Category: Social Media Escape ClubCategory: Social Media Escape Club

Hey! I had 74 subscribers on April 1st, 2022.

From April through July of 2022 (four months), I sent only six emails, and one of them was sent as my other newsletter Metal Bandcamp Gift Club by mistake – OOPS.

That was not a good stretch.

• 52 people still subscribed, 37 of them from the Substack network (71%).
• And because I didn’t have anything to push on socials, I only got nine clicks total from Twitter and Instagram.

So that’s how NOT to do it. Why do people keep looking at social media? Because there’s always something new!

And yes – there are DAILY email newsletters, but it’s up to you to find the balance for your readers.

Which I’m still doing!

From August through November of 2022 (the next four months), I ramped up and sent 27 emails, and you can see the difference below.

Going from six emails to 27 emails is a 350% increase.

• I gained 111 new subscribers, 71 of them from the Substack network (64%).
• Twitter + Instagram drove 100 clicks, a 1,000%+ increase from the previous four months. Those 100 clicks led to just 7 sign ups, a 7% conversion rate. Ouch.
• Started using LinkTree around November 1st, and stopped including links in my Twitter posts and IG Stories. That led to 25 visits and 10 sign ups, a 40% conversion rate.

By December 1st, I had 242 subscribers, and hit 250 around December 15th.

This is what worked for me:

1. Substack rolled out Recommendations on April 12th, and I was fortunate to get recommended by Ryan J Downey’s Stream N’ Destroy newsletter. That drove 113 subscriptions this year alone, and counts for nearly half of my 254 subscribers as of Dec 22nd. That happened because I’ve known Ryan for over a decade and we have some mutual friends, and he didn’t have to recommend it! Build relationships over years, write good stuff, and Substack Recommendations can really help.
2. Posting more often let me hone my writing and figure out what “clicked.” This also let me post about it more on social media, part of my Social Media Escape Plan.
3. Speaking of social media – when I would publish something, I would write and schedule a few posts on Twitter, and I had reminders on my phone to post to IG Stories. This helped drive 1,000 clicks to my Substack in four months.
4. Started testing out the “link in bio” strategy in early November, and pushing my social media audience to click on my LinkTree on my profile page, instead of including any links in my posts. I got nine sign ups total from Twitter / Instagram / Facebook in eight months, and 10 from LinkTree in less than two months. I don’t know why that happened, but I’m going to keep it going.
5. I interviewed interesting artists and people in the heavy music space, to show real world examples of people using email to reach their audience. The bonus is they shared the interview with their audience. This wasn’t a HUGE driver of subscribes, but it got the RIGHT people on my list, because it’s people who are curious about the subject of email marketing for music folks.

Your results might vary, but you gotta send some emails to get results, so get going!

The whole point of this HEAVY METAL EMAIL newsletter is to get people on your email list.

That’s because social media will be murder in 2022, and I don’t think any of us want to spend more time on those networks than we have to.

I wrote that a year ago, and come on – social media was murder this year, right? Think it’ll get any easier in 2023? No way.

ANTISOCIAL

A vulgar display of social media hostility.

“ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location using their IP addresses,” which is fucking wild. As Job Gruber says, “Chinese-owned internet services should be banned in the United States, and TikTok exemplifies why.”

Just getting worse for TikTok, as legislation passed by the U.S. congress just banned TikTok on government devices, and some universities are banning the service on school devices and WI-FI networks (though students can still use TikTok on their own data plans). Where does that end? Whew.

Twitter now shows everyone how many times a Tweet was viewed, which is probably terrifying for some media outlets. Big time follower count and low view counts (like, less than 5% of an accounts audience) just means you gotta pay up if you want to get seen on Twitter (or pay for Blue).

On a more serious note, Reuters is reporting “Elon Musk orders removal of Twitter suicide prevention feature.” What the fuck?

Linda Bloomfield ran #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter since 2018.
Then she told her 16.5K followers “I’m moving this to a newsletter,” and 1,200 people subscribed.

Tegan and Sara started a newsletter earlier this year, and they promote it to their 544K Twitter followers usually twice a week.

