Building a Writing Career Without Social Media: Amelia Hruby on Creative Independence

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:00]
Well, hello, Amelia. Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am delighted to have you on today.

Amelia Hruby [0:05]
Lisa, thank you so much for having me. I am really excited about this conversation.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:11]
I am a huge fan of Off the Grid. It’s an amazing podcast. I’m telling all of you listeners right now, you need to go listen to this. I’m serious, because you are speaking to an issue that is near and dear to my heart, which is our relationship with social media, and how we, all of us, can consider it—especially if you have a business, and if you are a writer, like it or not, you have a business that you are running, and you have to decide, how are you going to navigate this. I always like to begin by giving my guests a chance to share a little about themselves. So, what would you like us to know about you and your podcast?

Amelia Hruby [0:50]
Yeah, thanks for that opportunity. I would love for people to know, I suppose, that I am a feminist writer and podcaster. I currently have my own podcast production company called Softer Sounds, and as you mentioned, through the studio, we produce my show Off the Grid, which I always say is about leaving social media without losing all your clients. But for folks tuned in here, maybe it’s about leaving social media without losing all your readers or new readers. The show is really about being a creative person on the internet and the ways to share our work and hopefully make some money without relying on these social media apps that can really keep us trapped in the algorithms, for better or worse, often for worse. So, it’s helpful to know up front that I have a pretty social media neutral perspective. If you’re listening to this and you’re on social media, that’s great. I’m not here to convince you to get off of it, but if you’re tuned in because you think maybe you want to be off of it, I’m really here to help you see the many, many pathways forward for all of us, including writers. I feel like writers and authors are always told you can’t leave social media, but I disagree, and so that’s kind of what we’ll be unpacking together today. And as Lisa has already said, if you’re into all of that, there’s so much more for you to uncover or explore on my podcast Off the Grid. We’re almost 100 episodes in now, including conversations with some really fantastic writers. So, lots there. But for now, I’m just pumped to see what we get to do here today.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [2:23]
I’m excited about this conversation, and I just want to say that is one of the things that I have loved about your podcast, is that it is social media agnostic. Like, you’re not telling any of us what to do. But what I do notice is that every time you have a guest on—you know, recently you had an influencer on, so that’s someone who’s on social media all the time. Every single guest you have begins to question their relationship with social media, which I love. And some of them say, like, I’m never going to leave. This is what I do. But you give us an opportunity to question that and say, is this really serving me, and if so, how? And how can I do this in a way that is not taking over my life or putting me in a situation where I’m dependent on these algorithms and on these platforms that I don’t own? So, if you have a newsletter, you own that content, but if you’re on any of the social media platforms and you have tons of followers, anything can change at any time. And what are you going to do with that?

Amelia Hruby [3:27]
Yeah, exactly. And I always like to say, you know, I’m a pretty vocal critic of social media companies and the people who own and run those companies, and I’m happy to critique them. I think it’s actually really important to do so, but I like to keep those critiques at the structural, systemic company level. I’m never here to critique anyone’s individual choices in relationship to social media, because this is the sort of broader system within marketing, especially within publishing, that we all have to navigate if we want our words and our work to make it out into the world. But just like you were saying, Lisa, like, it is also precarious for writers to build their entire platform on social media because it’s not an owned channel in marketing. Speak like the social media company owns your relationship with your followers, not you. And, because of many of the terms and conditions on these platforms, they can even make claims to owning your images or your words if you’re sharing them there. So, I just think there are a lot of reasons, even if you’re on social media, why you might want to build other places or channels or bodies of work—like, why you want to build all of that elsewhere, even if you’re still on the apps, because we want to be taking care of ourselves and our work. And I have to say, like, the social media companies are not trying to take care of that for us.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [4:47]
And I see so many writers who are trying to chase the algorithm and all the things that happen with that, and what ends up happening is that they’re putting all this work into learning whatever the new thing is, and they’re not doing their writing.

Amelia Hruby [5:00]
Absolutely. Chasing the algorithm will never lead you to your best work, in my personal experience or otherwise.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [5:07]
Absolutely, I totally agree. So, one of the things that I also love about your podcast is that you have this beautiful toolkit that gives us this list of things that we can do if we want to get off social media. You also share your own personal experience in the very first few episodes of the podcast about how you got off Instagram. And so, if people want to listen to that, they can listen to your story but tell us a little about this toolkit. Could you give us a little taste and give us some things we can do if we’re thinking about either shrinking our relationship with social media or we’re ready to get off?

