Category: sethwCategory: sethw

Is it beyond comprehension that people at social media companies think of ways to make us dependent on their services? Could they actively be building a narrative that your participation is necessary?

First, consider the bait and switch: They got all of us to set up our profile pages for free and rewarded us with tons of views and likes. Eventually, we abandoned our websites, blogs, and email lists, and then they throttled our reach unless we paid to boost our posts or spent more time on their platform, uploading an un-ending stream of “content.”

Second, even if you don’t use their platforms to promote anything, you likely fell for the DM functionality to keep in touch with friends and family. But what if you get locked out of your account? What if your friend gets their account suspended for some random reason? What happens when one of your parents gets scammed and can’t log in?

If you lose touch with people you care about, you’ll figure out how to reestablish the connection quickly, usually by phone, text, or email—three pre-installed apps on every smartphone.

Remember – many people are paid well to keep you locked into their ecosystem. Escaping the world of social media ain’t easy, but that’s what Social Media Escape Club is here for.

I ran 1,105 miles in 2020, which took me around 200 hours.

Scrolling 33 minutes daily on your phone adds up to about 200 hours a year, too.

A friend told me recently that they want to start a newsletter, but they don’t want it to become a large time investment.

I told them that their next newsletter “is already written.”

Re-purposing the content you’ve already posted (on social media) means less time thinking about your next email newsletter, and gives you a jump on the creative process.

Once you have everything copied and pasted into your newsletter, you can make expand on some of your ideas, or include some other photos that you didn’t share on socials.

Most of us thought nothing of posting daily to social media, sometimes multiple times per day or per hour when an awards show was on or during a major sporting event.

Most of us have years of archival material to draw from, all tucked away in our social media channels.

Your posts only reach a fraction of your followers. Probably 90% of them never saw any of this material in the first place, so don’t feel bad about re-using your own material – it’s your material!

What could you do with just 30 minutes per day that might benefit you a year from now?

• Learn how to make scenic videos of lakes using a digital camera, Zoom H6 audio recorder, and editing the whole thing in DaVinci Resolve.
• Learning a new technique related to your craft
• Journaling and meditating
• Going for a walk, a bike ride, or go scootering (thanks, Amy Walsh)
• Dancing to your favorite records (R.I.P. mom)
• We think nothing of spending an hour a day on work meetings – what if we spent 30 minutes a day on FRIEND MEETINGS?
• Start a daily 30-minute check-in video call to help everyone stay on track and encourage one another

Sometimes, these things sound like too much, but each day, we have choices: invest in ourselves or create shareholder value for corporate behemoths.

Consider that we don’t think twice about uploading our original photos and text to a platform that sells advertising around our unpaid labor while limiting the number of our friends (or potential clients) who will ever see it, thus incentivizing us to either spend more of our time (a finite resource) on the platform “engaging,” or spending actual money to “boost” our posts so more people might see it.

There are three places to start when writing a newsletter.

1. Sharing

A link you shared with a friend can be your next newsletter. It might be topical, about a recent event or a new idea.

You could also dig through the archives on your blog or newsletter or your social media profile and re-share links that meant something a year ago or 10 years ago, like this blog post I wrote a decade ago:

“Every one to one interaction is priceless. It’s valuable. It can’t be outsourced, and you can’t just get some unpaid college intern to do it.”

Remember – something you shared 18 months ago was probably seen by just 8% of your followers – and you’ve probably gained more subscribers over the last year and a half!

2. Storytelling

We’ve all got stories, some big, some small.

I was taking some photos around town a few days ago, and the owner of the barbershop yelled, “come take our photo!”

Now, that doesn’t happen very often, but it made for a fun story!

Here’s some other stories I haven’t told yet:

• That time I invited by highschool buddy to NYC to hangout when I had the Deftones come to our studio for an interview.
• How I ditched all my belongings in 2010 and left Brooklyn with my bike and my laptop and rode to Rutherford, NJ to start my nomadic bike nerd journey and ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• When a manager for a big Grammy Nominated band told me they had a problem with my interviewer minutes before we were supposed to go live on a podcast.

You’ve probably got stories, and your subscribers would probably love to hear them.

3. Showing

This is the default, the starting point, the simplest thing to write about in your newsletter, but you have to do it in a way that feels right.

In last week’s ‘Social Media Support for Artists’ (hosted by the wonderful Beth Spencer), someone spoke about taking photos of her sketchbooks and then dreading the idea of posting them to social media and writing captions for each.

Someone suggested, “Make it a video!” And for this person, that resonated.

If you dread doing something, you’re probably not gonna do it. And if you do it reluctantly, everyone is gonna know you’re being pissy about it. The vibes will be off, my friend.