Paid subscriptions on their Substack start at $6/mo, and they have thousands of paying readers.

“A lot of the writing and connection that we crave, it just doesn’t exist on social media anymore,” Tegan says. “Social media has become this super curated, very flat-feeling world for us. So Sara and I were hesitant as we looked into the future with all our projects, like, ‘How do we promote these things without feeling disingenuous?’”

They’re not repurposing the newsletter content for socials. For what? To gain more followers they can’t reach?

No.

They publish a story, they link to it. Subscribers get it delivered to their email inbox.

The same inbox where fans get email receipts from records and concert tickets they buy.

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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.

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.

I can’t get handle the food anymore on social media, so I started Social Media Escape Club, because I can’t live on milkshakes and fries anymore.

Let’s all stop hanging out at the food court at the mall every day and start thinking about our Social Media Escape Plan.

You should be reusing your already-written social media posts for your email newsletter.

The Instagram post (above, left) is from December 15, 2022.
The email newsletter (right) is from December 16, 2022 – the next day.

Church Road Records has 5,587 Instagram followers.
That post got 143 likes, and three comments.
Add those up and divide by the number of followers, and that’s a 2.6% engagement rate.

(Engagement rate means someone did something – liked, shared, left a comment, or clicked a link.)

Now, let’s assume they have 1,000 email subscribers, and let’s pretend only 100 people opened the email (I bet it’s more).
That’s still a 10% open rate.

I’ll take 10% over 2.6%, thanks.

We’re all posting to social media, just trying to get people to our store, buy tickets, and sign up for our email list.

AND MOST OF OUR FOLLOWERS NEVER SEE OUR POSTS.

Think about it; if you “only” have 1,000 email subscribers, and “just” 10% open your email, it’s still more effective than spending hours of social media “engaging” and posting, trying to hit 5,500 followers just so less than 3% of them will interact with your posts.

Like I wrote over a year ago in FIGHT FOR THOSE EMAILS:

You know all those Spotify Wrapped images that were being shared on socials this week? Well, people who don’t follow you on social didn’t see them, so why not send those Wrapped images to your email list?

It’s a great way to bolster your love for your fans, too. Set up a 20% discount for your store and include that with your thanks email and see what happens.

You’re already spending hours every week on social media. Take 15 minutes and reuse that social media content fore your email list, include a clear “call to action” like BUY THIS RECORD, and watch some magic happen.

1. Scroll through your old social media posts. Find something that “did well” (got a bunch of likes or comments), and send it to your email list.
2. Set up your “link in bio” and use it on your social media platforms (I started pushing my “link in bio” in October and it sent almost 50 clicks to this newsletter and has been my 2nd biggest driver of email sign ups).
3. Buy a domain name. Set up a website. Don’t leave your online presence to tech-bro start up platforms that can disappear overnight.
4. Set up a discount / special in your online store to run through the end of the year.

ANTI-SOCIAL

A vulgar display of confirmation-biased articles:

• Facebook reach down on your pre-orders and tour announcements? Well, it’s alleged that “Facebook actively fueled ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s civil war by prioritizing hateful and dangerous content, then not moderating that content fast enough, or sometimes at all, says a new lawsuit filed against Meta,” according to NPR. Like I said, ‘Social Media Companies Don’t Care About Your Pre-Order.”
• Better late than never, I guess; Instagram rolls out a page “to support accounts that are experiencing access issues or may have been hacked.”
• Use Twitter Spaces for fan engagement? Oops, they went down the other day.

Seriously, though, if social media is your thing, Amazon’s Amp is hiring a Head of Social Marketing.

Got a question this week on Twitter, and figured I’d repurpose it for you, my lovely HEAVY METAL EMAIL reader.

Q. What advice would you give to an organization that already has a large traditional email list (10k), but considering shaking things up by switching to Substack? Is there an advantage to Substack over Constant Contact or Mailchimp?

A. The biggest advantage of Substack is the built in community features like comments, likes, threads, recommendations, polls, chat, mentions, collaboration, video, and the heaps of support from Substack and the community itself (check out their weekly Office Hours).