Amelia Hruby [5:45]
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s probably helpful to know about me something I haven’t shared yet, which is that the reason I left Instagram is largely because I was super bummed out about how my first book and its promotion went there. So, I don’t come to this just as a marketer or podcaster. I’m also a published writer myself. My first book, 50 Feminist Mantras, was an illustrated journal that came out with Andrews McMeel in October 2020, which was a really tough year to publish a first book, but as I was promoting that book, I went all in on social media. I spent so much money building a brand, building a website, investing in social media strategy and photos. I was all in on Instagram, and my book did okay. I think it sold just over 2000 copies, maybe almost 3000, which, funnily enough, is about how many Instagram followers I had at that time.

But through that whole process, I became so disillusioned with social media, and everyone told me that Instagram was the way to sell my book, and I felt like it just didn’t work, and so I decided to leave social media six months after my book came out, because I realized it was not the path for me and it was not effective as a writer. It wasn’t doing what I needed it to do to help me promote my work. So, I think that’s just helpful to know that. That’s why I created this toolkit and this list that you’re speaking to, because in the process of deciding to leave Instagram, I had this mindset, or I had a lot of fear of like, nobody’s going to remember me, every reason to forget about my work. I’m never going to be able to sell another book. I’m never going to be able to be a writer, and so to help get myself out of that mindset, I wrote this list of 100 ways to share your work without social media. And that list became kind of the foundation of the toolkit and brings in all the strategies that kind of you have mentioned here.

I think that for me, when I think about marketing without social media, or if you don’t like the word marketing, just sharing your work without social media, I think that foundationally, an email list is always one of the first things that I help people build. And as writers, we should love writing emails, right? Or we can love writing emails. Emails are another form of writing. I always think it’s funny that, like, writers I will meet will be all on social media, making like a million videos about their work, and totally never writing a newsletter, even though writing is in our wheelhouse, right? So, I’m always here to say, like, having a newsletter, starting a newsletter can be very simple or very elaborate. It can be a creative newsletter where you share essays, or it could be more of a marketing one where you just straight up promote your work and talk about events or new books that are coming out. However you want to do it is fine, but I love starting with email and like grounding it in writing, and then the other thing I’m thinking about right now is kind of building a bit of a world of, like, tangible products and things around my work. I love marketing with like making stickers or zines or these other things that also feel very much related to the words I love, and how can I bring them into the world in different ways, other than just like the book, yes, that I’m working on. So those are, that’s kind of the story of the toolkit, and a couple of things from the toolkit that I’m focused on right now. Honestly, Lisa, I’m so curious, like, if there’s anything from the toolkit that you’ve tried out or loved, or if there are ideas that it sparked for you.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [9:09]
One that I did want to talk about is the whole concept of SEO, because I think that’s really important. I mean, I also liked the idea of stickers, of telling people what you’re up to—one of the things I really liked, and I was thinking about, “Am I doing these things?”—which is having authentic conversations with people, going to conferences, for instance, and participating, whether they’re online or if they’re in person, doing those kinds of things where you’re having these authentic conversations, having a Calendly and just having people come and let’s talk. I don’t have a Calendly that’s public, but I do regularly talk to writers, and I have different events where I’m talking to them and asking them questions and getting to know them, because I do think that’s really important to foster those conversations.

But when we think about Search Engine Optimization—womp womp—boring from those people, they’re like, “No, don’t say those things.” That is a whole rabbit hole that we could go down in terms of what it looks like. But you talk about SEO for your website, and how getting more people to come to your website is one of the ways that you can continue to connect with people without social media. Tell us why that’s important, because I think writers in particular need to know, because we resist it like nobody’s business.

Amelia Hruby [10:33]
Yeah, yeah. I’m happy to talk about SEO. And I also want to circle back to what you said about being in, like, authentic conversation with people. Something that’s really coming up so much already in this conversation is that I feel like as writers, we’re already strong marketers, even if we hate that idea or don’t think of ourselves that way. Like, in so many instances, marketing is about the power of our writing and how it can invite people in, or entice them to learn more about us, or make a connection with them, or share something valuable with them. Like writing can do all these things, and I personally do not think that marketing is like antithetical to our creative practice or to creative writing. I think that it’s all writing, and there are different ways we flex our skills, perhaps, or combine those interests in different settings. But, like writing a blog post for your website, or writing an email for your newsletter, or writing the next chapter of your book—like, it’s all writing. So, I think that that’s really important to remember. And, I say that because I want to empower writers out there to believe they’re already good at marketing because they’re good at writing, or they’re getting better at writing. If you’re working on the skills that make you a good writer or a good author, you’re already working on the skills that make you a good marketer. And that’s critical, so important.

