Being ‘discovered’ needs two things: something to be discovered (i.e. making your work), and a way for it to be found (i.e. marketing your work). So much of modern marketing advice tells you to refine your audience, know who you’re talking to, understand your customer. But maybe there’s another way?
Jason Roberts’ concept of the luck surface area gives us a nice formula. The gist is that you increase your chances of getting lucky by doing what you love and telling people about it. It sounds deceptively simple, and it is, but it’s often easy to overlook when you’re simply just ‘trying to get noticed’.
If you’re making work and not sharing it, the probability of being ‘found’ is greatly diminished. Likewise, if you’ve only made one or two pieces and you’re sharing it like mad, the probability that the narrow range of one or two pieces will connect with the right person is also small.
A better approach then is to make as much work as you can, for yourself, and then yell about it from the rooftops while you continue making it. It may seem like a scatter-gun approach, and in some ways it is, you don’t necessarily know who will see it, and what they will like about it. But by increasing your luck surface area, and being open-minded about the opportunities that will inevitably come from it, you’ll be doing all you can. The rest is up to chance.