Substack also feels a bit like Etsy, where there’s a built in network, making it easier for other writers and readers to find your newsletter. Services like Mailchimp and Constant Contact are like BigCartel or Shopify, so you’re 100% responsible for driving traffic to your newsletter.

So if community and interaction are important, Substack is worth a lot of consideration.

If e-commerce / automations / segmenting / A/B testing (all the old-school email marketing things) are more important, then Mailchimp / Constant Contact / Klaviyo would be a better fit.

Q. Can you transfer over your existing email list or do people need to re-subscribe?

A. Yes! Export your existing list and upload anywhere – that’s the joy of email marketing, you’re not tied to any platform.

If you haven’t sent to that list in awhile (a year or more), it’s a very good idea to send an initial “warm up” email, with a clear and obvious UNSUBSCRIBE link near the top of your first send. Just to make sure everyone is still on board with getting emails from you.

Contact me with questions: seth@socialmediaescape.club

🏁 METALLICA’S SOCIAL MEDIA NEW ALBUM ZONE

Since December 8th, 2022, Metallica have posted three videos of James Hetfield talking about the meaning of the ‘72 Seasons’ album title, the new song ‘Lux Æterna,’ and “darkness.”

Twitter: 407,000 views
Facebook: 794,000 views
Instagram: 5,500,000 views

The total run time for all three clips is less than three minutes and add up to over 6.7 million views (so far).

ANTI-SOCIAL

My confirmation-bias is pretty blatant.

• “Wolfgang (Van Halen) elaborated on how these changes stemmed from his mental health struggles – which include depression and anxiety, and are often heightened by the backlash he receives on social media,” from Guitar.
• “Facebook, now known as Meta, knew Instagram was pushing girls to dangerous content,” says CBS News.
• “To leave a note, go to the top of your inbox, select the followers you follow back or people on your Close Friends list, and your note will appear at the top of their inbox for 24 hours. Replies to notes will arrive as DMs in your inbox,” – a new feature called Notes is coming to Instagram.
• “Even NASA has expressed concern over Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter takeover,” says MSN.

Linda Bloomfield started #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter in January of 2018, which is a weekly round up of paying gigs for creative folks in the UK.

What caught my eye was a Tweet (here) saying she’s moving Opportunity Tuesday to a newsletter format, so I reached out to understand her move from a social media network to an email list, which I think can be super helpful for lots of us!

I guess my first question is how long have you been doing Opportunity Tuesday? And is that how you built up to 16.5K followers on Twitter? That number of followers is no joke.

Linda Bloomfield: I posted the first thread back in January 2018 – can’t quite believe it’s been that long! I think I maybe had about 1,000 followers at that time, and I was working in an arts centre in London. I was constantly being emailed opportunities to “pass on to my network,” and started to question who that really was? And did it seem fair that people only had access to a lot of these opportunities if they were already in a ‘network’ of some kind?

It can be hard to find interesting paid opportunities in the arts as they’re not all shared in the same place, and frankly freelancers have enough unpaid admin to do without spending hours hunting for the next commission.

The first (Twitter) thread was a hit, and my following grew steadily – I tried to keep up the thread every week, with a few breaks for holidays, and now I somehow have 16.5k followers, which seems wild to me as outside of OppTues and the occasional theatre/arts chat I mainly post about nonsense: cooking, gardening, and my dog!

When did you see the writing on the wall regarding Twitter?

I owe a lot to Twitter – I can’t deny that my following has helped me build a profile and definitely helps me find more work – I’m freelance too!

So I’ve been following the Musk takeover closely and it really feels like things are headed down a rocky path. If Twitter even still exists in a few months I’m concerned it will no longer be a safe or trusted platform. I hope I’m wrong!

Did you consider moving Opportunity Tuesday to another social media platform?

I did consider other platforms. I know quite a chunk of “theatre twitter” has already jumped ship to Mastodon, but it just didn’t seem as “easy” and accessible as Twitter. Instagram doesn’t really work for words and links in the way I would need it to for OppTues, lots of people aren’t on Facebook anymore, and I’m too old for TikTok!

I follow a couple of other Substack newsletters and it has always seemed a clean, simple and accessible form of communication – so giving that a go now instead. It’s going well so far!