I think that in terms of SEO, I like to take a very, like, stripped-down, laid-back approach to it. You could certainly spend tens of thousands of dollars hiring somebody to SEO-optimize your website, but I don’t think you need to, especially if you’re just starting out. When I think about SEO, I think about typically, like, three things. The first is, what are people searching for, and what do I want them to be searching for when they find me? So the first step of SEO is actually getting out of your own head and getting into the heads of, like, your readers or your colleagues or your potential clients, depending on what part of you know the industry you’re in, try to imagine what they need, what are the problems they have, what are the things that they want, and how can you answer their questions? That’s how you’re going to come up with those search keywords, and it’s helpful if you think from their perspective sometimes, right? You know, as a writer myself, like, especially with the current nonfiction book I’m working on, I wrote a whole draft where I just wrote it for me, and then I’m doing a whole rewrite right now where I’m really homing in on, like, who is my reader, and how can this be for them?

So marketing is the same way. You can write some blog posts that are just like personal and fun and interesting for you, but then when you’re working on SEO optimization, let’s do things for the reader, for the audience. What are they searching? So, the first step, the first of my three things, is to think about those searches and those keywords. The second is to write blog posts that answer those questions, and do it very clearly, and you can totally bring in your most creative self, your most descriptive writing. Here, it should be imbued with your voice. It should be fun to read. But the third piece, then, after you have thought about the keywords, written the beautiful post that answers those questions of the keywords, the third thing you do that I think is so easy and makes it SEO-optimized, but feels so scary—it’s like we just put in headings and bullet points. We take it from that, like, paragraphs upon paragraphs, essay you may have written, and we add some headings, H1, H2, different hierarchies of headings, and then we put some bullet points at the beginning and the end, like, “Hey, here’s what it’s going to come up in this,” bullet point, bullet point, bullet point at the end. Here’s a recap, more bullet points, and that will organize it enough that the SEO tools that sort of scrape your website to find out what information is there can tell what information is there and can help you start to appear more in search. So, that’s, again, a very basic approach. There are plenty of SEO experts out there who could help you get more detailed, but I find that it can be that simple in the beginning, as just like, think about your reader, what they want to know about, write something to answer their question, and then put some headings and bullet points in to create that organized structure, and you’ve already started to SEO-optimize your site. So hopefully, that kind of helps with the beginning of answering that question.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [14:42]
No, that’s an excellent answer, and I think it makes it manageable. And it was what I started with when I was first thinking about SEO and what I would say. And you sort of read my mind, you’re like, if you know you’re writing a book, you need to be thinking about your reader. And so if you are practicing thinking about your reader in terms of thinking about those keywords, like, what are they searching for, answering those questions, and then figuring out how you can format things in a way that’s going to allow the bots out there, you know, all of these computers that are scraping your information to do that, then you are making yourself more searchable, and you are practicing doing what needs to happen in your book. Because I talk to people all the time about how it doesn’t matter the genre, you are having a conversation with your reader, and you are answering their question, and you are part of a larger conversation of all the things going on around this topic. And so, the more you are training your brain to think in this way, the more you’re training your brain to create stories that do that work. And you can do it with all your flair, with any structure you want, but you know where you’re going, and it gives you confidence when you begin to market your book and you try to put it out on submission, whether you are going to small presses or you’re trying to find an agent, you know where you stand in that conversation. You know what your book is trying to do, and that makes all the difference.

