Episode Summary
Unless its your primary focus content creation often gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list It takes time and commitment But in order to get content working for you it requires consistency So how do you get more consistent as a marketing team
In this episode of Recorded Content Justin Brown talks with artist Blake Jamieson who for several months of 2020 lived and breathed consistent content creation At 1023 pm every day Blake live-streamed for several hours from his art studio interacting with fans and sharing his art Sometimes he created art sometimes he read fan mail or did AMAs and sometimes he interviewed other artists But without fail he was there
Before becoming a sports artist Blake worked in marketing and he leveraged his experience connecting with an audience developing a niche and creating content to help elevate his career as a sports artist
Listen to find out how Blake developed his brand committed to a consistent content creation schedule and had fun doing it
Guest Profile
Name: Blake Jamieson
What he does: Blake spent eight years in marketing before he realized he dreaded Mondays and needed to change his life He became the I make art for offices guy but after a chance encounter with Jarred Fayson he found himself the I make art for athletes guy Now in addition to doing portraits of athletes he works with Topps redesigning iconic baseball cards and selling NFTs of his work
Noteworthy: During COVID Blake started live-streaming his art at exactly 1023 pm seven days a week Why 1023 He wanted to start his podcast after everyone elses hes most creative at night and 23 is his favorite number
Key Insights
- Content creators need to build habits around content creation Blake knows getting started is challenging Building the habit is key and habits take a long time to build and you have to get over that initial hump Getting started is definitely a challenge and then getting past the habit point then its just a no-brainer I was able to get into that quickly and then it didnt feel like work for a long time It was just what I did every night
- Standing out doesnt necessarily mean using the latest and greatest tech Blake uses the same tool hes been using for ten years Twitter video messages I do exactly the same thing to stand out from my peers that I did ten years ago when I started going hard on Twitter and thats the video message I send personal video messages to the people that I want to meet And that feature has been around for so long and very very very very few people use it Ive just had such a good experience building my audience one by one and making it more personal he says
- Once you have a habit you can scale back Once Blake established his content creation habit he could scale back but he can still jump right back in whenever he wants I started winding down the livestream at the end of 2020 It was tough for the first part getting into the habit Then I built the habit and experimented with different types of content and did so many shows Im so comfortable now doing live shows now I could turn it on and I could do anything and feel fine doing it
Episode Highlights
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LET THINGS HAPPEN ORGANICALLY
I live streamed once and I got really good positive feedback so the next day I opened up packs of cards As it grew I built content pillars I was getting fan mail over the course of 2020 especially once I started doing the live show And then I opened fan mail every Monday I do Mail Mondays and people would send in stuff just so they could be on the show which is really cool And then Fridays I ended up just interviewing other artists and creatives starting with people that were working with Topps like myself but also branching out to other people that I met on Twitter
Those two were really the two I stuck with the most and that happened organically
ANALYTICS ARENT THE ONLY INDICATORS OF SUCCESS
I really dont go deep into the analytics I know its important and every once in a while Ill peek but like you said I just try to have fun and thats my biggest KPI Im very active on Twitter so I felt like I had my ear on the ground there where if I did something that people really enjoyed Twitter is how I found out and that would encourage me to do more content like that In general Im not too caught up in the numbers
Its hard to quantify because the things you get out of a podcast or a live show are sometimesit might be an employee it might be a new best friend it could be a romantic interest it could be a new client It could be so many different things that you could get out of it and its really hard to assign Is this more valuable than that Its bringing stuff in so thats good
AUDIENCE IS KEY WHETHER YOURE IN MARKETING OR ART
I knew I didnt want to be a starving artist I wanted to run my art like a business and take it seriously Part of that was knowing that I needed to focus What do I make and who do I make it for That came from working in the marketing side of a ton of startups
Id meet a client and theyd want me to help with the user acquisition for their app through Facebook ads and Id say Okay what is your app and Whos it for Theyd tell me Its for everyone No Its not for everyone Lets get serious about this Thats not how it works
PROVE YOU CAN BUILD OTHER BRANDS BY DEVELOPING YOUR OWN
I realized my personal brand was important before I was painting while I was working in digital media and digital marketing I felt like one of the best things I could do to prove to someone that I can grow their brand is to have a brand that people knew So I focused on growing my Twitter really early in Twitters lifetime
Id been building my personal brand and when I switched at 30 from marketing to painting by focusing on tech companies it made my brand still relevant content to all my followers So it actually helped transition because most people that follow me on Twitter didnt start following me for my art They started following me because of the marketing content I would put out Im getting the benefits from the work I put in a decade ago
AIM FOR MORE CONSISTENCY AND LESS PERFECTIONISM WHEN CREATING CONTENT
Creating content at the same time every day was important I couldnt have done a daily show if I was like whenever I have time to record it today thats when Ill do my show Sticking to a time is good Late at night worked well for me because I didnt have distractions but you might be a morning person Find a time window that you can commit to and it doesnt have to be long Set aside 30 minutes and just try to get past those first 21 days 21 episodes
Something that Im always battling and I think a lot of creators are battling with is wanting things to be perfect before you put them out Im always trying to make myself more of a volume guy than a perfection guy because I think if I can just get in those reps the perfection will work itself out over time