As an artist you can sit around and wait for a media outlet to do a cool feature on your project, or you can do it yourself, then share it directly with your fans.

Back in 2010 when I was running Noisecreep for AOL Music, we worked with The Devil Wears Prada to promote their upcoming video ‘Assistant to the Regional Manager,’ with this post ‘Behind the Scenes at the Devil Wears Prada’s ‘Almost Shocking’ Video Shoot.’

(DISCLAIMER: I work with Atom Splitter PR who is working their new album)

As you can see, the format would work well in an email newsletter; photo, text, photo, text.

We did it for the ad impressions. We kept the lights on with stories like this.

And you, fine reader, have my full blessing and support to copy this idea and use it to promote your own music and art and magic.

Look, you already have “behind the scenes” photos on your socials from three years ago that you posted once and never shared again.

And since that time three years ago you probably picked up more fans who have no clue about that old video, or that design collaboration you did, or that photo shoot you did for a magazine cover, or that art gallery opening.

Right now you have fans that don’t know everything you’ve done.

Hell, you have fans that don’t know what you did last month because not everyone sees your social media posts, and not everyone opens every single email you send.

Listen to what Tyler, The Creator says in this clip, about all the effort that goes into one song, and people post about it once, put it on their IG stories, and forget about it (watch from the 43:08 mark):

People, please – your art has LEGS, people. It is magic! Fans get tattoos of lyrics, of band names, of album art.

But I know, I get it… you’re an artist. You don’t want to come off too spammy, or promote your project like it’s a used-car.

THEN DON’T.

Make some cool shit like that Devil Wears Prada post that we posted back in 2010.

Document your video shoot (or whatever the heck it is that you’re doing), and promote that. Promote your process, a “day in the life” of making an album, or setting up a photo studio.

You’re already posting these shots and clips on socials for a small subset of your fans to see. Get your fans on your email list, throw these goodies into a newsletter and send it direct the people who love you the most!

NOTE: this offering of “behind the scenes,” probably never seen before images and stories is a far better selling point than “sign up for updates” as you try to get people to sign up for your email list.

Then… shhh… I know (looks around for the ‘Scene Police’), we’re all artists here… you should include a link somewhere – not too big and flashy – to actually (ahem) BUY YOUR STUFF.

Give people something to click to pre-order an album, or book you for a session, or whatever it is that you do.

We’re all creative wizards here, and selling things is, “eww gross,” but I’m sure you like to pay rent and drink an iced coffee on occasion, so let people love you and support you.

Media outlets use those cool behind-the-scenes studio reports, and day in the life posts to sell ads and pay their rent, so make sure you’re sharing direct with your fans so you can keep paying your rent.

QUICK BITS:

This piece (‘‘‘People love to feel part of the process’: how the TikTok teaser turbo-charged the song of the summer race”) focuses on TikTok (of course), but I think it can be applied to other channels, too (SoundCloud, YouTube, Twitch, your newsletter, etc). Oh, and TikTok joined forces with TicketMaster, too.

Bandcamp’s ‘Best Metal for July’ round up includes Ashenspire, Wormrot, In Nothingness, and more, while Loudwire’s ‘Best New Rock + Metal Songs of July’ round up includes Architects, Bring Me the Horizon, Demon Hunter, Lorna Shore, and tons more.

“Someone reading your email on a screen reader would have no way of knowing what the link is or why they should click here,” which is a good reason (among others) to not hyperlink “click here” in your emails. I’m so guilty of this.

“One thing that COVID demonstrated was that you could stay home, stream everything and not go out,” said show promoter Peter Shapiro, ‘‘but in the end a lot of people realized how important the live experience really is.”

“I want to continue to show others that you can craft an income, a hobby, a passion project, a business, an art career, without any social media or social capital or twitter or a footprint that feels out of alignment with your values,” Cody Cook-Parrott

GOOD TWEETS:

Social media rewards you if you spend lots of time on each network, replying, commenting, sharing – all in the hopes that your posts will get seen by a few more people. Remember, “Social Media Manager” is a full time job at a lot of places with health benefits and a 401K – it’s a lot of work.

Hey wait a minute – aren’t bands supposed to just Tweet about their new release once and then disappear into a boggy swamp?! It takes a minute to hype your release a week later, a month later, six months out. Same for your music videos, press hits, and tour dates.

YOUR TURN:

Are you gonna send that email to your fans this week?
Start an email list?
Ask your social media followers to subscribe?
It’s Monday – what are you working on?

If you’re a talented host and actress and presenter (and a million other things) with a big following on Instagram and TikTok – you should still have an email list.

Whitney Moore is super active on the socials – videos! photos! witty observations! – but she also has a website (hooray)!

