Before you post anything

Most artists start posting and then work out who they are in public, over about two years, in front of everybody. It is survivable. It is also slower than settling a few things first.

Two of those things are worth an afternoon each.

Find out what level you are actually at {#your-level}

There is a ladder here, from somebody who makes music at home to somebody whose name is the reason a room sells out, and every rung has a different next move. Doing rung six work on rung two is the most common way independent artists waste money.

The way to place yourself is to ignore the numbers you can influence and look at the ones you cannot.

Does anyone you do not personally know come to a show? Does anyone play the record more than once? Has anyone asked you to play, rather than you asking them? Has anyone paid you, in any amount, for the music itself?

Four honest answers and you know where you stand. And knowing where you stand tells you what not to do: if nobody outside your friends is at the shows yet, a publicist is not the problem you have. If people are coming and nobody is buying anything, a publicist is not the problem either. The rung you are on decides which lever is even connected.

Nobody enjoys this exercise. It is still cheaper than a year of the wrong work.

Four decisions, not a brand book {#four-decisions}

Then there is the brand question, which people either skip entirely or turn into a forty-page document that never gets used. Neither is right. There are four decisions and they fit on a page.

Who you are when the music plays. Not your personality. The version of you that the songs come from. The outsider, the romantic, the wind-up merchant, the one who tells the truth too plainly. Pick one. It is a lens, not a costume, and it decides what you say yes to.

What everything looks like. Two or three colours, one typeface, one way of shooting photographs. That is it. Consistency here is worth more than quality here, because consistency is what makes a person recognise you in a feed before they have read a word.

Three things you talk about. Not thirty. Three. The music, and two other things you can talk about honestly for years without getting bored. Every post is one of the three. This is what stops the account drifting into whatever happened that week.

Where you want people to end up. One destination. The list, the show, the record. Everything you post either moves someone toward it or is a rest between the ones that do.

Why this order {#why-this-order}

Level first, brand second, posting third.

Level tells you what work is worth doing at all. The four decisions tell you what to make. Posting is what is left, and it becomes easy once the other two are settled, because most of what makes posting hard is deciding, and you have already decided.

Your move. Answer the four level questions honestly, then write the four brand decisions on one piece of paper. Keep the paper somewhere you can see it. Almost every content question you have this year is answered on it already.