Marketing or invitations?
The Fox Gaze 🦊 #88
Sometimes I wish I had opened a small shop with a beautiful façade, the kind people step into just to see what it’s about because they were passing by and got curious. I have often considered opening a café for conversation and games, a space to host gatherings about writing and nonviolent communication, maybe also a place for someone to sit and read or even write. A library, perhaps?
Behind this dream, beyond the desire to create a third place, a space for community bonds distinct from home and work, lies the hope of escaping not only the online world, but also, and especially, online promotion.
I think about this often, but this week the idea felt particularly strong because I organized an open online gathering for Ninho, my writing workshop. As with every Ninho project, I worried about not finding people willing to participate. With so much happening in the world and demanding attention, who has the time and space in their life to dedicate two hours to a writing meeting?
Or worse: how do people even find out that this gathering exists?
As I write this, I still don’t know how many people actually came. What I do know is that people signed up after the invitation was spread not only through Ninho’s pages and networks on the internet, but also by people who already participate and know it, within their own networks – both online and real, living connections, outside the virtual webs of “influence.”
When I created Ninho back in 2014 and no one knew I did this kind of work with writers – well, I really didn’t at that time – the suggestion I received was to contact people individually and ask each for at least three other names I could talk to. It worked, and eleven years later Ninho is still here, still alive.
My problem with marketing is thinking of outreach as something disconnected from the relationships I keep with people. Yes, I want to reach those I don’t know yet, and yes, a well-placed ad can make that happen. And yet, there are so many people and relationships that could draw closer through connections that already exist, through passing by a little shop on the street and feeling curious enough to step inside, through hearing someone say, “I went to this gathering and I liked it”, that it seems necessary to remember, again and again, that promoting a gathering can also be simply making a good invitation.
With love,
Tales