So when fans get clicking and visit Whitney’s website, they can sign up for her email newsletter for “weekly exclusive pics, info on projects, and fun stuff from around the web.”

As you can see the email is mostly text (‘Always Bet On Text’), so it’s probably easy to set up each week. There’s the ‘Photo of the Week,’ too, but you’ll have to subscribe if you want to see that.

An email newsletter is still a solid way to stay connected to your fans when the social media algorithms throttle your reach, or when you get locked out of your account.

And you don’t have to be skilled in video editing, or learn how to make those fancy audio teasers for your podcast, either.

You just… write an email, instead of contorting yourself into 13 different job titles, like Professor Pizza from Axeslasher said in an interview we did:

Creating on those platforms feels an awful lot like working for Facebook and not myself. The mental math equation went from “What do I think our fans would like?” to “What do I think will break through the algo that our fans will tolerate?”

The short answer is you have to start looking at and leveraging trends, which by-in-large, are fucking lame.

We’re a thrash band comprised of ghosts of vengeance. We shouldn’t be doing funny hand dances, or the running man.

And don’t put all your eggs into baskets you don’t own. Don’t rely on Facebook to be the website for your business, or your label or band.

Leverage the attention that you still might have and drive folks to your website so you can build your email list.

As I said last year in ‘Cut Your Social Media Time in Half:’

Set up an email list, get your fans from social media to subscribe, and send them an email once a week.

As you grow your email list, it’ll start to be more effective.

You’ll spend less time preparing and sending an email than you do on social media, and it’ll sell more albums, more tickets, more shirts.

So yeah – even if you’re doing a video show on YouTube or TikTok, or a podcast, it’s still a good idea to partner it with a written component, sent out once a week direct to your fans.

You’re already making videos, or publishing podcasts, or getting your photos featured in magazines, or putting things on your website – now just wrap them up nice in a weekly newsletter so your fans can actually see the cool stuff you make.

QUICK BITS:

Metallica “sold more tickets than any other hard rock, metal, or punk(ish) artist in the last 40 years,’“ BeReal is maybe the hot new social media thing, while Twitter “is supporting a group that is seeking to revoke reproductive rights nationally.’ Yowza.

Tegan (of Tegan and Sara) writes ‘How To Craft a Set List and Why,’ which is a great example of an artist writing about something which might be super interesting to their fans, and while “Zero-Click content is uncomfortable but it’s worth it” might sound confusing, you should make some coffee and read it (and take some notes).

While Sunny Day Real Estate may not be heavy metal, I saw them post recently and felt their announcement process could serve as a good lesson.

First, a cryptic post on Instagram. The red letters spell out ‘We owe you nothing. You have no control,” which is a line from the song ‘Merchandise’ from Fugazi.

The post wraps up nicely with the usual “link in bio” song and dance, of course, which leads to the band’s website.

Now, this next part is important. You got people to click – which is a miracle in today’s internet world!

So for the people who absolutely MUST know about your new song, new merch, or new video – ask for their email address:

It might be hard to read above, but the website asks “Want exclusive updates?” There’s an email sign-up form which we’ve all seen a million times before, and I’m sure a few people signed up (I did).

Your results may vary (you’re probably not Sunny Day Real Estate), but getting emails from five fans a few times a month adds when you do it for a year.

START YOUR NEXT NEWSLETTER

You know you want to start a newsletter for your band, label, photography, studio, etc., but ahhhhh, what will you even write about?

1. Repurpose your social media posts. Probably over 70% of your followers don’t see your posts anyways (because of algorithms), and not all your fans are even on social media (more examples here).
2. Share stories like the music sites post. We all see the nice press pieces (track by track, inspiration behind the album, behind the scenes photos in the studio) – try doing your own from time to time. Show off your guitar pedals, your camera set up, your new studio, etc.
3. Anniversaries. Don’t just post about your music video or EP release a few times and forget about it – post about it six months later, a year later. Most likely you’re brand new subscribers don’t even know about your older material.

Those should get your started.

Remember, you’re an artist, a photographer, a producer; sell your damn journey.

There are syndicated TV shows that revolve around people baking cakes, and cleaning out storage lockers, sponsored by major brands that sell sugar water.

Mundane shows, sponsored by commodity items, and they’re all doing a better job at marketing themselves than 95% of the music world.

Do the dance on socials, drive people to your email list, then regularly connect with your fans with stories, photos, exclusive looks, and the occasional link to a record or photo print.

People tune into reality TV shows for the story. Heck look at all the stories that Tegan & Sara share with their newsletter.

Don’t just link to your new video – tell me why it took 19 hours to make. Tell me how you got chased out of an abandoned building. Tell me where you found some of the props, how you hired the director, and then tell me about why making music videos in 2022 is still important.