Amelia Hruby [16:11]
I think that in some ways, like getting better at marketing is just a really great way to get better at like the other side of publishing, or, like, the other side of your book, right? The book process is all about like you and your relationship to your book for so long, but then once it’s published, it has a whole readership, and so you have to think about that readership before the book is published. You can’t get it published without thinking about them regardless. As you said, like you can’t go on submission. You can’t get an agent unless you’ve thought about who’s going to read this book, and I’ve just found, for me, like, I used to think of that almost with like, if I’m being honest, I’m like, animosity, of like, I should just be able to be in my creative process. Why do I have to think about all this other stuff? But something that’s really helped me reframe this for myself has just been approaching it through the lens of world building. And like me and my book and my readers are all in the same world, right? It’s not me or them, or me versus them or me begging them to read me, right? We all live in the same world, and my book is just one piece of that world, like all these blog posts we’re talking about, or like the stickers I mentioned earlier, all of that lives in the world too. And so, you know, I don’t want this to be overwhelming. It’s like, I’m saying you have to, like, write a book and build a whole world, but it is a little bit like you get to write a book and build a beautiful world around it and bring your readers into that process. And some of that is marketing, and some of it is writing blog posts, and some of it is like, it all goes together. And that’s the magic of being a writer who publishes books, like, if you don’t want to do any of that, just don’t publish your books. Just write them. You can stay in your creative zone forever. But if you are a writer who wants to be published, you’re also invited into this practice of world building and marketing. And I think that it’s it can be so much fun. That’s the other thing from the toolkit. Like the 100 ways list is about helping you find things that sound fun. So, you can do that, like, don’t do the marketing stuff that sounds miserable, do the marketing stuff that you can feel a spark of interest and joy in. Like, start there, and then you can build out into some of these other practices.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [18:12]
Another thing from your toolkit is, you know, having some swag. I was thinking about Laura Cathcart Robbins, who was on the podcast, and her publisher ended up offering these things to her, but you can create them for yourself. She had this beautiful water bottle, she had a little bag, and it had a picture of her book on it. And so, anytime you know she’s walking around, it’s right there, and that can start a conversation. So yeah, anytime you can build a world and then have conversations about it, that is the blessing of being a published author and sharing your work in the world. And so, I’ve told you that I have an ambivalence/hate relationship with social media. I know that there are times when it is necessary to have some level of engagement, at least right now, but honestly, I think over time, it’s going to go away for me, because it’s really a no inside me. I mean, that’s how it’s felt for the longest time. I do like doing targeted searches for the people that I care about and seeing what they’re up to, but doom scrolling or just mindlessly looking at reels sucks away so much of my time, and in trying to create social media content that has the chance at virality or is going to have this larger reach, it doesn’t do great things for my brain. So, tell me how your life has changed in a positive way as a result of being off social media. What’s your brain like, and what are you able to do without having to think about those things?

Amelia Hruby [19:45]
Yeah, well, first, I just want to empathize with your experience. I think social media is overwhelming for almost everyone, definitely for anyone who’s pressed play on this podcast episode. So, when we feel those things, I think it’s important to begin with, just like a deep breath and like a pause, right, like a literal like inhale and exhale, because all those feelings, like they live in our body, and they make us, I find really tight and crunched and like nothing feels like it can flow. And, of course, that’s the opposite of how we want to feel in our writing, where we can hopefully find flow and the words flow and all of that.

When I left social media, I think there are two sides to what I always like to say here. One is that I am so much more present in my life. Yeah, I just like, don’t have so many of the concerns that my peers and friends on social media have. I don’t get as sucked into doom scrolling spirals as they do, and all of that feels really good.

The other side of it is leaving social media is not going to solve all your problems, right? So, I don’t like to over promise here either, like, has it radically transformed my life in the best ways. Yes, absolutely. And, do I still have problems? Do I still get anxious? Does all of that still happen? Like, yes, 100% it’s a both/and here. So, when I first left, I really discovered that I had this, like, huge influx of creative energy. Because Instagram, the primary platform I was on, was a really big creative outlet for me. I mean, I was creating so much content for Instagram when I was promoting my book. We’re talking about, like, multiple posts a day for months. So, when I wasn’t putting that into Instagram, I suddenly had all that creative energy to go other places. So, my first, like, three to six months off Instagram, I was writing all these blog posts, I was sending all these email newsletters. I was like, riding this huge wave of that creative output, and then over time, I describe it as, like, I came back to a human pace, or like, I found my pace for the first time, and I got in touch with like, what are my actual rhythms as a creator? Not the rhythm I have to maintain for the algorithm, not the rhythm that feels forced upon me by the industry, but like, what is my actual rhythm? How do I actually create? What are the formats that actually inspire and excite me? And there was definitely this, like, big eye-opening moment where I was like, okay, wow, if I’m not so trapped in the box of like posts, likes reels, you know, IG lives, all this stuff. Like, there was this sort of funny moment where I was like, oh, I can do anything. Like my writing could take any form. I can do anything. And that was a really nice feeling to have. And then, of course, over time, like, all the regular stuff comes back. I still get blocked in my work. I still struggle with anxiety sometimes, or self-doubt, like all of that’s still present, but I think that what has happened, more than anything, is like, that’s not happening to me because of something I see on social media anymore. It still comes up in relationship to my work. But it’s not just because I saw somebody else’s post and was like, oh shit, they got a six-figure book deal, and I haven’t yet. So now I need to feel horrible for two weeks like that never happens to me anymore, because I’m not engaging in the platforms in that way. So, I’m able to stay much more centered in my own experience and much more in touch with my own experience, and I transmute my own struggles, I think, with more ease, because I’m with myself, rather than, like, with 1000s of people I’m following online.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:24]
Yeah, so there’s lots of openings, and it does not necessarily solve everything. I have two questions for you, and so I’m going to share them together, and if you forget, I will remind you, because it’s hard to keep all of this in your mind when, especially when you’re in a live conversation with someone. So, in a recent episode, you talked about that one of your pet peeves, because you’re hearing it all the time, is ROI, like ROI return on investment. People are always talking about that in business and how that’s really bothering you. But a question that came to my mind as I was listening is, what is the ROI, the return on investment for your presence? And you’ve answered some of this, but I’m wondering, is there anything else you want to say about that as a way of saying like, yes, this is the great part, and one of the things that can happen when you are off social media is FOMO, fear of missing out. And how are you combating that or living with it as a person who’s not on social media?

