Category: Social Media Escape ClubCategory: Social Media Escape Club

NO CURE vocalist Blaythe Steuer said from stage at Furnace Fest that he better not catch anyone littering. The band is from Birmingham, Alabama.

I’m sure “mention littering” was not on the marketing plan, but the universe did its thing, and here we are.

Steuer could have said nothing, of course. But he mentioned littering, and this jaded dude who’s been going to shows for 30+ years thought it was funny.

I’ve added them to my Bandcamp wishlist, and streamed their catalog on Spotify.

My experience is not universal, though. Some people definitely littered at Furnace Fest.

Every action is still an action.

You react, or don’t.

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If social media imploded today, could you still reach your fans?

And if social media only let you reach 10% of your fans, what is the threshold of that reach to where it becomes not worth it?

Is it 8%? 5%? Do you even know how many fans you’re reaching on socials? Are you paying to reach your fans?

And if you have 5,000 followers on Twitter, or Instagram, and it just seems like the effort really isn’t worth it, are you really going to just walk away from them? Just put up a single post saying, “hey, make sure to follow on Spotify,” or whatever?

What’s your Social Media Escape Plan?

Because it was 144 days ago when Elon Musk took over Twitter, and it’s a miracle it’s still standing.

Meta is gonna fire 10,000 more people.

TikTok might get banned in the U.S.

These are platforms we rely on to reach our fans, and they’re completely out of our control.

If anything happens to these platforms, we lose the ability to reach our fans.

So get in the habit now of asking your fans to subscribe to your email newsletter, then build a content strategy today on how and when you’re going to reach your fans with an email newsletter.

Don’t wait until you lose contact with your fans to start thinking about this.

Give yourself a break; you’re just one person.

From ‘Publishers move past seeing social media platforms as traffic drivers,’ over at Digiday:

“The Washington Post has about 16 people on its social team, which is split into two sub teams: its Instagram team and its ‘core social’ team, which focuses on all the other platforms.”

Maybe you don’t need 16 people, but you could probably use one full time person doing your socials, right?

This morning Embedded sent out ‘Promotional labor,’ which is well worth the read.

Over the past five years, social media platforms have demanded more and more work from their users in order fulfill the promise of keeping connected. If you want your followers to see you on Instagram, you can’t just post a picture, you have to make a video. And if you want them to see the video, you need to produce, shoot, and edit it with some level of skill. And even then, if you’re not catering to a specific trend, the video still might flop—so you try again, and add “comment five times, go live for five minutes” to your growing list of unpaid tasks required for the basic privilege of being seen. 

More work for the chance of reaching your audience sounds horrible, and not a great investment.

Get your social media audience on your email list while you still can. Here’s a very basic plan on how to do that.

Go easy on yourself. You’re just one person, and your magic is probably mostly wrapped up in the main thing you do, like making art, playing bass, or releasing records.

That’s why you have a fanbase in the first place.

Below I’m blasting SOCIAL MEDIA, not Fear Factory!

I could do this sort of surface-level reporting for almost every metal band out there, since social media is horrible for all of us, across the board.

That said, posting a notable anniversary on social media is fantastic way to drive engagement! Great idea!

Right?

Yikes.

Here’s the surface level breakdown:

• 780,300 total followers (Twitter + Facebook + Instagram)
• 45,600 views (across all three platforms)

That means 6% of their total social media audience saw these posts.

Which means 94% of their audience on social media had no idea about the 13th birthday of ‘Mechanize.’

That means 734,700 followers probably didn’t stream the album on a DSP, or watch this video on YouTube:

Again, not pointing fingers at Fear Factory – this is across the board, friends. We’re all in this same boat, and it’s filled with holes.

So start thinking about your Social Media Escape Plan, as it won’t get any easier (or cheaper) to reach your fans this year on any of the social media platforms.

➡️ If you’re the person doing socials for a company and the main draw is YOU, be careful.

From ‘Social Media Managers Are Becoming the Main Character,’ over at Link In Bio:

Are you being paid like a social manager or are you being paid like the face of a brand? More traditional faces of brands that you see in commercials can reportedly get paid from $250K to upwards of $1M per year. I understand TikTok is different, but there’s value beyond social strategy that a company is getting by using your likeness to build their brand.

I also think protecting yourself through a talent contract is important. Things like exclusivity, term, and paid usage could all be things that are negotiated here.

This might not be applicable to bands, but maybe for labels, or people working at media outlets.

➡️ Did you spend time working on the whole shopping integration on Instagram? Well surprise, “Instagram is kicking the shopping tab out of the home feed.” Facebook (the owner of IG) says, “you will still be able to set up and run your shop on Instagram as we continue to invest in shopping experiences that provide the most value for people and businesses across feed, stories, reels, ads and more.”

Sure!

➡️ And are fans watching your music videos? Jesus Christ, no, they’re watching something called YouTube Poops (from Garbage Day):

[VIDEO REMOVED]

On short-form video apps like TikTok and Instagram, a lot of channels try and game the algorithm by combining random video clips and sounds to catch users’ attention. The video above is a good example. It’s the video and audio from a scene from Family Guy, stitched together with footage of a pleasing sensory video and a playthrough of mobile Temple Run-style game.

And this also Garbage Day (yes, Garbage Day is a great read) :

The line between meme or internet trend and spam has never been particularly clear, but I think A.I.-generated content trends make it even blurrier.

This video, which is just AI generated still images and a royalty free track called “Labyrinth Of Lost Dreams” from Darren Curtis Music has over a million views since Jan 5th, 2023.

Aren’t you glad you spent $5,000 for your latest music video?

➡️ On a more serious note, “two Seattle area school districts are suing 5 social media companies,” accusing them of “harming students’ social, emotional and mental health.”

I’m not trying to be all “oh, stop using things that might lead to bad stuff,” because then we’d never use a bank, drive a car, or shop at a store.

But dear lord – our social media posts appear alongside auto-playing videos of police brutality, racist remarks, transphobic screeds and 100 other horrors, every minute of the day.

Set up your website, start your newsletter, and build your own quiet corner on the internet. We have all the tools and systems for becoming our own media empires.

Kiana Tipton recently posted her social media predictions for 2023 on LinkedIn, including this gem:

As concerns about the TikTok Ban increase, creators will prioritize owned channels + become more cross-platform (are we reentering a modern blog era?)

I think the solo efforts like Gawker and Wonkette and Just Jared (my memory is a little hazy, this was all a long time ago) are due for a come back.

Services like Ghost, WordPress.com, and Substack let you upload native video (see how I did that here), allowing creators to own 100% of their experience and branding and vibes, without platform lock-in.

And they’ve also got monetization tools built in, so you don’t have to send your fans to other sites like Patreon or Kofi in order to make money.

Yes, there’s still a place to post content on all the social channels (while the impression rates are still hovering around 2-3% hahaha), sure… but as billboards, directing fans to come to your site to experience more.

If you’ve been following along, I’ve leaned pretty hard into the “link in bio” strategy to promote this HEAVY METAL EMAIL and avoid the ire of social media algorithms.

Alas, the last few days I’ve seen zero traffic to my LinkTree, even though I’ve been posting to Twitter, LinkedIn, and IG stories. I’m sure I’m in some social media purgatory right now.

But that’s okay.

In this same time (Dec 15 – Jan 15) I got almost 1,000 views from Substack, Google, or direct traffic, and 32 new subscribers; that’s a 3.2% conversion rate, and all I had to do was… keep writing.

So keep writing, friends!

Hit me up if you have questions or ideas (seth@socialmediaescape.club)!