Dear friend,

The most important person to follow is yourself.

ACCESS

DOWNLOAD PDF: Don’t Care If You Have Any Followers or Not

SOCIAL MEDIA 101

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To follow your own gut. Your own intuition. Your own crazy ideas and ideals.

To not let any haters drag you down. Don’t let anyone try to restrict your flight.

1. You are a single origin espresso

You have a unique artistic vision. Don’t let anyone water that down.

If you were a lovely, single origin espresso (preferably from Ethiopia), would you want someone to pour a bunch of tap water into your sublime, golden crema? Hell no. You want yourself to be distilled, bright, acidic, fruity, and concentrated.

2. Most people don’t know what good art (or coffee) is.

Your artistic vision is concentrated. For people who cannot have an appreciation for good coffee, they will never be able to truly taste, experience, and appreciate your sweet and sour notes.

3. Do you value your art according to how many followers you have?

In photography, don’t take it too seriously. Don’t seek to get more followers. Who cares, and why do you care?

If you’re on your death-bed at age 90, are you gonna be able to die in peace, knowing you had a million followers? Is social media even gonna exist 20 years from now?

4. Be your own visual gardener

Be your own gardener. Tend to your own plants. Continue to enrich your own creative soil.

Don’t over-water your plants. Give them room and time to grow. Give them lots of sun, and lots of soil… in order to let their roots grow deep and strong.

Your creative mind is like a plant. You might be nothing but a small seed now, but you have the potential to be a massive redwood. You just need to be patient, and always gather more nutrition.

You gain creative nutrition by watching great cinema and film, consuming and reading great pictures, and also by having faith in yourself— faith in your own artistic vision and soul.

5. Where we’re going, there are no roads

Don’t care to look backwards to see if anyone is following you. Rather, be bold, and keep looking straight… into the distant horizon.

Or imagine yourself on a spaceship, exploring new hidden dark cosmos and space. Ain’t nobody following you.

Be a visual explorer. Be the one to build new roads. Or be the one to pave new paths.

In the future, there will be no roads in space. You won’t know what direction to go. But, you must have faith in yourself, to have the strength and courage to never stop exploring, creating, and understanding.

Be strong my dear friend, and always seek to first follow yourself. Your followers may come, or not. But what do you care? You have faith in yourself.

BE STRONG,
ERIC

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SOCIAL MEDIA 101

Empower yourself with social media and blogging:

• How to Get People to Unfollow You
• 50 Blogging Tips For Beginners
• The Social Media Blackbook for Photographers
• How to Start Your Own Photography Blog
• A Photographer’s Guide to SEO, Blogging, and Social Media
• How to Brand Yourself as a Photographer
• Advice for Aspiring Full-Time Photographers
• 1,000 True Fans
• The “10x Principle”: The Only Difference Between “Success” and “Failure”
• How to Become a Photography Teacher
• How to Teach a Street Photography Class
• Why I Teach Street Photography Workshops
• Trust: The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed as a Photographer
• Why Do You Need More Likes or Followers?
• Don’t Go Into Debt For Your Photography
• Instagram is Going to Be the Next Facebook
• Don’t Trust “Free” Photography Social Networks