Use social media as a playground not a prison

Give yourself permission. Choose yourself and your creative genius and you’ll be able to build from a place of joy and fulfillment.

Hi there!

I don’t know about you, but I am so sick and tired of the “follow-this-formula” type of marketing.

Having been an independent artist for nearly a decade, I refuse the idea that there is a specific way to get successful as a creative (financially).

In fact, as artists and creatives it’s more important than anything to apply our creative minds to the way we build out our ecosystems. Because they must be designed in ways that fit our personalities, energy levels, seasons and more in order for them to not deplete us in the long run.

Oh, and let’s not forget about flexibility to shift and change!

What worked last year may not work this year. And what worked before children will most certainly not work after children.

When I started my art career I was still at Uni and relatively speaking… I had no other responsibilities. It was easy to post everyday and just create whatever the heart felt called to create.

But with the years and added responsibilities (a home, a car, kids… you name it), it got increasingly more difficult to tap into the energy of the creative muse that I had taken for granted.

One example of what happened is that I more or less stopped to use Instagram completely. I’ve written about it before and how it was partly a result of our decision to not show our children online. Partly due to the growing NOISE about how I was supposed to 1) be a mother and 2) run my business.

At the time I had 200k followers on Instagram and had had multiple experiences of reaching millions of views for independent videos and I simply didn’t want to involve my child in that. Not only for her privacy, but also for mine…? I wanted to keep my art practice sacred for myself even though the noise told me otherwise (exhausting!)

Naively I thought I could keep going as usual… WRONG. Instead I went silent.

Thankfully it turned out to be a blessing in disguise

Because it showed me that business kept running as usual thanks to email.

Email and a proper funnel can hold you through seasons of less activity. But there will inevitably come a time again when those creative urges starts picking up and we crave expression and connection.

That’s the season I’m entering now.

It may be because I’m turning 30 in a couple of weeks.. Or it’s because my youngest crossed the 2-year thresh-hold a couple of months ago. But I’m ready. I’m ready to reclaim my artist voice fully and look at social platforms again for what they really are: Playgrounds.

It’s too easy to enter a platform and fall prey for the way the experts tell you how to use it. When in reality… IT’S YOUR CHOICE.

Nobody else can tell you how to use your voice or what will sit well in your gut.

What works for one person might not work for you, which is why I’m so incredibly passionate about the concept of following your gut and guiding other women in an intimate 1:1 setting (learn more here).

Especially for mother-artists.

We’re not only bombarded with noise around the artist life (urhm… When Will You Get a Real Job?), but also noise about how to be the perfect mother (yuk).

We don’t have to make 7-figures and follow bro-hustle-marketing in order to be successful. For the great majority of us, it will be enough if we make money to cover our bills and a little extra for buffert.

Yet we fall for it… That if we don’t keep up, or post a gazillion things in a gazillion places according to these trending formats and styles… Then we’re failures.

NO!

The only failure is to let the BS noise into your subconscious and distort your ideas around your self worth, including the value of what you’re creating.

What’s interesting is that the longer we wait to take action, or wait for permission (like the right time and place) to do something, the heavier it gets.

Two slightly controversial things that I’m currently doing, which goes against the typical “platform-how-to’s” are:

1. I’m building my own website to which I will shift my monetization efforts for Follow Your Gut. I will not turn off payments here just yet, but I am in the process of reorienting my entire ecosystem to server me better (emotionally, creatively and financially). A concrete example of that process involves choosing to drop the bestseller badge (which you can read more about here), as a statement to myself that I’m worthy regardless of a social status symbol. ALSO it’s worth mentioning that it’s a whole different deal to sell your art on your own website vs on a social marketplace like Substack (I’ll write more on this topic).

2. I didn’t post to Instagram consistently for nearly 5 years and decided to break the silence with a completely new format and simply going with the flow: because it felt fun!

I decided to jump and recorded this on a whim and hit publish to my account Petronella.art:

More often than not, the first post is the hardest. The results of the first post doesn’t actually matter, because it’s the action of doing it: of saying to the universe that HEY I’m doing this thing! That’s what matters regardless of the platform.

It shows you that you can do hard things. You can give yourself permission to make your own rules.

Fueled by the first post I felt called to play with a container that can hold the unfolding of my creative expression in a way that is freed from metrics based results.

So I posted this announcement today:

My only focus at this stage is to build an environment where my creative expression can flow and expand. It’s absolutely essential that the container, i.e. the goal of the project isn’t metric based as in “I want this amount of engagement” or “this amount of conversions”.

At this stage, the goal is to do it, which means that showing up for myself in this way means I’ve already succeeded.

Each stage and phase must have an appropriate mission attached to it to be in service of our work.

At the end of the day: You decide.

Closing in on a decade in the game, I know for a fact that things will change. Therefore there’s literally no point in trying to plan the perfect execution for how to optimize your socials, especially if you’re a creative intuitive woman (and mother?) who’s energy and capacity fluctuates cyclically, not just in relation to your children but also to yourself.

Let’s reframe the platforms we use as playgrounds. And yes, that includes Substack too!

• Need support to reframe your creative practise?

• Build your artist ecosystem?

• Learn to trust and follow your gut again?

• Or anything else you think we’re meant to do together?

Reach out! Send me a DM or answer this email.

You can read more about my 1:1 mentoring here.

Sending you love,

Elin x