Here are two examples of sharing and keeping the good vibes:

• Noah Kalina sent a newsletter about making egg cups, which was a story from a magazine that had come out several months prior.
• Taylor Pendleton made a video of her walking around Death Valley taking pictures. No music. No dialogue.

Do I dread running? Well, I love eating pizza a lot more, that’s for sure.

But I do love being outside. So running gets me outside, into the space I love. And then I love sharing photos and videos from being outside, way more than making “infographics” or whatever to try to promote my work.

By sharing a glimpse of what I love, it shows a bit of who I am, and maybe that resonates with a few people.

Getting off social media has to be more than just “yeah, but how will I still sell stuff?” It’s about the time you regain, which allows you to explore, learn, and grow.

So don’t get sad about writing a newsletter, thinking you’ve got nothing to write to your subscribers—you’ve got plenty to write about, share, and explore with the people who’ve signed up and said, “Yes, I want more of what you have.”

You are more interesting than storage lockers, and that show has been on air longer than Seinfeld.

I wrote about Mullet Marketing about a year ago, and if you’re guilty of it, you’re depriving your most engaged fans of your best work.

Let me explain.

The mullet can be described as “business up front, party in the back.”

PARTY IN THE BACK: This is most everyone’s social media feed, where you see live photos from events, gallery openings, and shows. Also, photos of dogs, record shops, and your workspace. It’s videos, 300-word captions, and where we voice support for various organizations and causes.

BUSINESS UP FRONT: This is most everyone’s email list, where we get static images of products, mock ups, poster art with teeny tiny text, details, facts, locations, prices, deals, and colorful buttons labeled BUY NOW or SHOP HERE.

This is why we cringe when our favorite artists say, “Sign up for updates,” or “Join my newsletter!”

We’ve all signed up for enough newsletters to know that most of them suck.

So here’s an idea – make a newsletter that doesn’t suck.

Wild concept, I know.

You wouldn’t share a stock photo on social media, so why use one in your newsletter? Re-use the photos you’ve already put on socials!

And what is the best part about writing a paragraph about your latest project in a newsletter? More than 10% of your audience will actually read it!

You gain a certain amount of energy when you know your creative output is actually being seen, and that energy is exactly what you need to continue producing your best work.

In a recent newsletter titled “Backstage” (which went out to 10,000+ email subscribers) Tegan from Tegan and Sara wrote about putting out a live album. Maybe release it on vinyl, CD, and cassette, “with a booklet with photos from the tour.”

Then goes on to say:

“Maybe we should hold some stuff back, I suggested, and keep the stories and recordings and photos for that. It would be nice to have images and videos that no one has seen. For social media, for the booklet. Right? Or maybe it doesn’t matter; we share so much content (we = everyone) at this point, who even remembers what’s been posted and hasn’t?”

As I’ve been saying for years, re-use photos from social media in your newsletter because most of your followers never saw them.

 

The Tegan and Sara Instagram has 470,000 followers, and the last nine posts got an average of 3,444 likes, meaning 0.7% of their fans liked any one of those images.

Two of those posts have over 100 comments. That’s 0.213% of their fans that left a comment, and that’s on a good day.

Mind you, Tegan and Sara are a Grammy-nominated indie pop duo who’ve been making music for over 25 years.

I’m not saying don’t be on social media (well, maybe I am); just lower your expectations of actually ever reaching 10% of your followers.

Understand that posting an IG Reel to your 3,500 Instagram followers will probably be seen by just 250 people, and if 1% click a link, well, that’s a solid two people that might see your offering.

A friend of mine deleted his social media accounts in 2017 or so. He’s played drums for 30+ years; that’s all he wants to do, be a musician.

He joined some bands he found on Craigslist, did some recording gigs with friends on the internet, played a lot of local shows, learned a lot of covers, and made a few bucks.

He just wanted to play drums, you know?

We talked on the phone recently, and he told me of a “secret” group he’s in, with a bunch of other local musicians. They meet once a week and jam and hang out.

This didn’t happen overnight, but now my friend is in multiple local bands, and playing drums all the time with great people. He’s never been happier.

All without a Twitter account or posting crowd shots on Instagram stories.

This is what I meant when I wrote, ‘Social media loses power when we build community in other places.’

Tegan and Sara were here before social media, they’ll be here when it’s gone.
The creator economy existed long before Zuck and Musk showed up.
There was a time when we didn’t speak of our work as “content.”

“Make cool stuff, show it to your friends,” says Rick Rubin. Friends, family, fans. You get the idea.

But if a platform doesn’t let you show your cool stuff to your friends, ask if it serves you anymore. If not, it might be time to rethink things.