A Blog About Something

About nine months ago, give or take a few months, when we were about to launch aSiteAboutSomething, an intellectual property lawyer, who was truly kind, took some time to explain to me how things worked and introduced me to this term: publishing platform. And that I needed one. Essentially, a publishing platform is an established base of fans, who are interested enough in your work to not only purchase it but to talk about it with others. ….Makes sense. It’s one of the things publishing houses look for in considering an author, because marketing books is mostly uncharted territory today, and they really are not very accomplished at it, and they know it.

Here’s the problem with “building a publishing platform,” the term itself tends to take you down the wrong path. It’s visual and intelligent sounding, but it leads you to think in terms of constructing an actual thing (think: hammer, saws, nails).

What we indie artists need to do primarily, from a marketing standpoint, is to establish and maintain real relationships with individuals who truly respond to our work. We need to listen to them and learn what’s uppermost in their hearts and minds, and how our work fits in that context. If we nurture enough of those relationships, there’s your platform. (Personally, I think “publishing platform” is a term that was coined by folks who did not have or need one.)

Now where are these ideas coming from? Mostly from discussions I’ve been having with LinkedIn contacts. Some of them are other indie artists like myself; others are business people who understand marketing and are kind enough to give me some much needed advice.

I wrote this to one of them this morning—puzzling over the gap between site traffic and sales (conversions for those who prefer marketing-speak)

“We are, each of us, in the midst of a process of figuring out precisely how we can connect meaningfully with others online to build a global audience. No one can really tell us just how to do that right now, but my intuition tells me that it requires great patience and refining all the details. What is lovely is that the wired world is somewhat of an upside down world where collaborative behaviors really make more sense than older competitive paradigms. Of course that’s true of all worlds, but we just haven’t opted for that mostly.”

So, here’s what I’m doing starting today. Whenever anyone shows any real interest in what I’m doing or purchases something from me. I am going to take the opportunity to at least ask two questions (not necessarily worded exactly like this):

1. What could I do to make your onsite experience better or more satisfying?

2. Tell me a little about you, and what it is about my work that’s of particular importance or interest to you?

The better we understand what’s going on in the hearts and minds of the people who respond to our work, the richer and more satisfying the communication, the more solid our virtual “publishing platforms” will be.

I’ll let you know what works or doesn’t Let’s stay in touch and share the journey.

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