Lately I’ve become dissatisfied with the way my social media is organized. Back in the day I made a point of separating my music making persona — at least the one that I use for most of my current creations — from my “conventional” life. At the time I thought this made sense. Who would want to listen to tracks made by someone named “Paul Frields”? Ugggh. My old nom de plume Stickster wasn’t great but at least it was recognizable and unique. And at least some of my friends would know that was me.
In the interim I’ve realized as I got better at making things and putting them out in the world, this separation wasn’t paying off. Whenever I release something my alter ego is the one that does it. Then I feel like a fraud when I “like” or share it on social media, like I’m astroturfing myself. Plus it’s twice the work, and it’s distracting when I’m trying to be creative. Every time I sit down in the studio I wonder whether I’ve properly publicized my work.
(I’m not all about the stats, I don’t live for that — I just love creating and sharing, especially now that I’m no longer afraid of doing so. But if you’re going to put out art you might as well announce it, otherwise you’re not sharing, just pushing bits.)
This past week I moved my YouTube channel presence around — demoting the channel where I release music to a secondary presence. My main channel now is the place where I plan to keep making videos, talking about what I’m doing behind the scenes. I’m still not sure this is enough — maybe I need to shift my whole presence to one chennel on YouTube. But it seems like it might be messy to have how-to videos scattered around with my actual released tracks.
Similarly, on X/Twitter, I got away from worrying about separating my content. I routinely act there as both a day-jobber and a creator, all under my Stickster handle. So maybe that’s telling me it’s the right way to go.
On Instagram and Threads, unfortunately, I missed out on the stickster handle long ago, but I have _stickster_ and that works out okay. But I also have my pfrields handle, and similarly I’m wondering whether it’s worth bothering to have both. That being said… getting people from one handle to another seems doomed to fail. On ancient Facebook I also have a separate personal profile and a business page, same story. (I don’t even know wtf to do about LinkedIn which is supposedly my “professional” contaacts — anything I share there about my true passions seems spammy and unwanted.)
I guess I need to go do some deeper, better research about what’s recommended — and how to leverage my profiles for the best results. Most of the guidance I saw on a cursory look was aimed at people trying to make creative work their main hustle — and typically young people. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still benefit from it.
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash.