CHANNELS

Are you waiting to be “discovered”? Do you think your work is so good that your audience should just “find” you? Do you think your stuff is so cool that it should be “picked up” by a gallery, record label, publisher, agent, or studio? Do you think that every brand should want to work with you, despite the fact that your work has never been seen by them?

The hard truth is that nobody is going to “find you,” unless you’re putting yourself out there to be found in the first place. The good news is that you can connect with your audience in any number of ways. There’s no “one way” to do it, and so you need to consider all the possible routes and try them out to see which is the right path. And when you find that right path, you must focus on developing that path to be quick, painless, and optimized for you and your audience.

Imagine you’ve discovered some amazing place way out in the middle of nowhere, where no one has gone before. It’s a place that took you years to discover for yourself, and it’s so cool that you’ve just got to show it to other people. Well, if it took you years to find this place, how can you bring other people there in just a few seconds? They’re not going to spend years traveling to some place they’ve never heard of. You’ve gotta make it fast and easy for them to connect with that place. Instead of dragging them through the bushes, can you build a super highway, a bridge, a teleportation device? That’s what channels are.

Many creators get stuck on a particular channel. For example, many artists think they need a gallery, musicians a record deal, writers a publisher, or filmmakers a studio, etc. We all know that friend who’s on every social media channel … sometimes even multiple accounts on each. Everyone wants a great sponsor to swoop in and pay for things. With all these options, which is your path? In this Lesson Plan, you’ll look at distributors, platforms, and sponsors to see what your particular marketing plan should be, and you’ll draft a campaign to connect with your audience.