Amelia Hruby [24:26]
Okay, both great questions, and I feel like they speak to different aspects of our social media experience. So let me start with ROI. So, I will say that, like, I just—I think it’s like a pet peeve of mine when we only focus on ROI. I have no problem with like, a general conversation around it, but I think that if we are solely focused on the return on investment for every choice we make, we, A, have to kind of lie to ourselves, because we can’t know what’s going to happen, right? We’re all projecting into the future; there is no guarantee that you will get the return on investment that you plan for or anticipate, or even are promised. Yes. And so I think that a sole focus on ROI kind of traps us in this loop of our expectations that I have found is very unhelpful if you’re a creative person, because we have to be willing to create the work without knowing what’s going to come from it, and we have to be open to all of our expectations being exceeded. And I think that ROI sometimes can be a way of like dampening the expectation or being so literal about it that we can’t be surprised or delighted by what actually happens, because we’re so solely focused on that return we were promised or we’ve projected. And so that is kind of my issue, my pet peeve with ROI. I understand how it makes sense in a business context. I don’t think it really makes any sense in a creative context, when you’re merging those in creative business. I just don’t know that it’s like the most helpful thing to be focused on.

The reason I think this relates to social media is because social media provides so many metrics around our marketing that we can become very metrics-focused, as if the metric is the return that we want. So instead of being like, I want to write a book and publish it, and I would love if I heard from a few readers about how much it meant to them. Instead, we’re like, I’m going to post about my book today, and I hope that it gets 100 likes. Yes, and actually, like, 100 likes and hearing from readers are not the same thing. They’re not the same type of validation, they’re not the same type of connection. And I think that social media and ROI there just really warps what we think is important about writing or publishing. Also, because those 100 likes do not necessarily translate into any book sales at all. And so, I think that this is sort of my issue with ROI in terms of your question around like the ROI on presence? Well, I honestly don’t really think of it that way. My friend and Off the Grid guest Amelia Knott wrote a beautiful book called The Art of Thriving Online, and she talks about, I think, actually quoting another podcast guest of mine, Pascale Cote, about reframing KPIs instead of being key performance indicators being key presence indicators. And that, I think, is a beautiful reframe. It’s like, it’s not about the performance, it’s about how present we could be with the process. Like, am I with my work every step of the way? And that, again, like, is anti-ROI, because ROI is requiring us to project into the future and think of only about the return, but a key presence indicator is about staying with ourselves through the process, being present with it. And I find that how has that like changed for me since I’ve left social media, I’m just so much more present in what is happening in every stage of my creative practice and creative process. And also, I think I am much more—I’m like, focused on the results. I actually care about the things that actually matter to me, like my book having a beautiful cover. I care about that more than I care about, like that book cover being in 200 Instagram posts. Yes. And so, I’ve been able to kind of shift that. And, I think that it’s not just that I’m more present. There’s like a texture here that I’m trying to feel into what it means. Or there’s something around, like, the ROI on presence, or the key presence indicator keeps me from getting so like, like, the colloquialism I’m coming up with is like, lost in the sauce. But that’s not quite the right phrase that I want, but it’s just that, like, I feel like my attention is focused on the things I want it to be focused on, not the things that everyone else tells me are important. Yes, about my book or my business, or my book and my business, and that has been such a valuable shift for me, and I think has been a huge difference between putting out the book that I put out almost five years ago now and then thinking about my next book that I’m hoping to publish this year.

