Best social media tips & a virtual event announcement.
This newsletter post revisits some of the best episodes of our podcast.
Dear Artists
Pawan Rochwani, the Founder of Platform For Artists, writes a weekly newsletter called Relatively Correct about the internet, content community, politics, philosophy, and socio-cultural events. On the last Sunday of each month, Pawan holds a live discussion with a guest from a niche field in collaboration with Bolti Bandh
BoltiBandh is an organization working towards depolarizing conversations on the internet by promoting healthier ways of discussions focusing on 'why’ people believe in something instead of debating over the 'what'.
These discussions generally follow the format of “What we don’t understand about...”. We have had four discussions so far, the first was about politics with Shweta Shalini, spokesperson of the BJP. The second about the Internet with Apar Gupta, Executive Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation. The third one was about love with Pawan and Safalta. And the last one about creativity with Samar Jodha, Photographer, and artist. This month we are going to be in conversation with Ramit Verma about “What we don’t understand about Indian Media?”
A digital activist cum satirist, Ramit Verma is the founder of the channels Official PeeingHuman and Kroordarshan. Ramit aims to analyze & critique Indian politics & media through the language of memes. His work facilitates informed political conversations with the help of humor. His videos try and capture the absurdity, contradictions, and biases of Indian journalists, news, and politics. He has also been studying the airtime that mainstream news channels allocate to major issues to understand their editorial bent and his findings are sad to say the least and quite worrying.
We have witnessed the transformation of media houses into circus outlets, as media ethics were dumped into the bin and as journalists started acting as self-proclaimed experts in everything from drugs to Covid-19, we just stood and stared at our television screens in harrowing disbelief. We will try to understand how we reached here, how did we let media goons hijack our democracy, why do these media channels succeed in playing with our vulnerabilities, and many more things with Ramit on the 25th of April at 12 pm. This is an invite only session and to be a part of this conversation register from the below link.
How to be a productive creator?
“For most of your life, you live your existence in the middle, where everything is normal and reassuring and regular. But failure catapults you abruptly way out into the blinding darkness of disappointment. Success catapults you just as abruptly but just as far way out into the equally blinding glare of fame and recognition and praise. One of these states is objectively seen by the World as bad and the other one as good. But your subconscious is completely incapable of discerning the difference between bad and good. The only thing it is capable of producing is the absolute value of this emotion, the exact distance that you have been flung from yourself.”
Have you heard about the age-old dilemma of quality vs quantity? This is the same dichotomy presented to us today re-packaged as creativity vs productivity. This dichotomy is an unnecessary imposition on the way we perceive our work. Like most things in this world, this is not so black and white, not so identically opposite of mutually exclusive.
As Niklas Goke mentions, “The amateur tries to sync his art with inspiration. The pro knows that inspiration will sync with him once he sits down to write.”
“Inspiration exists but it has to find you working”- Pablo Picasso.
“A lot of IG influencers use the word ‘blogger’ because they do understand that it is a more serious connotation for their body of work”
According to Hubspot, there are 600 million active blogs globally in 2020. Richa says it correctly that “contrary to what people like to believe blogging is thriving a lot more in today’s world”.
In her words, a lot of the content ecosystem revolves around what brands want and where they are willing to invest. Blogging is the third most preferred content market strategy after videos and e-books. In fact, according to data from 2018, 55% of marketers listed blogging as their top priority. Blogs can result in a 434% increase in indexed pages and companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads than companies without blogs. These statistics are a clear indicator of the sustained and growing interest blogs hold not only in terms of content but also in terms of commerce.
Long-form content is here to stay, this is also evident from the fact that people are willing to pay for newsletters and information-heavy articles. The same stands true for blogs where people are willing to interact with niche content to gain information.
Some people consider blogging old school or the thing of the past, but the thing is they are simply wrong. There are 600 million active blogs out there on the internet and “contrary to what people like to believe blogging is thriving a lot more in today’s world”. Read this article to understand why Richa Singh, the Founder of Blogchatter, believes that blogs will hold a crucial space even in an internet dominated by social media for many years to come.
Every company is going to be a content company because, in a sea of companies, content, community, and commerce are three key pillars upon which any business is going to be built. And community and commerce are going to be enabled by content.
The gig economy has flourished a lot in India in the last decade, according to a 2018 PayPal report, India accounts for 50% of the global freelancers. Anirudh says, “In India, unlike the USA, a lot of creators don’t have the freedom to follow their passion, almost 75- 80% of creators are freelancing because they have to”
Read this article to understand how content is on an unprecedented rise in India right now and what it means for content creators across the country?
Given the desperate Covid-19 crisis we are facing, lockdown seems inevitable for most states, which means local businesses will have to migrate a large chunk of their functioning in a digital setup again. Rapti Gupta, the Content Marketing Head at Instamojo shares her words of advice for an effective social media strategy for small businesses.
“People don’t buy your products, they are buying your stories. Everyone is looking for a connection, a point of convergence. The biggest advantage a small business has over multi-million dollar companies is the touch of intimacy and community. It is important to represent this humane aspect of your business through the content you put out.”
It’s quite normal to get overwhelmed by everything that’s happening around us. But it is important to allow ourselves space and time to process the stress and anxiety we are feeling. As artists, we often over-burden ourselves with work and high expectations, and it isn’t helping anyone. Take a step back, take time to wind back and relax, work can wait, your mental health can’t.
“In this world where numbers and data define our hard work and effort, we often neglect the well being of our mind which was all along the one doing the hard work. Hustle and overworking have been normalized so much that taking a break or even a gap year seems like a distant dream and even after all of this when you do decide to take a break you are tagged as someone who is not serious towards his/her work.”
Tell us how you are taking care of your mental health in these trying times. You can reach out to us on our social media handles if you need any help.
We are at @platformforartists
See you in the next one, till then please stay indoors and take care!