The thing I love here is you’ve been doing this since 2018. That’s four years, which is forever in internet time. And in your first post on Twitter, asking for people to sign up, you got about 1,200 people to sign up. From one Tweet, that’s great! But again, you built up four years of trust to do that, so when people saw “hey, subscribe here,” they did it. They trusted you.

I guess so. It’s very lovely! I’m just so glad people have found it useful for all this time. It’s my favourite thing in the world when people get in touch to say they’ve had successful applications for things they’ve found through Opportunity Tuesday!

Can you speak a bit about showing up for those four years? There had to have been slow weeks, right? Self doubt creeps in, “why am I doing this?” What kept you going all those years?

Oh my gosh, yes absolutely. There are definitely times I’ve regretted committing to 10 every week!

I genuinely put the hours in to find the “right” things for the list each week. I won’t, for example, just list standard jobs that wouldn’t be of interest to freelance artists, and I won’t list anything exploitative. So it takes around three hours every week and there are of course times I wish I didn’t have the commitment. I’ve occasionally been known to post at midnight, or “Opportunity Tuesday… on Wednesday,” and even once or twice have included an “interval” in the thread while I eat my tea or watch bake-off.

But people get it because I don’t get paid for this so it’s got to realistically work with my life. I’ve taken a few breaks over the years, for holidays, family stuff, or just when work is particularly chaotic – and people have mostly been kind, understanding and patient.

For the handful of times I’ve regretted starting it, there have been 1,000 times I’ve been so glad I did.

It feels like it’s bigger than just me now – a community has been built around it, one that celebrates open recruitment, fair pay, and support for freelancers, arts and culture. A bunch of other free lists and threads have sparked since 2018, often citing Opportunity Tuesday as their inspiration. I feel very proud.

And with your first email send, what was the reaction? I’m guessing you had like a 50% or higher open rate, right?! What’s the response been so far, from sending out these listings via email?

You can tell I’m new at this because I hadn’t actually checked until I saw this question! Oops. Looks like the first email on Tuesday received a 76% open rate – wow!

Since then we’re now up to just under 1,800 subscribers in total – I’m floored to be honest. And delighted it will be able to keep going this way, if / when twitter dies.

A few people are also chipping in real money now – access is the same for free and paid subscribers (and always will be) but people can choose to chip in £1 a week if they can afford to. The income isn’t huge but will mean I can properly make time for it each week going forward. As a freelancer myself, in a cost of living crisis, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that!

A 76% open rate??! You are a legend. And it’s a testament against the silly notion that “nobody reads emails anymore!”

Compared to putting up these listings on Twitter, how was it different putting it all together in your first email? It was your first time, I know, so there’s a learning curve, for sure. But it’s nice to not have a character limit, right? Haha

Not going to lie, it took quite a bit longer than anticipated! But I think that’s just because it was my first time, and I’m also still cross posting to twitter at the moment which I won’t be doing forever (maybe).

Substack is a lovely platform though to use, really simple and clean, and it was a treat to be able to write as much as I like for the introduction and the end. It sounds silly, but OppTues has such a specific format that it’s hard to give it much…personality?

But you’re totally right, the change to email means each weekly list can come with a bit of razzamatazz and colour – an intro, a story, some context, a response to what’s going on in the world and in our industry for freelancers – that feels like an exciting opportunity.

I’ve already thought about adding in some news, links to other arts folk doing great things, stuff like that – it’s going to be fun to get creative and experiment. I’m sure the layout will get a little fancier in time too, once I’ve learnt the ropes! (It will probably always end with a photo of my rescue dog Mabel though, I reckon she’s the main reason the open rate is so high)

ANTI-SOCIAL

My absolutely-biased bunch of raging links against social media:

• “Instagram is telling creators when and why their posts are ‘shadowbanned’” – oh, how nice!
• “Facebook and Instagram are struggling to attract and retain the younger generation that’s crucial for their longevity. Why? The simple answer: Gen Z prefers video.”
• Speaking of video, “the rise of personalization and short-form video platforms means that the streaming services’ marquee editorial collections don’t drive as much listening.”