Category: Social Media Escape ClubCategory: Social Media Escape Club

It’s a big holiday weekend and we’re all busy watching the holiday orders pour, right? Right!!?

If that didn’t happen – don’t sweat it. There’s lot of people, and lots more opportunity. Heck, people probably missed 70% of the posts on social media in the past week, so you’ve still got time.

“Your most die-hard fans are busy, and missed your last two (or three) emails,” I said in ‘IT’S OKAY TO REPEAT YOURSELF.’

Chance are a lot of people don’t know about your big holiday specials. So post ‘em again, at different times of the day. Send your emails at night, or early morning.

Your FOUR THE WEEKEND assignments, due Monday of course.

1. Re-make some holiday assets. Create a ‘BEST SELLER’ design, or ‘ALMOST SOLD OUT’ ads. Make a video (see below).
2. Treat email newsletter subscribers different. I saw a small guitar pedal maker send out a 20% discount to their email subscribers, while everyone else gets 15% off. Make signing up for your email list valuable!
3. Be absurd. Cards Against Humanity dug a hole one year, and raised over $100,000. I’m sure plenty of artists have done ridiculous things over the years, but now it’s your turn.
4. Cool, you asked your social media followers to subscribe to your email list. Once. In August. Set a reminder to do it again and again every few days.

Brethren Design Co. are a design firm, and they sell fonts, too. Me? I don’t need fonts, but their ad was fun enough to share, and now I bet someone on this email list who needs fonts might just check it out. That’s how this shit works, friends!

Since half of SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB is about the social media part of “online marketing,” I figured I’d try to include some more articles on the subject, as things seem to change from day to day, and you might have missed something if you blinked.

Facebook:

• The long, lonely wait to recover a hacked Facebook account
• Fake Facebook and Instagram accounts promoting US interests had ties to US military, Meta says

Twitter:

• Musk tweeted a photo of Twitter merch seemingly mocking ‘Stay Woke’ apparel supporting Ferguson protests and BLM
• Elon Musk just decided to bring the worst people on the internet back to Twitter

TikTok:

• The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns
• Meet the indie musicians who are making a living on TikTok

Instagram:

• Photographers rejoice! Instagram algorithm to favor photos and reels equally
• Has your Instagram been cloned yet? Inside the rise of social media identity theft (and what to do about it)

P.S. it’s November of 2022, and it’s time to stop trying to put links in your Instagram captions.

As our inbox slows and the Slack channels go quiet, we reflect.

From Seth Godin:

When we’re in the middle of a project, it’s easy to imagine that it’s not going to be around for decades. But every project opens doors, for you and for the people you build it for. It doesn’t matter if it works for everyone, if it’s a worldwide bestseller or on the front page.

Oceans are made of drops.

All the work we’ve been doing is foundational. Skills and knowledge we gain from working on various projects add up over the years.

I worked on my first music blog for seven years before it led to starting Noisecreep for AOL Music.

I sent 1000+ nightly email newsletters for my Skulltoaster metal trivia project and now I work mostly in email marketing.

Now I share 20+ years of all that experience in these newsletters, and hope that it helps you along your creative journey.

If you’ve got a piece of wisdom from your journey that you’d like to share with almost 250 artists and industry folk that signed up for an email newsletter about email marketing in the heavy metal world (thank you), hit reply, leave a comment, send me an email, or stop by the subscribe chat, and maybe I’ll put it in an upcoming email.

I’ll go first: I had just gotten admonished for a typo on our homepage by a managing editor, and when they walked away this photo editor said to me, “relax, we’re not saving lives.”

I get it – we all hate the fuck ups, but we’re not transporting human hearts or top secret documents.

Good luck, friends, we’re all counting on you.

BITS AND BOPS

12:32pm: Follow me on Blempus. This looks like it’s going to be the one folks. We’re going to Blempus

12:34pm: It appears that Blempus uses your phone app to dial 911 if you attempt to upload a profile photo

From @drewtoothpaste

“Maybe don’t go spend your Thanksgiving with a bunch of racists and you won’t be so stressed out about it?”

From Mike Monteiro

“twitter is falling apart!” damn

“but great news here are fourteen other social media platforms for you to join, post content, and try to rebuild a following on!” oh

From @byelacey

People will spend lots of money in the coming weeks.

Black Friday is November 25th.
Cyber Monday is November 28th.
The last Bandcamp Friday of 2022 is December 2nd.

Do your fans know about your upcoming specials?
Do your fans understand that supporting independent artists is crucial?

