Sketchbook pages of my doing Peter Han's excellent Dynamic Sketching course.
he Case Against Using Link-trees.
You know link trees: Instagram, and many other platforms, allow you to have one link in your bio. But you do so much! You have a YouTube channel. An Etsy shop! A website! And more!!!
Which link should you put there?
I know! Refer to a page with a list of all your links! A link tree!
That sounds like a good idea, right?
Imagine you are in a shop and maybe, you want to buy some product. Imagine that the company currently puts out twenty-four different versions, each with its benefits. Which one to choose? You are more likely not to buy anything because there is too much choice. Companies often have two or so options: a “value” and a “premium” version. The value option is the cheapest one, where you get good value for money, and the profit margin isn’t too great for them. The premium offering is for people willing to spend more money, and the profit margin on that can be higher. You are targeting it at less price-conscious people.
If you look around, you see it everywhere: economy versus business class in planes, regular hotel rooms versus suites, et cetera.
You can do that with your art, too. You can sell drawings relatively cheaply and make your paintings way more expensive. Or, if you teach, you can have a free newsletter, and there you can occasionally offer a paid course where people will maybe get more information or personal guidance and feedback.
Note: this newsletter will always stay free. This is my end-game! I just want to draw and get better at it, share what I learn, and have a creative outlet and a place to experiment with things.
But back to the topic: the case against link trees.
The problem with a link tree is that you make visitors choose, and they don’t know what they want yet. They will either have to visit every link or just leave.
It is far better to have one landing page where you explain what you do and give examples so that people can see if it is for them, and then at the end, at the bottom, have one what they call “Call To Action”—the thing you want them to do next.
You show them what you have for them, and then you say what you want from them.
In my case, I share letters with thoughts for artists, and you can find them in the newsletter archive on the website. My end game, my call to action, is to ask people if they want to join my newsletter so they won’t miss anything.
I know it isn’t easy. You are probably doing many things, and you want people to see it all. But try to distill it into the one thing you offer, the one thing they will get from it, and the one thing you ask of them.
In a sense, this is all that “personal branding” is: what do people think of when they think of you?
An example where I felt the person did it wrong was when the maker of a really popular blog on screenwriting suddenly posted that he had made an app for screenwriters. This was when making apps wasn’t as easy as it is now. And so that left me thinking; is he a great screenwriter, or is he a great programmer? My brain wanted to file him in one cabinet and didn’t know which one to file it in now.
Think about that thing you want to be known for, and make it all about that.