Finding Your Online Creative Community

Kathleen Shannon 0:04
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Emily Thompson 0:43
Hey, bosses, today's minisode is a question we got live at the printers row lit Fest in Chicago.

Claire 0:52
Hi, I'm Claire. I'm from here. I first I want to say I am Kathleen I thought I'd seen the most fabulous jumpsuit of the day. But I think yours takes the cake. So yeah. But I I wanted to ask, what would you or what advice would you give to people who are just starting out trying to create an online presence to both showcase their work and to connect with other creative people? Like how do you build or join communities? Like that?

Kathleen Shannon 1:21
That's a really good question. I think that it is following the people that you want to follow that inspire you, for example, on Instagram is where do you like to? Where do you like to be online?

Claire 1:33
Yeah, I suppose. Instagram or Instagram. Like people can like really, like different artists websites, like people are. Like, like, my friend recently started his own artists website. And it's he's both good at like web design stuff. Obviously. I'm like, I have no idea. But um, yeah, that really inspired me to like, think about that more. And

Kathleen Shannon 1:55
what are you doing? Are you doing design? Sorry? What are you doing? Are you doing design or

Claire 2:00
I'm I'm trying to be a writer, you're trying to be a writer, okay.

Emily Thompson 2:04
So that I think the first step would be to choose a platform, just pick one because I think mistake a lot of people make whenever they like, enter the online world, they're like, I need a Twitter and a Facebook and an Instagram and a website. And my website needs a blog and all of these things, just choose one. Start with one, if it's a website, where you're going to, you know, put your work or you know, write a blog or whatever, then just do that one thing. Where you can choose something is significantly more simple and easy to set, which would be Instagram, like you can have a great image and write the thing. And just focus on that though. So step number one, choose a platform.

Kathleen Shannon 2:40
Yeah. And then I'm going to say, publish as much and as much as you can. And so for me, in my early days of blogging, I was publishing up to three times a day, and a lot of it was garbage. But just that practice, and sometimes I even miss that sometimes I think like, Oh, I need to get back to that place where I was publishing in that way. Even though we're publishing a podcast once a week, every week, it just says evolved and change. But I missed that kind of frequency and pure like prolific publishing. So I would say publish a lot. And then one other thing that I would say to you is look at where people you admire are so are other writers that you admire, are they on Twitter? Are they on Instagram. So once you have that one platform, which for you is probably a website, where you're publishing, and then look at where people that you admire are, but then also, I think there's a lot of value in growing up with a bunch of people who are in it with you. So I remember thinking, Oh, if I could just be friends with influential person, X, Y, and Z, it would be made. And I was like, You know what, forget that, hey, let's all of us who are figuring it out, get together and lift each other up and become the next wave of influence. Like, let's just do this together and be in it together.

Dana Kaye 3:57
And also, there's so many author events in Chicago and just going to book signings and authors who are writing similar things that you want to be writing and asking them say, I really love your work, buy their book and say, Can I take you out for coffee and talk to you and ask you these specific questions? I think a lot of the the writing community here is very welcoming and understanding and supportive. And I know a lot of our authors go out to coffee with aspiring writers or students all the time. Again, going back to the honesty and authenticity of like, I bought your book, I'd like to treat you to coffee. I value your time. I have specific questions. I think that that can go a long way.

Kathleen Shannon 4:32
Yeah, I forget you have the benefit of being in Chicago. We were trying to do it from Oklahoma City and Florence, Alabama, and Alabama. So like we kind of had to do it online to find our people but I think that you can find a lot of people and we are all about face to face. This is why we're doing events like this and we just want to be with people in real time because there is something extra special to that.

Kathleen Shannon 4:58
This minisode was brought to you By twenty20 check them out at twenty20.com/beingboss, that's t w e n t y 20 as in the number.com slash being boss.

Emily Thompson 5:12
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