And then how that relates to FOMO. Well, I think that it’s so interesting to think about FOMO now for me, because FOMO was a huge part of my social media experience in the earliest years of it. Like when I really was, especially when I was younger. Was in my early to mid-20s, I like used social media to see what other people were up to, and then feel bad if I wasn’t up to stuff like they were. I think that these are actually kind of related in the sense of like, I didn’t have any FOMO leaving social media, and I don’t experience FOMO now, because as tired as this sounds like, I just love my life, and I’m not so concerned with what other people are doing in their lives, unless I know them and we’re in relationship and I want to hear about it. Yes, but being off social media has made it much easier for me to loosen my grip on what I call, or many people call, the “Compare and despair” cycle, which I think is closely related to the fear of missing out. I’m just not—not holding on to those, like, measuring sticks of like, here’s how I measure and here’s how other people measure anymore, and that allows me to care less if I am quote, unquote missing out on something someone else is doing, because I like the things I’m doing, and I trust the path that I am on. So that’s kind of my way. I guess we could say, I’m like wrapping this whole ROI and FOMO conversation into Pascale’s idea of KPIs as key presence indicators. And there are lots of episodes of Off the Grid, if people want to get even more into that as well.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [30:34]
I love thinking about how being off social media allows you to engage in life in a richer way and to love your life. And what was coming to mind as you were talking is that we’re recording this in March, and we’re recording this just before the AWP conference. So that’s the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference, a huge writing conference. And what I have seen year over year is that those who don’t go see the photos on social media of the people who went and before they had chosen not to go for a wide variety of reasons. And I tell people, AWP is something you only want to go to if you have a reason to go, because it’s so huge, it’s easy to get lost. But once they see that, then they’re disappointed in their own lives when they may have had a great day or had a wide variety of wonderful things happen, it’s like, oh, but my life wasn’t like this. And so yeah, shifting that paradigm and finding those places where you can love your life and define what that is for you, and then have those ways of authentically engaging is really important. And one of the things I was listening to one of your episodes, and it was about being seen and how that’s one of the, maybe the false metrics that we can fall into with social media, is this belief that, oh, if I’m out there, and especially if I have the likes and I have, like, the vanity metrics that are going to show that I’m being successful online, that it’s a way of being seen, and that’s not necessarily the case. How do you handle that in your own life, in terms of feeling like you are still seen, and how are you seeing others in a richer way?

Amelia Hruby [32:18]
Yeah, I mean, it’s a huge question, so let me try to break it into a few pieces. I think that when we talk about being seen or feeling seen, there are two different layers that I want to sort of separate here. One is like our deeply personal, emotional human need to be seen, right? We want to be seen and feel seen in our relationships. We want to feel like we belong. All of these, I think, are like core human emotional journeys that we each go on. And I think that many of us have turned to social media to feel seen, and aspects of our identity that perhaps we don’t see modeled, or we can’t find people to relate to in our offline lives, and so social media can be a really, beautifully powerful tool for seeing ourselves and feeling seen in the aspects of our identity that may be overlooked or may be straight up, like rejected or discriminated against in a broader context. And I don’t want to diminish that, and I think that that’s really important. And also, I think that if we only ever feel seen online over time, that feeling becomes like kind of desiccated a bit. It’s like not fully satisfactory, if we don’t have those deeper, tangible, literally, like in-person relationships that also meet us where we’re at, or help us feel seen. So, I think that’s one stage of it, and ways I’ve done that.

I mean, I do so much just making friends, largely on the internet. Honestly, I don’t live in a place where there are a lot of people who care about the exact same things that I do, but I meet people online, then I go visit them, or we have phone calls, or we, like, kind of bring our experience and our relationship offline together, and that’s how I feel seen without social media. I think the other layer of this conversation is about visibility, and that is more of like, a broader like, I want to be visible to a larger audience so that I can sell a book or, like, make money in this way. And that is related to this conversation around feeling seen like visibility taps into our deepest needs, and often our core, like wounds around belonging and being seen or witnessed, especially as it comes up in like a family context and in our, you know, youngest years, many of us carry deep wounds around not feeling seen by our families or not being cared for in the ways that we needed and that all can come out to play when we talk about visibility.

But when we’re looking at visibility, we’re talking about building an audience, or being in front of a larger audience. And an audience building is different than relationship building. It’s happening on a different scale. It’s one to many, not one to one or one to few. And so, when I think about visibility without social media? Well, then I’m thinking a lot about where the audience is gathered, and where can I go and be with them, and, then how can I start to build my own audience and bring people toward me? So, visibility has these real, these like dual emotions, of like, I have to go out in front of other people, and I have to bring people toward me. And I think that that’s a lot of work to do when you’re also, like, trying to write your book and hang out, like, hang out in your creative process. But I was just thinking, like, bringing this back to our conversation around, like, ROI and FOMO. And then I said earlier I was going to way wrap back in, like, authentic conversations and relationships. I think it all starts small. Like sometimes when we’re thinking about feeling seen or being seen, we jump straight to that, like, I need an audience of millions of readers, or like we look at Elizabeth Gilbert, we’re like, I want to be her, but I’m over here with my audience of three readers right now, right? So, it’s like there’s a big, huge distance between those two things, right?

