Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

Use the emails you get from other industries as inspiration for your own newsletters.

For example, I got this email from Venmo recently:

The main point of the email was the video, but the links wasn’t to the video on YouTube – it was on the Venmo site.

You already know where I’m going with this.

When you drive someone to YOUR site, you control the branding, the vibe, the links, the experience.

When you drive someone to YouTube, your video is now competing with content that is algorithmically alluring to your fan! Oh no!

Your site can be set up to feature your upcoming tour dates, new products in your store, a pre-order package, or an email sign up link – all things that are buried under the “SHOW MORE” link in the YouTube description area.

Look, you command a room, and you command your narrative online.

So lead your fans.

Lead them to your website. Show them your newsletter.

Not all your fans hang out at the food court at the mall anymore, subsisting on a diet of pizza, smoothies, and chicken nugget outrage.

Social media is the food court at the mall, where your posts appear next to sports news and racist tirades, and the landlord keeps raising the rent.

It’s time to leave the food court at the mall.

Stop building your entire existence on rented property, and set up your own website + newsletter.

WEEKEND TASKS

Here’s four things you can do before Monday:

1. When’s the last time you cleaned your LINK IN BIO links?
2. Buy a domain name from Hover (that’s a referral link) and think about setting up (or updating) your website.
3. Make your own “pick one” images (like this one), and put it on your website. Have your band mates chime in and make it a whole feature – hey, it’s what all the music sites do, and people click on ‘em! Get ‘em clicking to your site instead and sell some albums.

4. Double check and make sure you set up 2FA for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and just about every other service that is critical to your operation.

The biggest part of your Social Media Escape Plan is fighting for that direct connection with your fans.

Your fans followed you on social media for a reason, so don’t worry about coming off as annoying when asking for a pre-save, pre-order, to click a link, or sign up for your email list – most of your followers won’t see your post anyways!

1. Post often. Schedule those posts around the clock, especially when you’re not online – some of your fans are in different time zones!
2. Mix it up; make videos, vary your images, use screen shots, adjust your text, try some audio. Variety is the spice of life, so that must be true on socials.
3. Make your pitch compelling. Remember, you’re more exciting that $2 burritos.

➡️ Here’s Dave Karpf (an Internet politics professor at GWU) talking about reach on Twitter. It’s going down, friends!

When I tweet something, it isn’t actually viewed by 42,000 individuals. It’s seen by the subset of those 42,000 people.

…

I didn’t reach 42,000 people by tweeting my article. I reached less than 3,000 people. And that has been pretty consistent. Unless I write something spicy that gets a lot of retweets, the view-counter tells me I’m reaching 2,000-3,000 people.

That means he’s reaching about 7% of his Twitter Audience.

Go look at the big music media outlets and bands and run those numbers. Or maybe don’t. Yikes.

➡️ Wondering why your Instagram posts aren’t clicking? Maybe because the algorithm likes promoting hate instead!

White Christian nationalist “groypers” are thriving on Instagram, posting memes with racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic tropes while others pose as clean-cut conservatives to lure in new, college-aged recruits. 

➡️ Heads up – your tour announcements and product drops on Facebook might have to compete with Donald Trump once again – fun!

President Donald Trump will soon regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Meta, the parent company of the two platforms, claims that “new guardrails” are in place to keep the former president in line.

➡️ Oh look, Elon Musk continues being bad at being a “free speech absolutist”:

Twitter has censored links to a BBC documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the Indian government, despite CEO Elon Musk’s previously stated commitments to free speech on the platform.

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN

Okay, some more “glass is half-full” pieces to provide some hope in getting your fans from social media to your website / email list / store.

This from Louise Stigell from Confessions Of A Terrified Creative, in her post ‘How do I market my art without social media?’

Social media is the “shotgun” approach to marketing and selling art. We put our art out there and hope and pray that someone will stumble over it and will want to hire us or buy art from us. This approach might have worked back in the day, for some. But even then, many successful artists I’ve read about have said that a miniscule amount of their sales or leads have come from social media.

Stigell is writing from an artist’s perspective, but I think it’s still a good read for any creative person out there.

So think less shotgun, and more direct.

Export your Bandcamp sales emails, and send a for-real newsletter to your fans (be sure to provide an opt-out if some of those emails are a year old or more).

