Category: Social Media Escape ClubCategory: Social Media Escape Club

From ‘Inside the Baffling Revival of the Cassette Tape’ over at Rolling Stone:

According to Luminate CEO Rob Jonas, “Millennials in the U.S. are 42% more likely to buy cassette tapes than listeners from other generations” as a way to support their faves.

Vinyl sales are up, people are buying cassettes (I always loved cassingles), and I’m sure CDs will start to creep back in, too.

Heck, teens are using digital cameras again.

Back to emails, though; this according to Sale Cycle:

59% of respondents said that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, while just over 50% buy from marketing emails at least once a month.

Read that again: almost 60% said marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.

So if you’re posting on social media multiple times per week for just 5-10% of your fans to see, you should probably “repurpose your social media posts” and put them into a weekly email newsletter.

Weekly? YES.

I bet your fans would love to hear from you every week (which is why they followed you on socials, came to your show, and bought the record).

Try it for two months then look at the data. You are looking at the data, right?

It’s easy to say “that’s too much.”

It’s also pretty easy to copy and paste your social media content that hardly any of your fans see, drop it into Mailchimp or Substack, and hit send once a week and actually find out.

FOUR THE WEEKEND TASKS:

1. Have you replied to more fans then you’ve posted? Reply to three fans on your socials this weekend. Bonus points if you make it a personal video.
2. Valentines Day is now 31 days away – got anything planned?
3. Have you given your fans a reason to visit your website? Updated it in the last month? Freshened up your bio? Or are you content to just keep shoveling your photos, art, images, music, and sound onto social media platforms that you don’t own or control, neglecting the fact that Google can send you more traffic than all those social media sites combined.
4. Have you asked ONCE in 2023 for fans to sign up for your email list? Is your landing page in order? Did you just lead with “Sign Up For Updates” and wonder why only two people signed up? It’s because that “offer” is “for department stores and car dealerships,” and you’re a lot more exciting than that.

Social media numbers teach many lessons.

Carter Vail is quirky musician I follow on Instagram. He’s not a metal guy at all, but he writes some catchy tunes that I think any music nerd could appreciate.

He’s got the numbers that most any independent artist strives for:

• 137,000 Instagram followers
• Reels with 35K, 100K, even a MILLION views

He started his Patreon in December 2022, and posted to it twice. In the new year he’s been promoting it through IG (and elsewhere probably), and posting a bit more, and he’s now at 13 patrons and about $65 per month (before Patreon and PayPal fees).

The lesson here is that even with 137K followers and millions of Reels views THIS SHIT TAKES TIME.

Remember, social media can be a full time job (go look – there are job listings that pay lots of money for it).

So if you’re an independent artist / musician / photographer / band / producer – you can’t expect full-time results without the full-time effort.

I know this isn’t a SOCIAL MEDIA newsletter, but I’m 100% in favor of using social media as the delivery truck to my own stuff, and I’m sure you are, too.

So control what you can control:

• Post consistently. Schedule posts if you have to, but make sure you’re putting up something every day or so.
• Make it easy for people to support you. Link to your Bandcamp, have a Patreon or a Substack, and make sure your online store is working.
• Focus on getting people to your website. This should be the hub for all your operations; your store, Bandcamp, Patreon, tour dates, news – get in the habit of keeping it updated and fresh!
• Offer fans a reason to get on your email list. Exclusive deals, pre-sales, behind the scenes reports, tour diaries! For inspiration look at the editorial features all the music sites.

Social media is the food court, and you don’t wanna hang out there all day.

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

Your art is your restaurant.

You set the menu and you set the hours. You adjust the lights, the atmosphere and the vibes are up to you.

PATREON NUMBERS

Below are a handful of bands, media outlets, notable characters, and reaction channels with Patreon pages.

Go check out what they’re doing, and how they’re promoting it on their websites and social channels.

William Ramos, 1,081 patrons
While She Sleeps, 1,017
Two Minutes To Late Night, 854
Banger TV, 720
Ne Obliviscaris, 712
Alissa White-Gluz, 588
Nik Nocturnal, 485
IGNEA, 469
Lords of the Trident, 431
Bullet for My Valentine, 248
Darkest Hour, 240
Jamey Jasta, 226
66Samus, 224
Northlane, 211
ELEINE, 192
Matt Pike, 117
Requiem Metal Podcast, 79
Alex Skolnick, 66
SeenFeen, 54
Cane Hill, 45
Into the Combine Podcast, 43
Judicator, 29
Lambgoat, 11

Some of these folks have been putting out seminal albums since the 90s, and some release cover songs with members of TOOL. So use that list as inspiration, and get out there and do great stuff.

To get us started, “social media triggers children to dislike their own bodies,” this according to a study over at The Guardian.

