Back in September last year, I wrote a piece called “The Platespinner”, in which I gave my thoughts on Creative and Social Media fatigue. I also gave the opinion that…

if you divided an NFT artist or creator's time up into percentages, if we are being honest with ourselves, unless they already have a thriving successful career with a captivated audience, the "creation process" is perhaps 35-40%. The remaining 60-65% is marketing…

However, recently I’ve realised this ratio misses out a vital piece of the creative pie - Interaction & Engagement.

During the Bright Moments pre-launch event for View.art last week, I got chatting to a few people about how they market themselves and what sites they use. From Instagram to Facebook, Tik Tok and Twitter, the conversations primarily circled around content creation. It dawned on me that actions such as engaging with your audience and interacting with fellow users was hardly mentioned. And yet, in order to truly build a core community, that community should feel welcome and wanted.

I took some time to reflect on how I had utilised that 65% over the past year, and it all came down to posting, posting posting. Making short videos, uploading images, talking on spaces, answering open calls, joining new platforms, writing update posts here on Substack.. all in a bid to branch out to find a wider audience, but very little time ever felt left over to engage and communicate with it.

I was so focused on creation & promotion, I had no time (or energy) left for conversation.

If I’m not taking the time to comment and engage with other people’s content, how can I expect them to do the same for me?

The thing is, I feel like as creators, we have been conditioned by social media to solely focus on pumping out marketing “content” in a desperate bid to compete and succeed in an oversaturated ecosystem, moreso than we have been to communicate and grow with each other. Not only that, but the type of content we release has to cater to what users accept as the optimal norm on that platform, all thanks to our socially engineered, highly condensed attention spans.

It used to be that 10 minutes was seen as the ideal video length, the typical threshold before viewers tended to switch off. Now, with YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Tik Tok and even Snapchat, we are frantically compressing information into soundbytes that often barely last 60 seconds. Yet instead of the core message being concentrated and intensified too, it’s usually diluted to the point it loses much of its potential impact.

The impact this has on the viewer is staggering. Not just because in the downgrade in thoughtful, well crafted content but also because of the Quantity-Over-Quality dynamic it creates. It results in a barrage of media, an onslaught of sensory short jabs from all sides, and our only defense mechanism is to “Doom Scroll” with the punches instead of consume and digest with consideration.

Is it any surprise that users aren’t commenting as much? We need to break out of this unsociable cycle. No one is talking. Actually, thats not true. We’re all trying to talk at the same time, but how many of us are willing to listen, and decypher the cacophony?

Now don’t get me wrong. Whilst I have been known to Doom Scroll, I’m not advocating for the destruction of such shortform content! I do however think we should make an concerned effort to both create and consume a balanced diet of media that enriches our minds, instead of smoothing our brains.

The World Wide Web is more than just a digital dumping ground, a tangled net above a virtual abyss…

When I wrote “The Platespinners”, I suggested “the "creation process" is perhaps 35-40%. The remaining 60-65% is marketing”.

I now feel that there are 3 equal slices of this pie, with 1/3 for Creating, 1/3 for Marketing, and 1/3 for Interaction and Meaningful Engagement.

Building a brand involves a high level of market awareness and social presence. But growing an audience requires genuine interaction, willingness to listen, and engagement with users who make the effort to comment & contribute.

Isn’t that what we truly want as creators?