes to releasing:

• 1. They put all their love and energy into the creative project itself, and don’t have any left for marketing.
• 2. They don’t understand what it actually takes to get their work in front of a lot people (or how to do it).
• 3. They do understand, but the potential negative consequences hold them back from acting.

There’s also the issue a lot of creatives have with the idea of marketing in general… but that’s a conversation for another time.

Let’s go through each of these three problems.

#1: “I don’t have the energy”.

It’s easy to see why creatives don’t feel they’ve got the energy to market a project.

A meaningful project can take a lot out of you.

You’re dealing with a lot of emotion and self discovery. You’ve had a prolonged focus on one thing. It’s taken up a lot of time.

It hurts me to hear (and to sometimes give) advice for creatives like “you have to keep showing up, no excuses.”

It’s true in a lot of cases, but that doesn’t mean it’s ideal.

You’re required to be always ‘on’ to get your work out there, but you also need ‘off’ time to make the process more effective.

For a lot of creatives, the ‘social media way’ doesn’t support this.

You pour everything into high-quality projects…then you’ve got to do it all again for the promotion of it.

So this lack of energy is understandable.

But we need this project to reach the outside world, so how do we get around this problem?

How do we stay focused on doing the best work we can while also having the energy to get it out there when it’s done?

While I’m not pretending it’s not tough, there are two things I’ve found incredibly helpful:

The first is creating a strong driver.

You can easily spend 10+ hours a day working on music, but doing the same for something you don’t love is exhausting.

Being creative feeds your soul. In a lot of cases, it’s energising.

You feel like you’re doing ‘what you’re supposed to be doing’.

You don’t need a push to write music, or make art, or build something you care about.

In fact, you’re so driven to do it, it can hurt not to do it.

And you might do it because it’s healing in some way, cathartic, nourishing—you have a strong reason why you do it.

Have you ever thought properly about why you need marketing? Why you, specifically, need it?

You might say: “Because I want to get it out there, Alex, isn’t that obvious?”

Yes, but why?

You could easily just make art at home and never release it to the world (which some people do)… but that’s not the case for a lot of creatives.

There’s a reason you want to get your work out there, right? There’s a reason it hurts when you can’t reach people with it.

What’s that reason?

• Is it because you feel that by sharing your work people will finally understand the real you?
• Is it because you want your art to give others what it gives you?
• Is it because you want to make a certain impact?

Whatever it is, you have a need to get it out there.

And that need is not some trivial thing. It’s a big deal.

Actually creating art is not how people will understand you, or how you change lives, or make an impact.

The creating part is nourishment for your soul. It helps you understand yourself, and could help others understand you.

It has the potential to change lives, to make an impact.

You may even create with the intention of making an impact, changing lives with that creation.

But actually creating won’t do that.

Marketing is the part that helps people understand you, changes lives, makes an impact.

It’s the marketing process—delivering your creation to the world.

If you create a piece of music that could regularly bring people to tears and make them question everything they know about life, but no one ever hears it…

…how many lives will you impact with this piece of music directly?

None. Not a single person.

Because they don’t even know it exists.

Making art is a beautiful thing. Sharing it is also a beautiful thing.

It is the delivery of that beautiful creation that will help you create change, show people who you are.

If that doesn’t light a fire in you to take marketing seriously—if it doesn’t give you the energy you need…

I don’t know what will.

You’d be amazed at how much energy you can summon when you have a strong reason to do something.

If you want to give yourself more energy for marketing, get crystal clear on exactly why you’re doing it.

And speaking of getting clear…

The second thing that will give you more energy is having a plan.

When it comes to releasing your project, there is nothing more exhausting than a lack of clarity. You’ll get stuck and burn out before you even start.

Having a plan takes the exhausting guesswork out of the experience. It clears a lot of unnecessary muck and reduces decision fatigue.

One huge problem I see with a lot of the musicians I talk to or work with is they have no real plan.