And so, I think that we start on that interpersonal relationship building level, have conversations with people who read your book, move out of the broadcast model of communication. Because what I see far too many people do is, you’re a tiny just getting started writer, or you’re an established writer who has a small audience, but all you ever do is broadcast at people. You get on social media, you put these posts out there. You never have those one on one or small group conversations. You don’t do the book events. You just go to these like massive conferences and feel invisible there. But none of that is actually building relationships, and that’s where it all starts. And as you build more relationships, you can really step into visibility, because now you have relationships that will put you on a bigger stage. They’ll put you in front of people who will put you in front of their audience. And you can start to get that momentum. And that is how visibility grows. It starts in those like interpersonal moments, where we feel seen and see other people, and then it builds into the more of the visibility and the audience building. And so, I think it’s just really important to like, know that it’s both, and know what stage that we are at, and cultivate those skills over time too.

Because the other thing people don’t anticipate that I will share from firsthand experience is that we have to kind of expand a window of tolerance for visibility. If you go from an audience of three to an audience of 3 million overnight, your body cannot handle it like it does not work. And this happened to me last fall, when I had the amazing experience of being a guest on We Can Do Hard Things, which is Glennon Doyle’s podcast, and was a huge opportunity for me. I mean, they have, I don’t even know, 100 times, 1000 times, 10,000 times the audience that I have. And my body was so panicked because I’d never spoken to that many people before. I’d never put my work on such a public stage. And so far in my career, my audience has grown very organically at a pace that my nervous system could keep up with. But that was just this moment where I was way outside of my window of tolerance, and I had to figure out how to handle it. And I think that we don’t talk about that enough in these conversations like I can just imagine so many listeners here who have, like, been to a workshop on how to like, grow your audience, but have not thought about any of these things around the levels of like, how to feel, seen the core wounds that come up with that, ways to heal those, how to build relationships, how to move into audience, building like, it’s a very slow, step-by-step process that we could take in our own time, and that I think we’re actually better served moving through slowly than like, the sort of like viral social media fame, success path we’re told we should want.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [38:40]
I love that you said that because that is what I work with people on all the time. Yeah, because we do need to move at a speed that our nervous systems can handle. Because, yes, in terms of outward success, having something go viral can seem great for about three seconds. That’s about how long it’s going to feel great. And then we have to deal with the fallout of what is it like for us to be seen, and how are we going to handle that? So, building an organic audience slowly over time is actually going to serve you so well and you know that that audience is going to be there. Because I think one thing that can happen, especially if you have skyrocketing success, you can also have skyrocketing fallout, and you can have people who aren’t there anymore. And I noticed that one of the things that you’re doing is you have a group that’s starting in March, and your episode, unfortunately, is not going to air for a little while, but you’ve you are building community, and you’re like, hey, come write with me. Let’s have this co-writing space. Let’s be in community together. Let’s continue to have conversations. I think that is a wonderful way to have that both and right. I am in a creative space. I am tapping into that energy, and I’m getting to know my audience and the people that care about my work.

So, I’m going to end with two questions. You have a book that is in the process. You’re—I don’t know how much you want to say, we talked about it, but I want to give you a chance to say where it is in the process. But as you think about this book, and you think about where you are now, which is not on social media, versus where you were with your first book, which you were on social media, what’s one thing you’re thinking about doing to market that in a new and fresh way?

Amelia Hruby [40:31]
So, I’m currently working on a book called Your Attention is Sacred, Except on Social Media. It’s at a kind of funny stage in the process right now, where, as we’re recording this, I’m awaiting an offer from my publisher. Just to get briefly into the weeds for all the writers out there, my first contract had a right of first refusal clause in it, so when I went to write another book, I had to send it back to my first publisher. I actually thought I was going to self-publish this book, and I still might. By the time you listen to this, it may be that I am self-publishing this book. But I’m kind of sitting with this question of, what do I want to do? Do I want to publish traditionally again? Do I want to go into self-publishing and do it my own way and take on all the work that that requires? And I’ve had both experiences before, because my first book, I actually self-published it first, and then it was picked up and republished by the publisher. So, I love every aspect of the publishing industry and of the writing and the publishing process, and I’ve done it myself, and I’ve done it with industry support.

And I think there are pros and cons for both in terms of how I’m thinking about promoting this book. I mean, I know your question was like, what are fresh ways that you’re thinking about doing this? But I think that part of me wants to be a bit of a like curmudgeon and say that, like, I’m doing a lot of the tried-and-true stuff that I think does work. So obviously, I have an email list and a podcast of my own that once the book is officially official, however that happens, we’ll be promoting those things. We’ll be pushing pre-orders. We’ll be inviting people to support in different ways, but I’m also taking my own advice around world-building. I’m thinking about like, what are the zines? What are the stickers? What are the, you know, people? What are the products that I can wrap into this that make it feel like a book, but also more than a book? And I’m thinking about all the relationships that I have and have built, and how can I activate those people to be talking about the book, sharing the book, and putting it out there? And for me, those people are not influencers that I’m like, sending book boxes to or something like that. They are people I know and love and care about.

