You may have noticed there was no blog post last Monday, and there was about to be no blog post today, either, because I’ve been traveling. I spent the last week in LA visiting family, going to meetings, and attending Podcast Movement 2022. And I spent most of last night in an airport (ugh).
Anyway, it was A Lot™️, and I’m not 100% sure my brain has healed enough for me to write you a coherent post, but here we go.
I acquired an interesting insight the first day of the podcasting conference, during Tom Webster’s excellent Infinite Dial presentation. He was in the midst of covering social media trends, and noted that many TikTok users enjoy the platform because (aside from a huge number of other factors) most people do not want to create content for it. They only want to watch the videos, to consume the media.
Basically, you can hang out on TikTok, watch a never-ending stream of entertaining videos, and never be made to feel as though you have to contribute. In a world where we’re constantly hounded to do more, produce more, be more, it’s honestly kind of refreshing.
I’m not saying that I like or dislike TikTok, or any other social media platform. I was simply struck by the phrase, “Most people don’t want to create [on TikTok].”
It was such a huge worldview shift for me, as I come from a world where most of the people I talk to are desperate to create. They read books growing up and now they must create them. They get up at 5am to add as many sentences as they can to their memoir, to scribble notes about their novel during lunch break. I am one of these people. And if you’re reading this letter, you might be one of those people, too.
Now, there is something to be said here about judgment, about feeling superior, about an “us vs. them” mentality that slips insidiously in when we look at people who want to create and people who don’t — but I don’t have the mental capacity to address that today.
Rather, I want to say that creativity is not a monolith. I think that we are all creative in different ways. Some folks like creating videos, while some are drawn to writing novels, and others bake wedding cakes, knit, crochet, paint, dance, and do any infinite number of creative things.
Yet over and over again during the conference, I kept hearing the question, “Do I (or does my podcast) need to be on TikTok?” and the answer was usually in the form of another question, i.e., “Can you afford not to be?”
It was disheartening for many conference-goers, who are already producing podcasts, writing newsletters, and churning out content for a growing number of social media platforms. TikTok feels like yet another hungry mouth to feed and honestly, it can be, if we let it.
You can be on TikTok if you find joy and rest in watching the videos. You can even create content/videos for it, if that’s how you would like to spend your creative energy.
But please remember:
- While your creativity itself is unlimited, you do have a limited amount of energy to expend each day on creative work.
- It’s easy to spend time and energy creating content with which to “feed the machine” instead of working on your actual passion project.
- Social media does not and cannot guarantee success for your creative work, though it can help you build your audience if done strategically.
- As with all social media platforms, you do not own TikTok, and if it goes away, you will lose the content you created and the audience you built there.
- No, you do not “have to be” on TikTok or Instagram or any other platform. But it might be a good idea to claim your name or project’s name there just for posterity. I wouldn’t want someone to look up “@sarahrheawerner” and find someone that’s not me doing embarrassing dances.
Social media can be a really contentious topic in creative spheres, and I’m not going to pretend to have all (or any) of the answers. At the end of the day, I can’t tell you whether you “should” or “should not” be on any given social media platform.
I can only encourage you to use your best creative energy on the creative projects that matter most to you, and to be gentle and gracious with yourself when you realize that we are not meant to Do All The Things™️.
Words & warmth,
Sarah
P.S. You can follow me on TikTok at @sarahrheawerner, if you want.
