FIRE YOURSELF AS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Hi, it’s Seth Werkheiser with some more goodies for your Social Media Escape Plan.

The holidays are now in full swing, so that means plenty more marketing messages about discounts, sales, free shipping, and pleas to order soon “to ensure delivery by Christmas!”

In this email I want to give you a gift of peace and acceptance. I want to lighten your load.

Everything we see going on with social media right now is chaos. Pure dumpster fire madness (see below).

So as an artist you might be wondering how you’re going to navigate posting, creating compelling social media assets, editing videos, and about 900 other things.

This from ‘YOU DON’T NEED MORE JOBS,’

I know being an “email marketing expert” or “newsletter writer” wasn’t another job you wanted heading into a new year, but trust me, someday you’re going to want to move “social media expert” off your job description.

I believe you can siphon your social media audience to a your email list, and then you’ll spend less time being an “online marketing expert,” and more time working on your craft, and I think that’ll be better for everyone in the new year.

As an artist, if you’re managing your own social media, you need a raise.

A for-real social media manager makes around $52,370 per year according to GlassDoor.

And if you’re making videos, doing live streams, and doing all the graphic design for your social media efforts, well, that number goes up.

So if your social media efforts feel like an uphill battle, that’s okay, because you’re probably not able to work 40+ hours per week on them, nor are you getting health care or 401K contributions from that work.

Now you gotta update 13 new social media platforms? Sounds like more work (hint: it is), so make sure it’s working for you.

And by all means, please don’t just walk away from these platforms in defeat.

Start your email list and start asking your fans to sign up.

This will be a painfully slow process because you’ve been tending your social media gardens for half a decade (or more), but seeing “only” three people sign up doesn’t mean you suck, it means probably 70% of your fans never even saw your social media post about subscribing to an email list.

I believe in 2023 reaching your fans will only get harder on social media – it will never get easier.

Start an email list today (I suggest Substack), and tell your fans to subscribe.

Happy Holidays!

ANTI-SOCIAL

Below is all the confirmation bias you need to ditch social media and focus on building your email list.

Facebook:

• “92.3% of the views in the US during Q3 2022 did not include a link to a source outside of Facebook,” according to Meta. Posts from a Page with a link got seen less than 10% of the time. Yikes.
• ‘Meta keeps booting small business owners for being hacked on Facebook,’ via Forbes

Twitter:

• ‘All the Music Stars Who Have Left Twitter After Elon Musk Took Over,’ via Billboard
• ‘ATLANTIC RECORDS DENIES USING BOTS To Juice His Or Other AR Artists‘ Video Numbers,’ via TMZ

TikTok:

• Oops – looks like this link was broke in the last email; ‘Meet the indie musicians who are making a living on TikTok,’ via Mashable
• ‘TikTok’s Viral Challenges Keep Luring Young Kids to Their Deaths,’ via Bloomberg

Instagram:

• ‘We at Instagram Want You to Know That if You Don’t Use Reels We Will Hurt You and Your Family’ – satire from The New Yorker, but it feels true.

P.S. interesting Twitter thread about securing your Official Artist Channel on YouTube.