You know how sometimes there’s a word or phrase you just hate but you can’t come up with a better alternative for it?
The word “content” is one of those in the context of “creating content.” Is there a less appealing thing to create than content? 🤢
And right up there with “content” is “personal brand.” Yeah, I hate it too. But it carries an intuitive meaning that we want to get across. What else would you call it when you create content 🤢 behind your name?
Well, I came up with a better alternative that I’m going to use, and I welcome you to do the same.
Instead of building a personal brand, I’m building a creative platform
I’ve already written quite a bit about my pursuit of creative independence. And for years and years, I looked at professional musicians and thought, “What an incredible life…just making your art, sharing it with people, and making a living that way…”
We live in an AMAZING time where creators of all kinds can have that type of life. To create connection with people through your work on your own terms.
To do that reliably, you need to build a mechanism to connect with people and share your work with them. A system or an ecosystem to maintain those relationships and reliably share your voice with the people that care about it.
That’s your creative platform.
Your creative platform is the mechanism you use to connect with your fans.
It may be your email list, your podcast RSS feed, your social media, your books, your YouTube channel…
And yeah, it might be tied to your name.
But by calling it a creative platform instead of a personal brand, you can remove the grossness from it. It’s less about holding yourself up as a selfish, “look at me” type of person, and more about creating a reliable way to get in front of people in order to share your work.
Not to mention, a lot of people are building creative platforms behind other entity names or even pseudonyms!
A lot of people stop sharing their voice because they hate the idea of creating a “personal brand.”
There is no shame in building a creative platform. It doesn’t serve you or anyone else to be a starving artist…if you’re starving, your work isn’t sustainable, and it’s likely not reaching people either!
You have a voice. You can use it and do a lot of good with it! And the larger, more robust, and more resilient a creative platform you can build, the more good you can do. Not just with your own voice, but by lending that creative platform to others too.