They’re actually trying to put energy, love, and attention into releasing their project…

…but that energy is so unfocused that the process wears them out before they get even a sliver of success.

If you don’t have a plan, your energy will go to waste, and you won’t get results.

When you do follow a good plan, that energy leads to results, which makes you feel like it exerting energy is worth it.

And not only that, when you start getting results, your energy goes up—so you can go even further.

Do not underestimate the power of a good, clear plan.

It will redirect your energy.

It will help you channel it into something that drives results.

And it will give you extra energy you didn’t even know you had.

So it’s important to not only put a lot of energy into the release process, but also to know what to do with it.

And this leads us into the second big reason releases flop.

#2: What it really takes.

Let’s assume you’re fired up now.

You have a super strong driver and you’re ready for a great release… only you don’t know what to actually do, or what to expect.

A lot of the musicians I speak to don’t understand how promoting a release ‘should’ work. At least if they’re using social media as the way to do it.

That’s not a dig at them—it’s understandable.

They get fed all kinds of different information and don’t know what’s worth listening to.

Maybe this is the cause of the big knowledge gap here.

They’re told they don’t have the right tool, or their posts are missing some key ingredient. If they just fix these, everything will be better.

But what they’re often really missing is much simpler:

Persistent and concentrated energy going into the promotion.

When it’s release time, it’s release time.

Releasing a creative project is a big deal and needs to be treated as such.

Although it’s true the “new song out now” approach to promotion isn’t effective for a lot of musicians… that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat your release like it’s important.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, said this about the writing and marketing of his book:

Honestly, writing the book was a very long and painful process, and I poured everything I had into it. I wrote about the topic for three years, and then I signed the book deal. We agreed to write the book in a year … It ended up taking three years … I put five years of writing, and a year and a half of marketing into the launch … I’m just glad it was worth it. — From this article.

A year and a half of marketing. And that’s only the launch—he’s still technically marketing it five years later.

Honestly, how much energy have you put into a marketing campaign for one of your releases?

I have a friend who plays in a decent band but doesn’t understand music marketing nowadays.

When we talked about his latest release, I asked what the band had done to get it out there.

His answer was something like: “We played a show, and we hired a PR guy to pitch to some playlists… but we weren’t really happy with the result.”

“What about social media—did you post anything about it? Any ads or anything as well?”

“We made a few posts but nothing really came of it. We didn’t run ads.”

“Ok, what are you doing at the moment to get it out there?”

“…Nothing. We released it 2 months ago. It’s over.”

I’ve tidied up the conversation, but it’s the gist of it.

I think this was at least an EP, too. 4 or 5 songs.

Their promotion period lasted for a couple of weeks. Two months later they were already beyond done with the release.

Who knows how long they spent actually writing, recording, and producing those songs.

This is not a sustainable approach to releasing creative projects nowadays—for most anyway.

In a recent Instagram post, I explained that ‘we’re no longer in a good environment for commitment’. I was talking about social media as a marketing tool.

What I mean is it’s much harder to get someone on social media to stay focused on and commit to a single artist or release.

Social media is full of distractions and gives you every incentive to keep scrolling… instead of giving a release a proper go.

And so to make an impact with our creative project, we need to repeatedly expose our work to people. Ideally over a longer period, and as frequently as possible.

If you want a good result with your release, you need to put a ton of love and energy into the release process.

It needs to be in front of people as much as possible.

You could do that with money, by running ads over a long period (if it’s plausible for you).

You could also do it by posting consistently about your release over a long period.

In an ideal world, you’re doing both, and more.

Most musicians I speak to wince at the idea of creating more than 10 posts for their release. And they’ll frequently point to examples of established artists who ‘didn’t have to do this’.

I know it’s a lot. But you’re not them.

You don’t have the leverage they do, and so your best bet is to go as hard as you can without destroying yourself.

The general approach to releasing is deceptively simple nowadays. I think it’s in part why it’s so hard to accept.

