SOCIAL MEDIA DOESN’T DESERVE ALL YOUR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

Someone told me this decades ago, when I was running my first music blog;

“I know I can come back to the site in an hour and something new will be posted.”

The websites we visit most frequently are updated frequently.

When I ran Noisecreep for AOL Music there was a time when we posted 20+ times a day.

That got a lot of people to the site.

Your social media feed is updated basically every second.

We post to social media several times per day, or at least a few times a week.

Meanwhile, our websites collect dust.

Then, when a casual fan finally visits your site, they see old products and out of date photos. Then they bounce.

Why am I harping on websites so much when I mostly talk about email newsletters? Because getting people to your website on a regular basis makes it easier to get people to sign up for your email list.

Instead of freely giving Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk all your “exclusive” content (which they monetize, then turn around and charge you to reach your followers), publish the bulk of your work on your own website.

Don’t ask for an email address on the first date.

Show off your fine qualities on your website. Update it often. Feed it your videos, your quips, your rants from Twitter.

Get someone to visit a few times. Maybe they buy something and opt-in to your email list.

Then you can reach that fan without worrying about social media algorithms.