So why do I wanna start a blog?
SO... This is my first blog and I'm writing it directly into the blog page of my website. In this first blog post I want to ask myself why do I wanna eventually start a blog and write down all the ideas that pop up while I'm writing this and simultaneously brainstorming with myself - I mean the two of us haha...
I will read this first blog post every time I'm going to write another one just to make sure that all the reasons or at least most of them that I bring up here are still vital as I move forward in my life.
So the headline is "WHY DO I WANNA START A BLOG?!"
Well not for SEO reasons obviously, as most of the businesses use it for these days.
As anyone who considers him/herself an artistic persona, will notice that on daily basis you have a bunch of random ideas - some are notes, interesting quotes or even photos that you take every day, others are raw ideas in your artistic medium. As a lot of people would note at this point, well yeah that's why you have social media... Yes and No... Your ideas would need to be spread across multiple different platforms - each serving a certain purpose of your brilliant idea/creation. You'd post a picture on Instagram, you'd post your videos on youtube with a short 1-minute blurb on Insta again, you'd write your short ideas on Twitter, connect it all on Facebook and everything else for random purposes would go on to your Snapchat. On top of this, you'd still need to find a suitable platforms for your longer/bigger ideas that come in a form of essays or as it's more digital to call now - blogs. Now not only all of your ideas are scattered around half a dozen platforms, they also get lost in the ocean of digital content that is published in millions every second around the world. At times you can even feel like you're competing over attention on each platform - like how many subscribers, followers and likes do I get. And last but not least, when all your ideas are on a platform, you even have the risk of losing everything one day, just because smth happened on their servers or your post was marked as spam or even simply that you forgot your password and couldn't retrieve your account. I know this doesn't happen that often. But still... It's something to consider as well. It's like having your own house versus renting a place!
Now the paragraph above is not about bashing social media and saying you should quit it and start a blog. No, social media is powerful and it's the only way us - the Indie generation, can make our voices to be heard. So you need to make sure you're utilizing the power of these platforms. However, your ship needs an anchor - that's your own website - linked to all your social media accounts back and forth!
So these thoughts have brought my focus on to starting a blog - a digital space where I can store all my ideas and creations that are worth sharing with a larger audience, most of whom I wouldn't be familiar with... Now this brings me to the next point - the power of new and unknown audience!
As an artist at any stage of your career, most of you would probably agree that family and friends are not really a good starting audience to express yourself in full desire... If you've broken that obstacle and found ways to grow your audience starting from the base of your family and friends, that's great and congrats! But some people never pass that stage because the criticism or ignorance towards your creativity coming from the close circle could feel more discouraging and painful than that from a complete stranger or even a decent critic. Not to mention, that your full artistic persona which is only seen to you (and yet to be more discovered) is only seen in bits and pieces in the eyes of your family, friends, bosses, co-workers, teachers & professors, church priests and other figures of your society - you name them, even your girl/boyfriend. Now ask yourself the question why so many artists had to run away from their homes or escape their hometowns, pick a stage name and be the person who they feel they are deep down in their guts. George Byron, Bob Dylan, Jack White to name a few. As they say "no prophet is acceptable in his hometown..."
So this idea underlies the core of starting a blog and a website, in general. Just the thought that you're writing your ideas and sharing your creativity in any way you feel like with either nobody (meaning just with yourself if you don't have any readership) or an infinite amount of unknown and new people feels exceptionally intimate to me in both cases. When I say unknown and new, I don't mean in a way of being strangers on the internet as I'm super excited to meet more like-minded people in my life whether on the internet or in any walks of life, but more so meaning to have mostly strong artistic bong with each other... Not knowing who you're telling this to, but knowing there will be people who'd find interest in it...
So what I am gonna talk about, right? It's as important of a question, as the whole idea of waking up to Kurt Vile's "Wakin on a sunny daze" song, then "Pretty Pimpin" it and saying I'm gonna start a blog. Well you gotta have something to tell... In my case this is what I envision would constitute most of my content.
Well music mostly... I've made some big decisions this year, moved to a new place, threw myself way out of my comfort zone and all of that for pursuing music full time. I've just put together my little home studio. So in my musical journey I will have things to share... It might be demos, music videos, practice ideas, live recordings from shows and whatnot. The point here is not about showing off, but keeping a track of your progress and storing your ideas! But if it's pleasing to people, I'll be find myself much happier to continue entertaining : )
Internet is a community and community is all about sharing! So as much as this blog is about me and my music, I believe I have a lot to share with other independent artists as well. This digital space will become a place where I will document my thoughts on the industry, findings on breakthrough strategies, tips on anything from recording to marketing and many more giveaways. Somehow in my life I ended up earning a PhD degree in marketing. As much as I kept hating being in corporate jobs, writing academic shit and just trying to separate my artistic persona from the marketing guru cliche, I came to understand that it's best if the two of them team up for one goal - MUSIC. Now I understand that to many artists (a bit more stubborn and considering themselves real anti-establishment ones), the mere idea of marketing sounds like sales and sales is just tagged as sleazy. I mean if you consider you made it in your life as an artist without any marketing effort, then bravo! And if you haven't made it to a big stardom (everyone in their relativeness of audience size), but you're playing on the street to random commuters who don't even know your name and at best would remember you as the "dude that plays at the corner of this and that street", but you're just happy about playing music all day long and not having to get your hands dirty with marketing, that's also fine! At the end of the day, we're all different in terms of what makes us happy, what is our dream and what sacrifices we're ready to make for it. And not to be confused here, that I have something against being a street musician as I have many favorite street musicians most of whom we again get to know through the internet. So for me, though being a person who at this point is extremely antagonized by everything corporate, marketing still represents purely a channel to spread your voice. And we shouldn't take it for granted as it is a straight way to cut the middle-man industry people and connect to your audience all around the world. And if you're an artist, you do need an audience - size doesn't really matter! As experience shows with the growth of your audience your creativity blooms... The more attention you get you return back with stronger creation! A natural synthesis of some sort...
To kind of conclude the previous idea on marketing, along my musical journey I will learn, research and experiment a lot of things related to music marketing, the industry and its gatekeepers, gigs, recordings and anything else that comes up on my way. Again to keep track of all these learnings but also to inspire others to get a strong grip of their artistic endeavor, I feel twice more responsible to document all these indie-artist-breakthrough-marketing ideas in this central place. I feel very confident that my passion in music and my profession in marketing would bring their fruits not only to me, but also to anyone who finds usage in this content.
So to summarize, in this blog space I would like to express myself in my uttermost artistic sincereness and freedom through music or any other other medium that I would be inspired by. The starting goal is to at least have a vault of my ideas. But if they are inspiring, amusing or entertaining to anyone out there, I'd be a lot of more happy to continue playing my Joker card! I know my creativity and productivity can grow exponentially when the seeds of my ideas are planted in a fertile soil. So with my musical content, I'm also going to share all my learnings on artist self-promotion in this blog space! If people find this information more and more useful I'd dig deeper to find more interesting information and to bring up more helpful tips!
I don't have a schedule how often I'm going to post blogs and whether or not this would ever turn into a newsletter of some sort. We'll see how things go, right? haha
I'm psyched to start this mystical musical journey with all of you!
Gemini George
