Make Scroll-Stopping Content

I graduated from art college in 2010. To prepare for my job hunt, I printed behind-the-scenes photos and concept art from my stop-motion film on glossy 8x10s and carefully arranged them in a big, physical portfolio. I'm probably part of the last cohort of students who graduated without social media handles. Instagram introduced video posts in 2013. These days, I've been reflecting on how portfolios have evolved since moving largely online. Physical portfolios were precious (the best of the...

I've previously mentioned that even though my YouTube channel has 1B+ views and 3.6M subscribers, I'm 'bad' at YouTube. All those views and subscribers have largely come from my short clips, meaning that there isn't an eager audience guaranteeing views on my long form videos. But if you've been following my posts, you know that I recently cracked the code: How Artists Can Win on YouTube My Artist YouTube Formula Worked Part of me being 'bad' at YouTube is that with all the impressive numbers,...

This week, I want to break down how I transformed my Facebook posting strategy from aimless to intentional. It’s a peek into how I approach content as a business, not just an artist sharing work. What Hasn't Worked I've increasingly dismissed posting on Facebook. However, I've occasionally been pulled back in due to their claim of 3 billion (!!) monthly active users. I have the content, so why not? Even though I've slowly grown my Facebook page to 645k followers, my posting strategy there has...

This is a modified version of an original post from February 22, 2024 The Dinner Table Test In my years of making videos and analyzing which were the most shared, I've found there's pretty much one major factor in determining the shareability of any post: the dinner table test. A cousin to the elevator pitch, it basically asks if a picture/video is simple enough to describe that you'd be inclined to bring it up in discussion at the dinner table. "Hey, did you see that video where the cat...

With AI's sudden rise, there's been a lot of discussion about how important 'narrative' is to artists and businesses online. Simply put, what's the story behind your content? For example, Wendy's has notoriously leaned into sounding like a snarky social media manager gone rogue from corporate headquarters. Given that my content is all about realistic magical effects and tedious stop-motion animation, I've specifically chosen to present a narrative of: a wizard casually filming himself on his...