There’s more to it than this, but if you:

• Make genuinely great music
• Repeatedly expose people to your release
• Work with the Spotify algorithm (if that’s the path you’re going down)
• And don’t stop pushing until you get a good result or you’ve got something else to talk about…

…you’re doing the bulk of the work, and you should be able to get at least a decent result based on where you’re at.

How many times have you pushed a release consistently and frequently over a long period?

Most creatives I know haven’t done it once.

I’m not saying that’s you… but if it is, you know what to do now 🙂

And an important point here: Quality still matters.

You might assume that by increasing frequency and consistency you’re sacrificing quality.

This doesn’t have to be the case.

If your foundational approach to content is high quality, you can be frequent without losing much quality.

This is something I cover in my course, which by the way you can join the waitlist for now.

Are you planning?

On top of this admittedly huge task of repeatedly exposing yourself to people, it’s important to have an actionable plan.

Although you could decide to take one channel (such as social media posting), go all in on that and just let it be messy… that’s not always the best strategy for everyone.

In my course I take musicians through a 5 step process to create a simple but solid release plan.

Here’s a quick overview of it (and this can apply even if you’re a different kind of creative):

> Step 1: Define the big picture release markers.

For musicians, it’s a smart move to have either:

• Multiple releases planned out over a longer period
• Or to treat one multi-track release in the same way.

Eg: If you have a 4 song EP, why not map that out as single releases over 4 months and then bring it all together at the end?

This allows you to hold attention for longer and keep up momentum, among other things.

> Step 2: Define the main promotion period for each release.

For how long will each of these be the main focus of your promotion efforts?

Nowadays for most, I recommend something like:

> 20% pre-release promo (depending)

> 80% post-release promo

That’s rough, and doesn’t apply to everyone. But if you’re reading this, something like this most likely applies to you.

And that main post-release period could go on until you’ve got something else to talk about.

> Step 3: Define your marketing channels.

Which methods will you be using to get your release out there? For example, one approach could be:

• Aggressive social media promotion
• Paid advertising
• Social spreading (getting others to share your release around)
• Take advantage of any connections, opportunities, etc. that may help your release
• A bit of extra playlist promo, but usually not as a main focus.

For music releases, the goal nowadays is often to leverage Spotify’s algorithm. You do this by feeding Spotify lots of high quality ‘engagement’ early into the release.

If you get enough listener engagement early on, Spotify will push your release out more.

You might not want anything to do with Spotify (I get it) or to play any kind of ‘algorithm game’ and that’s fine.

I would still take a similar approach to promotion regardless.

> Step 4: Map out specific dates and tasks for the release(s).

Once you know:

• When you’ll be releasing things
• How long you’ll be focusing on promoting one main thing
• And which methods you’ll be using to do so…

…you can now lay out the specific tasks you’ll need to do, and when.

I won’t list out every potential task here, because this would go on forever. And you don’t have the proper context to understand it all here anyway, but what you can do here:

> List out every task you’ll need to do to prepare for the release.

> Then organise them in order of how soon you need to start working on them.

This list should be based on the marketing methods you’ve chosen in Step 3.

There are also standard things you’d need to do for a release (upload to your distributor by a certain date, etc). You’ll want to add those in too.

You can assign dates to each task so you have a clear set of tasks each week (or even each day).

> Step 5: Details of those specific tasks.

The last step is to plan and/or start working on the details of each of those tasks.

For example, if you’ll be making a lot of posts for your release, what will those posts be?

Do you need to reach out to certain people to organise something for the release? When will you need to do that and what will you need to say?

This is a “start broad, get narrower” approach to building a plan.

I’ve found this kind of approach to be highly effective (for many things, not only releasing).

It gives you a clear picture of what you’re doing and why, all the way from the overview down to the specifics.

I have a customisable Release Plan Builder for artists in here, but there’s no reason you can’t build one.

Ok, let’s move on.

#3: The hesitation to promote your work.

Let’s come back to this idea of treating your release like a big deal.