Make quick videos of you replying to comments from social media, and upload directly in the replies for that ONE PERSON. Wow your fans.

Start working with other folks – collaborate on a project together. Make cool stuff that you want to show your friends. Make videos. Make a zine. Make a shirt. Release a mini-movie on a site with your talented friends. Document a skate trip or hike.

You’re more exciting than a show about storage lockers – put that out into the world.

And of course, make sure your fans actually see it. Don’t just scream about it over and over again on social media platforms that “let you” reach less than 10% of your fans.

➡️ Get in touch: seth@socialmediaescape.club

Fact: people watch TV shows about storage lockers.

It just makes this post from Lauren Nicholas hit home:

Treat your content like episodes of a TV show. What makes people tune in week after week? What compels people to binge just one more episode? What hypes folks’ excitement after a hiatus?

There’s a TikTok show called Buying Time, where people come in and buy expensive watches. It’s bonkers.

It was made by Adam Faze and the Mad Realities team:

Now, is this realistic for an independent creative? A writer, a band, a photographer?

Heck no, but the point isn’t “making a show.”

You already are the show.

Think about it: if a TV crew (or a writer from Rolling Stone) followed you around, what would they capture?

I promise, your everyday process is interesting, especially your fans.

People watch other people cooking. Cooking shows are a thing.

You are more interesting than $2 burritos, and look at how Taco Bell sells them:

So tell people about the interesting things you’re doing, like the Rick Rubin quote I included in my newsletter from this week:

Everything was trying to make something cool to play for our friends that they would like. That was all it ever was.

Are you bugging your friends about things you think are important, or are you showing them the cool stuff you’re making?

Make cool stuff, show your friends.

WEEKEND TASKS

Here’s four things you can do before Monday:

1. Go look at some media sites outside of the music world and see what sort of features they’re doing. Check out skate / BMX / art / poetry websites / socials / magazines and see how they promote their work.
2. Buy a domain name at Hover this weekend (that’s a referral link).
3. Clean up your “link in bio” links, please. Dear lord, no one is skimming through 20+ buttons.
4. Haven’t updated one of your social media sites in awhile? Write a new post, and tell people to visit your website.

Instead of promoting my Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes a few times on social media this week, I just wrote a better newsletter. Less time on socials mean I’m making these mixes every week – more time making cool stuff, less time shouting into the void about it.

Because, yikes:

I’m just using “link in bio” on socials to drive people here, to HEAVY METAL EMAIL. Even with this little traffic, I still managed around 35 new subscribers in January from direct traffic, without the social media eyeballs.

Chuck D chimes in on the Rick Rubin thing:

“On Rick Rubin I will tell you this. Art is what you feel no one should tell you what Art should come out of you. He gets that. Many artists want things in exchange for their art from love to money. A whole other thing. Rick feels you out in a sea of others wanting the same thing.”

Then I saw someone replied to his post:

I love the power in that. Missing on social media?

Nah, Chuck D’s been working.

Rick Rubin started Def Jam in his dorm room (with Russell Simmons). He’s been working.

Watch this Rolling Stone clip from 2014:

“Nothing that happened was intentional, nothing. Everything was trying to make something cool to play for our friends that they would like. That was all it ever was. And then selling enough records to make another record.”

Believe these two things with me in 2023:

If I’m missing I’m working.

Don’t miss me on Twitter, I’m working. I’m writing this newsletter, and helping sell albums with Metal Bandcamp Gift Club (since 2016), and making my Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes, and day job work helping sell vinyl.

Spend all day on Twitter? Nah. We’ve got work to do, magic to create, art to make.

Make cool stuff. Tell your friends. Sell enough to make more.
Keep this on repeat, day in day out, and don’t stop. I’ve been doing this since 2001, before Twitter and long after Musk burns it to the ground.

Because yes, sure, a million views is fun. A thousand likes.

Try getting 1,000 fans on our email lists.

Invest in work that pays off down the road.

Because if your social media posts are seen by less than 3% of your followers, that means over 97% of your fans didn’t see it.

One email a week, which can be a round up of all the social media posts that your fans didn’t see in the first place.

For you heavyweights (5000+ subscribers), maybe publish those tour diaries, studio reports, video shoots, and other “features” in your newsletter for your existing fans, where you know 30-40% of your fans will see it.

If I’m missing I’m working. Let’s work.