Social Media Companies Don’t Care About Your Pre-Order

Let’s look at this conundrum that Dr. Joshua Wolrich (@drjoshuawolrich) has on Instagram.

He has 401,000 followers. Woo!
His Story on Instagram got 9,522 views. Yay!

Now, take 9,522 and divide it by 401,000, and you get 2.3% – that’s the percentage of his followers that saw his Instagram Story (sometimes called “impressions” in the biz).

It also means 97.7% of his audience didn’t see the story.

Are you okay reaching 2% of your audience on a given post?

Chances are your tour announcement, your pre-order going live, your new video, your last minute venue change isn’t seen by the majority of your fans.

But an email sent to your list of 10,000 fans with just a 10% open rate means 1,000 would see it.

An Instagram story to the same 10,000 fans with a 2% impression rate means 200 people see it.

Now, does building an email list of 10,000 fans take time? Absolultey it does!

But we’ve already spent hours every day on multiple social media networks trying to build a following (I’ve been on Twitter since 2006, say hi at @sethw)

Imagine if you spent the next seven months working on getting your social media following moved over to your email list.

It’s hard work, but what else you gonna do?

Start making dance videos for TikTok?
Figure out what the heck BeReal is?

Fuck that. Set up an email list, and start telling our thousands of followers to sign up.

QUICK BITS:

“I’d been looking for a simple way to share these shots alongside my music. 

As I started to think about how to best distribute this work, I craved a consistent space where I could calmly share my in-process and finished music, visuals, and thoughts in a more direct way than the usual channels allow for, away from algorithms. The technology never really existed in the way I envisioned it. That is, until I came across Substack, where I’ve been able to send you songs and visuals directly in a clean, minimalist format. Magic.”

From Matt of FogChaser who shares a piece of meditative ambient music and photo (and other goodies) every month in the FogChaser newsletter.

“Our audiences don’t care how much time was spent creating something. They don’t care if a piece is polished or it isn’t. They don’t debate 4K video vs. iPhone video or care if Photoshop or Canva were used to make a graphic. And, they especially don’t care if something went through a 100-person approval process.

Our audiences care if the content is interesting to them, period.”

From Jessica Smith who was the Senior Manager of Digital & Social Strategy for THE NEW YORK YANKEES.

GOOD TWEETS:

I know, I know… “email lists are for old people,” right? But the Olivia Rodrigo website has a newsletter link at the top of her page, and no Facebook button. Curious!

I’ve said before that ‘It’s Okay To Repeat Yourself,’ so don’t be afraid to Tweet more than once about your new video, your album from six months ago, or that song you love from three years ago – every fan doesn’t know everything you’ve done!