Are your online store fronts updated and looking sharp?
Got your LINK IN BIO service set up?
Do your social media channels have the proper links to your store? Could your merchandise images use a refresh?
Are you offering holiday bundles, free shipping, bonus items?
What happens if you get locked out of your social media accounts on Black Friday?

Yes, Spotify rates suck and inflation is a bummer – so what can we do today to capture some of the money that’ll be flying around?

Here’s your FOUR THE WEEKND tasks – complete 50% of these by Monday.

1. Geared more for the “online coach” crowd, but ‘How to determine what discounts to offer for Black Friday’ over at Teachable is a good read for anyone selling on the internet.
2. As mentioned in August, check ‘Quick Tips for Holiday Selling’ from Big Cartel.
3. Purchase the Black Metal Rainbows Compilation Album which benefits charities that support LGBTQ youth.
4. 💥 Collaborate with some trusted partners and create a gift guide that you’ll all share with your own fans. Imagine five trusted friends / bands / labels all promoting solid, vetted goodies a few days before Black Friday (and keep repeating it).

“The world will not know how to help you unless you scream from the mountaintops what it is you like to do, and how you like to do it.”

From James Edmondson in ‘F You Money, & Don’t Release Your First Font.’

Ask your fans for the support, and stop being afraid to promote your Bandcamp or store sale. Tired of updating 13 social media platforms? Start asking fans to sign up for your email list.

“In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable. Any 16-year-old with a smartphone can invent a hashtag or repost a viral article.”

From Cal Newport in 2016 in the NYTimes. Does your work blend in, or – like Seth Godin asks (below) – would you be missed if you were gone?

“You could be the one we’d miss if you were gone.

It takes quite a bit of emotional labor to pull this off. Consistent effort to contribute, to see possibility and to be patient. If it were the easiest or most direct path to a short-term goal, everyone would do it.”

I recently swapped a few messages with a fellow writer on the Substack Office Hours thread.

This person writes motivational posts on LinkedIn. You’ve seen those posts, I’m sure.

A lot of those folks write that stuff, in hopes of turning their LinkedIn followers into newsletter subscribers.

This was part of my reply:

Isn’t what you’re writing already sort of “widely available” on LinkedIn? Lots of helpful advice, things that make you think, interesting ways to look at things. Those are all great things!

But since there’s a LOT of that, why do people need to subscribe to your newsletter?

Some LinkedIn folks are putting everything right there on LinkedIn. And some people (on any social media network) are perfectly fine to just keep scrolling, knowing they’ll find similar content for hours on end.

What are you doing that’s so special that people will stop scrolling and click a link?

You might not be writing posts on LinkedIn, but you’re posting about your new EP, your upcoming tour, your new designs, your latest interview.

But you’re not just competing against other metal folk, you’re competing with Andor on Disney+ and NBA basketball and beautiful people dancing and pointing at words.

You got riffs? Friend, I got 50 years of riffs.

Figure out why anyone would click on what you’re offering.

Elon Musk is full of shit with this Tweet, which he’s since deleted.

Ask any managing editor or writer or social media manager or founder of Punk Planet and they’ll tell you the same thing; Twitter is not great for driving traffic to your site.

That’s a bummer when you’re promoting a new album, tour dates, or new products in your store.

And it can be demoralizing if you’re asking your fans to subscribe to your email newsletter and you’re not getting a lot of sign-ups.

Let’s see how that went for someone on Twitter this past week, shall we?

Linda Bloomfield has been doing #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter, sharing job opportunities with her 16,500 followers every week.

Since then she sent her first email and mentioned that a, “whopping 1204 of you who have signed up so far!”

If you take 1,204, and divide by her 16,500 followers, that’s a nice 7.2% conversion rate.

In the internet world getting even 3% of anybody to click anything is good, let alone visiting a site and subscribing to a newsletter.

Much of that, though, is having built a reputation for something cool and useful (sending out job postings in the creative world every Tuesday), so when she says “hey, we’re moving to an email newsletter,” her already devoted fans followed her.

Which is why I say the ‘ole “Sign up for updates” line “is for department stores and car dealerships.” It’s boring.

Can Metallica get away with that? Yes, but you’re not Metallica.

Your art is still magical to your fans, so spend some time crafting exactly what your fans are signing up for, like Tegan and Sara‘s newsletter:

Updates? Nah.

“Tegan and Sara talk to each other about music, writing, art and life using voice notes, annotations of lyrics, personal essays, video conversations, and unreleased music.”

And note that they have, “thousands of paid subscribers.” Hmmm.

1. Tell your fans what they’re signing up for.
2. Make it easy for them to subscribe.
3. Deliver on your promise.

It will never get any easier to reach your fans on the various social media platforms than it is today. It’s only going to get harder.

