We Are Media Makers
Whether we're confused by one word or the entire message, the anxiety that comes from misunderstanding someone else's language is incredibly frustrating.
— Abby Covert, How to Make Sense of Any Mess
Am I a “marketer?”
Very early in my self-employment, I was invited to join a networking event as a mentor at my alma mater. I remember introducing myself to another alumnus—or rather, I remember what he said to me once I'm sure I bungled my introduction. He replied, "Oh, so you're a marketer."
That response scrambled my brain a bit. Yes, I do marketing. But I'm not "a marketer." The title he'd defined me as didn't sound right to me. It wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right either.
That experience had to have been in 2011 or 2012. It was before terms like "influencer" or "creator" became common. Even "blogger" or "coach" wasn't super mainstream. The best term that guy had for me then was marketer.
It's worth noting that marketer didn't carry many positive connotations. Typically, you don't call someone who works in the marketing department of a company "a marketer." They are, but that's different from what the term means. I think—and this is speculation—he meant "direct response marketer." At that time, a direct response marketer would be someone who placed an ad in the back of a magazine or sent unsolicited mail to generate sales of a product of dubious value—often a pre-digital information product.
I honestly couldn't tell you if this guy was intentionally insulting me to my face or if marketer was, to him, a completely value-neutral term. For my sanity, I've chosen to assume it was the latter. All I knew then was that the term marketer made me uncomfortable—like an ill-fitting underwire bra.
Identity without terminology
It's an odd feeling to use words to describe yourself that others don't know what to do with. And I've tried out a slew of those words in the last 15 years: blogger, coach, strategist, educator, trainer, small business owner, entrepreneur, founder, leader, etc. Today, I mainly refer to myself as a writer, podcaster, and producer. Thankfully, those words are pretty recognizable across a wide swath of people.
But this question of what to call myself—and, by extension, what to call you—has been equal parts frustrating and fascinating. The question has been part of my own self-employment (another word!) since the jump. It's created plenty of confusion when talking about who my audience is or who an offer is for. But today, I find myself confronted by new lexical challenges.
Not so much on the what to call myself front. I'm pleased to be a writer, podcaster, and producer right now.
The lexical challenges are on the what to call you front. Because what I call you matters—a lot.
What I call you changes how you relate to my work, whether or not you think I'm talking to you or about you, whether you perceive yourself as included or excluded. When I talk about rethinking work, whose work am I rethinking? Which workers am I speaking to or about? What do I even mean by work?
Defining terms
On one of our first dates, my husband paused a conversation to "define terms." It was like music to my hyper-literal ears. Whenever we discuss big, potentially controversial, or otherwise fraught topics, we always pause to define terms. After all, we can only have a productive conversation if we know what we're discussing.
When we define terms, we’re not merely agreeing on a definition. We’re negotiating how we’re using words and what they mean in the particular context of the discussion. When I say "small business owner," what do I mean? When I say "feminist," what do I mean? Those terms have definitions, but how we use them varies across time, place, and relationship. They mean different things depending on context.
When it comes back to the questions of what to call myself and what to call you, I wrestle with a meaning and context that seems to lack an appropriate term. Instead of defining terms, I need to do the opposite—to “invent" terms defined by the evident meaning and context of this moment.
What term can I use to signify the meaning and context I'm trying to talk about? And how does that term connect to existing meanings and contexts? It doesn't matter if I find a “good" term for a particular meaning and context if others connect that term to a different meaning and context.
The names we give for things—especially ourselves—are more than a simple choice of words. They change our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to systems of power. Our identifying terms shape what we know and how we know it, what we have access to and how we access it.
Okay, that's very abstract. Here's the current naming challenge I'm wrestling with.
Who you are & what to call you
When I write about social media, I am aware that many different types of social media users read my work. There are small business owners who do marketing, small business owners who do networking, creators and influencers who do audience-building, and more casual users. Some people use social media for fun and others because they feel they have to. Some enjoy it, and others hate it.
The truth is that I'm less interested in the particulars of how any one type of person uses social media. I'm much more interested in how social media shapes, extends, or disrupts social and economic relations. The same is true of marketing broadly. How do various marketing activities shape, extend, or disrupt how we relate to each other and how value flows through systems?
As I revisit my past writing on marketing, I'm faced with my own evolving lexicon for who you are and what to call you. I can see those terms change as my relationship with you and how I conceive of our social and economic positions have changed. Part of my revision process must be finding a unifying vocabulary. I have to define terms and use them consistently.
Here's what I know:
The vast majority of readers/users will be self-employed in some fashion
Most see marketing and content creation as not their full-time job
All are subject to the social and economic forces of the current digital media environment
How media is created, distributed, and engaged with is central to how social structures, power dynamics, and markets form and persist
Wait. We need to define terms.
What is media?
It's not the media—as in the collection of organizations and independent journalists that report on and make sense of the world. Nor is media limited to forms like television, podcasts, articles, interviews, etc.
Media shape how we experience everything.
Let's use a straightforward example. I've worn prescription glasses since I was about eight years old. My glasses are a medium. They extend the ability of my eyes to see and make sense of visual stimuli. My glasses mediate what I see and how I perceive what I see. Without them, everything that's not a foot from my face is fuzzy.
Any form of advertising qualifies as a medium. Ads mediate certain conditions, turning them into problems to be solved by the products being advertised. For instance, there's an ad running on YouTube right now that starts out with a dude (technical term) incredulously asking, 'Are you still wearing layers just to go outside?'. Layers become a problem in the mediated reality of the ad—a problem that can be solved by purchasing the ad dude’s hoodie.
And here, I thought layers were the solution to variable weather conditions! Silly me.
Here's where I'm going with this:
You are a media maker.
You produce media that mediate others' experiences. You make "things" that shape how others perceive themselves, their challenges, their opportunities, and the context they find themselves in. You do this whether you think of yourself as a creator, a marketer, or a networker, and you do this whether or not you're promoting something.
You don't have to make social media to be a media maker. A Zoom chat is a medium. An event is a medium. A website is a medium. Any marketing activity I can think of involves making media.
Whatever you make can mediate (i.e., shape, change, make sense of) the way someone else sees themself and their world.
You are a media maker. That's an incredible opportunity and a massive responsibility.
That term—media maker—might not feel like it fits you. That's okay. Part of my job is connecting your experience and that identity. To demonstrate not only the descriptive nature of the term but also its invitation and creative potential.
That's the media I'm making right now.
What media are you making right now?
New Workshop: Remarkable Marketing Basics
When: Thursday, March 28 at 12pm ET/9am PT (90 minutes)
Format: Live Workshop (recorded), with slide deck & worksheets
Cost: Pay What You Want ($15 min), FREE for Premium Subscribers
The practice of marketing is all about connecting the right people with the right product at the right time.
Put another way, marketing is how a business connects with potential buyers, earns their attention, introduces its offer, and helps potential buyers evaluate whether its offer is right for them.
There are loads of possible ways to do this, and social media marketing is just one. And this workshop isn’t about social media at all.
This workshop walks you through:
the 3 critical building blocks of any marketing strategy: Discovery, Nurturing, and Evaluation
how to figure out where your marketing strategy is breaking down
and 2 of my favorite frameworks for creating remarkable marketing that resonates with the right people