I mean, as I said already, you know, my podcast Off the Grid has almost 100 episodes now. The majority of those have been interviews. That’s a whole group of people that I’ve gathered and nurtured and created, who all have their own platforms, who can all help me promote the book. I also think that that strategy is just what will carry me through. So, for me again, it’s email, it’s podcast, it’s cross-promotion, and it’s world-building, fun things, books like stickers and flyers and zines and other stuff I can create around it, and maybe there will be something fresh, I don’t know. I mean, I do love like, everything I do is built in relationships. I’m a huge fan of building a business centered on relationships. And I think there could be some fun ways I’ve been experimenting with like, the idea of like, is there a little newspaper that goes out to people who sign up for a list, and that has things in it. When I’ve thought about self-publishing the book, I’ve thought about like, do I put a page in the back that’s straight up, like ads? Do I sell ad space inside my book? Which is a fascinating question for a book about attention to begin with. But like, you know, there’s so many different things that could happen. And I think, like, which lane I choose will determine where I take that forward and how I do that. I’m also thinking about events. I’m thinking about trying to do some things in different cities. And I think because I’m a business owner and a creative person, I also just feel very empowered to do it all myself. And I think that because I’ve had experience with the publishing industry before, my expectations are set correctly. You know, I don’t expect my publisher to send me on a book tour. No way in a million years is that going to happen. But might I do it and self-fund it, or crowdsource fund it? Yeah, I very well might. And I just feel so empowered to do that. I’m not spending any time being caught in the loop of like, oh, I wish I could have that, or I wish my publisher would do that for me. I’m just like, no, if that’s something I genuinely want, I will sit with it and decide if I genuinely want it, and if I do want it, then I will make it happen. And that is how I think about marketing the book overall. It’s just like, what are all the fun ways I can get this in people’s hands? And let me tell you, like, posting on Instagram is not a thought, because I’m not on social media, but B, like, it does not sound fun at all. So, like, I’m not going to make that my strategy.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [44:42]
And what I would say is that even though you said these are tried and true, and I would agree with you, these are tried and true, the concept of building a world around your book, I think, is something that most people don’t think about, and then thinking about all of these other ways that we can get our books out there. What are the fun things you could create—stickers, the bottles, the book bags, all the things that can get the word out there and do it in a way that is not online? Well, I’m going to ask you one last question. What is one way that you nurture your resilience and nurture yourself that people might not expect?

Amelia Hruby [45:27]
What’s coming to mind is that I think that if you listen to me in this episode, or if you go listen to Off the Grid podcast, it’s possible to take away that like I am just a person who has all their shit together and can do everything myself, and I just want to, like myth-bust that, because it’s absolutely not true. Like the way I nurture my resilience is that I feel incredibly well supported by a web of people I have gathered around me, and I reach out to them regularly for support, and I offer them support regularly. So, the ways I nurture my resilience off social media. I mean, honestly, it’s literally just a million group chats and voice message conversations. I have friends I voice message every day. I think of them as my self-employed co-workers, like we just talk through things, and we’re there for each other, and that is what makes me resilient. I do have, like, a well of resilience within myself. I’m not saying I’ve outsourced it to other people, but I also don’t feel like I have to or I only can rely on myself, like I believe that there are other people who can be resilient for and with me, and that makes me definitely feel like I can do anything, as I seem to have claimed in this episode.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [46:39]
Well, I believe that you can do anything, and I love that you’re focusing on connection, because that is truly one of the things that helps us, whatever the storms are or the successes we have in our lives. So, if people want to listen to Off the Grid, they want to connect with you, what are the best ways for them to do that?

Amelia Hruby [46:56]
Yeah, so you can find Off the Grid anywhere you get your podcast. Typically, if you search Off the Grid: Leaving Social Media, it’ll be the first result. You can also find our website at offthegrid.fun, which has information about the podcast and my membership and everything that I do related to leaving social media or stepping back from social media. And if you’re interested just in my work, you can find me at ameliahruby.com, that has links to my first book, as well as all my podcasts. There are many of them and everything that I am up to. So that’s probably the best places to find me are ameliahruby.com and offthegrid.fun.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [47:32]
If you were listening and said, “Hold on, I didn’t get a chance to write that down,” everything is in the show notes, so it is very easy for you to get. Well, thank you so much, Amelia, for being on the show today. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Amelia Hruby [47:45]
Thank you, Lisa, this has been so great.