Creating Marketing Content vs. Creating Art

The process of creation and the process of analysis are two different processes, and it’s best to keep them separate. There’s another process to layer in and keep separate as well, which is the process of creating for marketing and attention purposes.

Selling yourself, essentially.

This process is different than the process of creating for yourself, from your vision because the purpose is transactional in nature, which advises what makes it a success or not. If people engage with your marketing content (buying your thing, clicking your link, etc), then it is “working” successfully.

I recently read this VOX article identifying the struggles that artists face with needing to create their personal brand online in order to get noticed. The author, Rebecca Jennings, says: “Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human — now have to be entrepreneurs, too.”

We live in the age of the internet, where artists and entrepreneurs are most successful when skillfully packaging themselves as products for buyers to consume, through the use of marketing tools and pouring time and attention into ways to become noticed.

With the gap between the business side of art and the creativity side closing more and more as our technology advances and the “entrepreneural American Dream” transforms in this late-stage capitalistic business model, what are artists supposed to do now? Become professional salespeople just because there’s technology and trends to follow that might cause a viral moment?

This is a good moment to figure out what feels like YOU, and do THAT on purpose, instead of figuring out what will make you trend.