ANOTHER REASON WHY YOU NEED A NEWSLETTER

If your live-stream shits the bed, it’s easy to send a message to your fans and let them know you’re working on the issue, or maybe send a new link when it’s all back up and running.

QUICK HITS

📺 Seth Godin on ‘How To Reach Your Audience?’ (as a good friend says, “write a good song.” Yeah, I know, pretty simplistic, but if there was a map, anyone could do it.) Via Marketing 411

⚫️ ‘Ask Me About Abortion Anger’ from Eugene S. Robinson

⚫️ How To Add A GIF To An Email Newsletter

⚫️ ‘U.S. FCC commissioner wants Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores’ – ooops, can’t export your TikTok followers!

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Remember – your email campaigns don’t have to be clones of every email campaign you’ve already seen. Just as your music, your art, your vision is unique, you’re allowed to color outside the lines and craft emails that your fans will want to open.

This is how you can start a Social Media Escape Plan.

Sign up for Substack, and tell people to sign up. In this case, Pissed Jeans put up this Instagram post, said “link in bio,” and now they have an email list.

Their reasoning sounds legit, too:

Rather than rely on the mercy of the proprietary Meta™ algorithms to let people know when we have a show coming up or new shirt or whatever, directly emailing you, the Pissed Jeans Enthusiast, seemed like it could be fun.

Because it’s TRUE.

If you have 1,000 followers on Twitter, there’s a good chance you’re reaching maybe 5% of your fans (Buffer, who knows a thing or two about social media, reaches about 2% of their audience on Twitter).

If you have an email list of 1,000 subscribers, you’ll probably reach 20-30% of your fans – and without having to stare at your phone six hours a day “making content,” (check out “You Don’t Need More Jobs” for more about that).

Un-opened and un-clicked emails look “bad” to the mysterious inbox servers in the email world, which is why your emails might skip the INBOX and end up in the “promotions” tab in Gmail, or even worse – the spam folder.

If your open rates are dipping down near 10%, it just shows those servers that emails from your domain aren’t engaging, or might not be wanted, so “eh, no need to put it right into someone’s inbox!”

This is sort of like an algorithm in the social media world, but there’s some easy fixes, and it doesn’t involve making videos of you dancing and pointing at words.

BEHOLD, THE WELCOME EMAIL

There’s a few things you can put into your welcome email when someone signs up to your email list, and that’s asking for the subscriber to add your email to their contacts.

“I hate making guarantees about anything in life, but getting your email whitelisted all but ensures you will always end up in a primary tab,” says Thanks for Unsubscribing.

I also like asking for a reply to the welcome email, which is worth a lot in the “staying out of the promotions tab” game.

“It’s amazing for boosting your deliverability and email domain reputation. ISP’s treat responses as the “gold standard” for engagement,” 100 Celsius

I do this for my Metal Bandcamp Gift Club newsletter:

Yes, it’d be nice if this was included in the sign up process, but this is an email list for people who buy music for people they don’t know on their birthdays, so it’s a unique audience!

What could you ask your subscribers when they sign up?

1. Producers: which album is their favorite that you’ve worked on?
2. Photographers: have they ever bought prints before?
3. Band: have you seen us live, and if so, where?
4. Writer: what’s the best review you read this year?
5. Store: what’s the last show you went to?
6. Tattoo artist: tell me about your first tattoo!

Again, these prompts are to get a reply, so keep them aligned with what you’re doing. And reply to these folks! Treat them like DMs on social media. They took the time to reply to your email, so take a minute and send a quick reply. You never know where it may lead (maybe a few more sales, jobs, shows, etc).

“Engagement metrics for welcome emails are eye-popping. On average, marketers enjoy 4x the open rate and 5x the click rate when using automated welcome emails over standard marketing emails. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, they expect to receive a welcome newsletter immediately. They’ll even visit their inboxes just to find it,” MailerLite

Consider using your Welcome Email to point your subscribers to the stuff you want them to see:

1. A link to your store, maybe with a discount code
2. Your website, or the tour dates section
3. Your Patreon – some of your biggest fans might not even know you have one!
4. Your Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music pages
5. Your latest video on YouTube

That click tells the “space cloud email algorithms” that your subscribers are engaged with your emails, helping you land each email in their inbox every time.

And honestly – not all your fans know about your store, your upcoming tour, your Bandcamp page. There’s nothing wrong with simple text links, casually letting people know all the stuff you got going on.

IT’S PROBABLY NOT YOU

You can do everything “right,” and emails still aren’t getting opened.

Relax.

Inflation, war, unrest, climate change – everything is happening all the time, and not every email will get opened, not every pre-order campaign will be a hit. Don’t take it personally. Adjust and tweak, and send another email next week.