Also, Meta is being fined by the EU for “forcing users to accept targeted ads.” Oh, and “Meta’s New Vision Of The Future Doesn’t Mention The Metaverse Even Once.”

Is Facebook heading towards another pivot? Shocking!

“Influencers discovered they could earn tens of thousands of dollars on the platform by making simple reaction videos,” writes the New Yorker.

“As long as fifteen minutes a day allows them to forgo full-time jobs and focus on music, they will continue to pump out face-filter videos.

“I do it every day to make sure I can pay my rent, dude,” Koch said.

To make you feel even worse, please read ‘30 ways influencers cheated their way to millions of dollars,” with lots of screenshots and info on “how Twitch streamers fake their numbers,” “fake Instagram engagement,” and more.

Yes, I’m all about leaving social media, but while we’re there we need to maximize our efforts to get folks to visit our sites and subscribe to our newsletters.

When Sarah Palmyra (with her 896.5K followers on TikTok) was asked how to engage with her audience, she offered this bit of advice:

“Stories are a really great way to engage with people. I just ask my audience questions, what do you wanna see next? What do you think about this? What do you like about this? And then that’s when I really check my direct messages and see who is saying what. And I have those real conversations just one-on-one.”

I’ll leave you with this:

For posts published by Instagram business accounts, the average engagement rate almost doubled in the past year and is up to 1.94%. Carousel posts still have the highest engagement rate (3.15%), while photo posts have the lowest average engagement rate (1.18%).

If the average engagement rate on Instagram is around 2%, imagine how low the actual click rate is for the “link in bio” game we’re all playing?!

Gee, it’s no wonder that we’re not seeing huge traffic to online stores and tour date pages!

I’ve been leaning on the “link in bio” strategy since November (since “Tweets with a link garner 28.76% less reach” says Buffer), to drive traffic from socials to my various projects (see my Linktree here), just like I hope you’re testing out. Hit me up if you have questions or ideas (seth@socialmediaescape.club).

People who buy vinyl and cassettes? They check their email.

People who buy concert tickets? They check their email.

People who order merch? They check their email.

You don’t need a social media account to buy any of the above, but you need an email address.

And every smartphone comes with an email app pre-installed 🤔

Yes, I preach the good word of email newsletters, but don’t think of it as “writing a newsletter,” think of it as “communicating directly with your fans.”

All those photos you share on Instagram and Twitter that only 5% of your fans see anyways? Yeah, use those.

You can even include a link, unlike when you keep posting URLs in your Instagram post (please stop doing that).

Maybe you’re afraid that your first email newsletter will suck, right?

Guess what? My first HEAVY METAL EMAIL post sucked. This one is a little better.

I got better at it because I kept doing it.

My first week running Noisecreep sucked, but eventually we got to follow Bring Me The Horizon around Times Square in 2010.

Let’s be honest – your first Tweet was definitely horrible.

Writer Natasha Mascarenhas told a story she learned from her professor, when asking “how long is it going to take to become great?” His answer was basically, “no one cares about the first 500 stories.”

Get your crap emails out of the way now, when you’ve got 100 dedicated fans on your list that won’t care either way.

FOUR THE WEEKEND TASKS

Due Monday, friends.

1. Start thinking about your Social Media Escape Plan. Not just because of horrible algorithms, but for when you get locked out of your account.

2. Valentines Day is 38 days away. Come on, there’s nothing more metal than love and heartbreak! Plan something fun for Feb 14th, I dare ‘ya.

3. Have you messed around with the LINK IN BIO thing yet? Come on, Buffer says “Tweets with a link garner 28.76% less reach.” It could be worth testing for your own projects.

4. Try actually replying to a few fans on your social media channels. It’ll make their day, and maybe it’ll appease the algorithmic gods.

You can say “LINK IN BIO,” or you can do something like this (watch all the way through the end, it’s so well done):

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Connor Price (@connorprice)

Am I saying you have to make videos just like this? No.
Do you you have to make dance videos? No.
Do you have to point at words? No.

Do you have to do something?

Yes.

There’s a whole new year ahead of us; are we really going to keep “doing socials” like we’ve always done, and expect improved results?

Making fancy videos like above is hard work.
Saying “watch our video” with a link is light work.

We have to find that sweet spot that works for us that will get fans to click a link and subscribe to our email list, or pre-order our latest product.

But, maybe you don’t have to do all the work.

I was chatting about the importance of artists’ telling their stories with Steve Tom Sawyer the other day, about making video clips in the studio, on the road, while shooting a music video.

And Steve raised a great point – why should the artists always have to do that?

He’s right.

Find someone on your same level, trying to put together a body of work, and build something together. There’s a lot of talented A/V people out there, hustling and doing the work.

So in the new year, ask for help. Partner up. Build a team.

Work with good people on good projects and good things can happen.

That said, wanna talk? seth@socialmediaescape.club