Best bet is to not even play the game. Start an email newsletter today and reach your fans directly.

QUICK BITS:

“Ten minutes on Joe Rogan is worth a year of tweets. It’s far better as a way to find people or information.”

That from Matt Taibbi on Twitter, which spark Musky-boys reply that Twitter is “the biggest click driver on the internet by far.”

So, you probably can’t get on a super big podcast, but you can get on other podcasts, make videos that people talk about, create websites that people visit. Make amazing stuff with good people, in real life and online. Put things into the world that will outlast a Tweet (and probably the company).

“The native and ad-free Patreon player allows creators to upload their content directly to the platform, select thumbnails for their videos, and view audience data like view count. Creators will also be able to select who can view the video without worrying whether links will be shared outside of subscribers.”

From The Verge; gee, it only took until late 2022 for this to roll out, but this is probably a good thing for lots of Patreon users.

GOOD TWEETS:

“But no one goes to websites anymore,” says some guy who spends all his time on Discogs, buying concert tickets on various websites, and refreshing his web-based email for UPS delivery updates.

Even though I lost my glasses and ended up paying over $350 for new ones so I could drive home I wish nothing but three wins for Turnstile.

The biggest part of the SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN is the escape – how we get our fans, followers, our audience motivated to actually click a link and give up their email address.

Here’s the simplest and most boring (and probably the least effective) way to do that.

Updates, huh? Thrilling.

After years of offers from boring companies we know what those “updates” will be; boring sales, special offers, tour dates for shows eight time zones away. Those are important, but your art / music / magic deserves better than just “updates.”

⬛️ ANNOUNCEMENTS: Tell the people on your email list first – they just gotta sign up, like below:

Or something like this:

⬛️ GIVE AWAYS: You could collect emails by doing a giveaway with a heavyweight service like Gleam (below), or something more basic with Tally:

TIP: Make sure your give away is for your fans, and not everyone. Give away some merch, or a record. If you give away an iPad you’ll get lots of people on your email list, but only because of the iPad, not your project.

⬛️ VIDEO:Maybe you made a reaction video, reacting to your own music video. A personal message to your fans, or showing off your new clothing line, an acoustic version of a song, a lyric video, or a behind the scenes look at a recent photoshoot.

Get yourself a Vimeo Business account, embed the video on your own website, and set up a contact form at the start of the clip.

When people visit your site, they’ll be prompted to enter their email address. Be sure to include some text near the video, assuring your fans are signing up for your newsletter, of course.

Don’t just use the same old boring text and expect amazing results. You don’t write boring songs, or make boring products, do you? So don’t skimp on the presentation of your offer to your fans.

Okay, enough ideas – here’s your FOUR THE WEEKEND tasks, due by Monday.

1. Regardless of what email service you use, ‘Bringing your Instagram followers to Substack’ is required reading.
2. Look at other genres and see how they’re rolling out their new music. Go ahead and copy one or two ideas for your own project.
3. Decibel Magazine revealed their Top 40 list already. Rather than shovel your thoughts about it onto social media platforms that monetize your content, consider putting your year-end list on your own website, where you can encourage your fans to sign up for your email list. First person to send me a link to their list on their website or newsletter by 12/1/2022 gets a $20 Bandcamp gift card.
4. Did anybody complete last week’s tasks of setting up a LINK IN BIO? Send me your links and I’ll feature them in next week’s FOUR THE WEEKEND.

QUICK BITS:

Notion social media manager Alex Hao over at Link in Bio :

“So rather than making “growth hacking” a core part of our strategy, and risk becoming beholden to it, it’s something we leverage sparingly—when it can surprise and delight a user-base that is familiar with our “normal” content. And when you’ve already cultivated an engaged audience via other strategies, jumping onto a trend that aligns with your brand yields some killer results.”

Remember, as part of our Social Media Escape Plan we have to do well on social media to drive people to our websites and email list. Post memes? Post only serious stuff? You have to find out what resonates with your fans if you’re going to entice 1000s of your followers to your email list.

🪦 And R.I.P. Metal Insider’s Metal By Numbers feature, which hasn’t been updated since July.

A good thing to remember for sites with features like this – they can be turned into stand-alone newsletters – like 

Stream N’ Destroy!

I’d subscribe to a newsletter of editorially curated (meaning, not all) new videos and songs.

Where’s the email newsletter of just amazing concert photos from the week?

Imagine just sending an email newsletter every week, instead of posting to nine different social media outlets? Dreams come true, friends!