You might be someone who wants to make a big deal of it, and maybe you even understand that many successful releases nowadays are due to a high level of exposure over an extended time…

…but you don’t feel good about doing it yourself.

I’ve spoken to countless musicians who say something like:

“I don’t want to annoy people with my release, I don’t want to them be put off.”

I totally get where they’re coming from with this, get it a bit myself when I’m promoting a product.

Here’s the thing: Some people do get annoyed by excessive promotion.

Some people have very little tolerance for seeing a post about something more than once.

If you’re trying to get something out there, and repeated exposure is a big part of how you do that… it’s almost impossible to avoid annoying some people.

Here’s my take on that:

Do you really want your fan base to be full of people who are so touchy, so easily annoyed that they can’t handle seeing you—an artist—post about your art a lot?

Don’t you want people who want to see / hear your work over and over? To become obsessed with it?

If I saw one of my favourite bands posting about a new song relentlessly, I would love it.

I would inhale all of it until I’d had my fill, then maybe after a while I would stop engaging so much with the posts… but I definitely wouldn’t be annoyed at them or suddenly not be a fan.

I don’t believe it’s a good idea to pander to people who might like you on the condition you don’t talk about your art too much.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about paying attention to your audience and making sure they’re getting value… but not to the point where you have to hold back like that.

You should not feel guilty about posting about your release a lot. It’s not selfish, at least not in a bad way.

You are allowed to take up space with your release.

Anyone who’s going to be annoyed by that can easily stop paying attention. Just as they can exit a YouTube video if they don’t like it, they can stop interacting with your posts, and that’s fine.

You are not responsible for how other people interact with these platforms.

You do what you need to do, they’ll do what they need to do.

And by holding back on pushing your releasing more—by being too timid out of fear of annoying people—you’re holding back on making a bigger impact.

You need to understand that your art, your creative project has real value. Your personal contribution to the world in this specific way might just change someone’s life.

Even if it’s in a small way, what you’re doing matters.

This is how you personally help the world move forward in some way.

Don’t withhold your value out of fear. Don’t stifle your creative expression out of fear.

Your release is for the people it’s for—not the people it’s not.

To get over this fear and make real progress, it may require a fundamental shift in how you see yourself.

You may need to get uncomfortable, be courageous and take actions that initially feel ‘wrong’.

Because you will never make the impact you want without ruffling a few feathers.

When I go through a promotion period for my services, I lose email subscribers because I’m being more direct about my product.

My views and engagement typically go down on Instagram for the same reason.

In these times, I shed the people who aren’t serious about change or who aren’t yet ready to change—or who are too easily bothered by a few promotional emails.

And that’s great, because I’m speaking to people who are ready to change.

I’m speaking to people who take their creative work seriously and who are willing to do what’s required to get it out there.

If someone on my list or in my audience will only stick around on the condition I never talk about my products, I’m fine for them to leave.

I know I have something that can seriously help people. And you know you do too. You have something that will add value to this world in some way.

Your work matters.

It deserves love and attention from you.

At the end of the day, you’ve got to ask yourself: What’s more important? Annoying a few people or making the impact I want to make?

Conclusion.

Being a creative is not always an easy thing.

If we want to do this for real, we have our work cut out for us.

We’re required to put serious energy, love and attention into both the creative work itself and the process of getting it out there.

We have to push when it’s uncomfortable and be prepared to face the consequences for doing that.

It’s not always fun. It doesn’t always feel like we’re capable of it.

But we have real value to give to the world. We have potentially life-changing work to contribute.

And because of this, we must embrace the hard path.

We have bigger, better reasons to do it than to not to it.

What you do matters. You matter. Go and get it out there.

I hope this one gave you some juice to push forward!

It was a lot of fun writing this one—it came out of me easily, and I think it’s because I’m really starting to realise what a difference we can all make.

If you’re a musician and you want your 2024 to be your biggest year of music yet, I hope you’ll join me in this next year. Let’s change lives together.

In the meantime, take care of yourself, be bold, and get yourself out there.

All the love and talk soon,

Alex