Category: Social Media Escape ClubCategory: Social Media Escape Club

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.”

Elder lost access to their Facebook account with 78,000 followers back in early November because of an “external ad account that was hacked that had admin privileges did not have it enabled.”

Since then they’ve been keeping in touch with their audience via Instagram, and in the past week sent out this post:

This warms my black metal heart!

In the post they wrote, “we’ve become too dependent on social media as our only way of getting our news out to you lovely people. Without paying these companies massive ad money, there’s no reliable way of getting through to you, even if you want us to.”

Sign up for their newsletter here.

Some of the comments are magical, too:

“Never signed up for a newsletter faster in my life!”
”So many bands/venues/promoters don’t do this it’s crazy!”
”Old school is best”
”Smart! We are signed up!”

Elder hit #1 on all of Bandcamp for a bit, with well over 700 orders as of writing this (Dec 7, 2022), and they did it with:

• 43K Instagram followers
• No access to their Facebook since September
• No Twitter account at all

High fives to the Elder team, yowza!

OPEN UP THIS PIT

It’s time to get your fans on your email list before you get randomly locked out of your social media accounts.

Like I wrote about a year ago, “Your 2022 is going to be a bloodbath if you rely 100% on socials to keep in touch with your fans. Especially if you lose access to any of your social accounts.”

Seriously – what’s the plan if you lost access to one of your accounts tomorrow?

• Can you still announce your tour?
• Announce a new album with your media partners?
• Release that video you’ve been working on?
• Promote your new merch line?

Get your fans on social media to sign up for an email list while you still can.

ANTI-SOCIAL

Some conformationally-biased articles to get your heart pumping.

• “Twitter will no longer enforce its COVID misinformation policy,” which pairs well with “THE LONELY ROAD: TOURING DURING COVID.”
• “8 Ways to Grow Your Email List With Facebook”

• “Changing standards and financial instability are making disabled users of Twitter anxious they may lose a valuable tool for connection and advocacy.”
• “Arnold’s Bar & Grill’s Facebook account was hacked over the weekend,” and “Zingerman’s Deli back on Instagram following hack.” Neither have much to do with music, except the whole “we rely on social media to communicate and market to our fans and customers,” which is very much like what we do in music.

🏁 METALLICA’S SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED ZONE

Metallica have slowed their social media pace since last week, when they posted over 50 times after announcing their new album. Since Monday:

Twitter: 2 posts
Instagram: 2 posts
Facebook: 2 posts

One post warns about “Crypto giveaways,” which is a bummer.

The other is a native video upload of James Hetfield talking about the meaning of the new ‘72 Seasons’ album title:

Facebook (Post): 303,000 views
Instagram (Reels): 2,400,000 views
Twitter: 165,500 views
YouTube (Shorts): 36,000 views

If James can take a minute to make an explainer video, so can you. Plus now he doesn’t have to answer this question in any upcoming interviews, either! WIN/WIN.

If even Google has to start a TV commercial by asking “did you know Google makes a phone,” you need to hype your own work a LOT MORE.

(the Google commercial I embedded here from YouTube is offline)

This from a little company called Google:

Revenue: 257.6 billion USD (2021)
Number of employees: 186,779 (2022)

Do most of your fans know you have a new album? Do they know you have an online store? That you have an email newsletter?

Hell no, they don’t.

Statistically speaking, NO ONE knows what you’re doing.

Yes, I wrote about this in August, but I’ll put it here again because I know not everyone read it:

Right now you have fans that don’t know everything you’ve done.

Hell, you have fans that don’t know what you did last month because not everyone sees your social media posts, and not everyone opens every single email you send.

Like, you’re literally going to meet a metalhead this holiday season that still hasn’t heard the new Metallica track.

Since releasing their video for ‘Lux Æterna’ on Monday, November 28th Metallica has not taken their foot off the gas:

Twitter posts: 17
Instagram posts: 18
Facebook posts: 19

That’s over 50 posts since MONDAY.

Have you posted 50 times in the last month?

This goes for your new album, shop updates, and getting people to sign up for your email list – no one sees anything, so keep posting.

“But Seth,” you cry, “Metallica has a team behind them!”

They do, yes, but that no reason why you can’t post ten times in a week when you’ve got something new to promote.

Hi, it’s Seth Werkheiser with some more goodies for your Social Media Escape Plan.

The holidays are now in full swing, so that means plenty more marketing messages about discounts, sales, free shipping, and pleas to order soon “to ensure delivery by Christmas!”

In this email I want to give you a gift of peace and acceptance. I want to lighten your load.

Everything we see going on with social media right now is chaos. Pure dumpster fire madness (see below).

So as an artist you might be wondering how you’re going to navigate posting, creating compelling social media assets, editing videos, and about 900 other things.

This from ‘YOU DON’T NEED MORE JOBS,’

I know being an “email marketing expert” or “newsletter writer” wasn’t another job you wanted heading into a new year, but trust me, someday you’re going to want to move “social media expert” off your job description.

I believe you can siphon your social media audience to a your email list, and then you’ll spend less time being an “online marketing expert,” and more time working on your craft, and I think that’ll be better for everyone in the new year.

As an artist, if you’re managing your own social media, you need a raise.

A for-real social media manager makes around $52,370 per year according to GlassDoor.

And if you’re making videos, doing live streams, and doing all the graphic design for your social media efforts, well, that number goes up.

So if your social media efforts feel like an uphill battle, that’s okay, because you’re probably not able to work 40+ hours per week on them, nor are you getting health care or 401K contributions from that work.

Now you gotta update 13 new social media platforms? Sounds like more work (hint: it is), so make sure it’s working for you.

And by all means, please don’t just walk away from these platforms in defeat.

Start your email list and start asking your fans to sign up.

This will be a painfully slow process because you’ve been tending your social media gardens for half a decade (or more), but seeing “only” three people sign up doesn’t mean you suck, it means probably 70% of your fans never even saw your social media post about subscribing to an email list.

I believe in 2023 reaching your fans will only get harder on social media – it will never get easier.

Start an email list today (I suggest Substack), and tell your fans to subscribe.

Happy Holidays!

ANTI-SOCIAL

Below is all the confirmation bias you need to ditch social media and focus on building your email list.

Facebook:

• “92.3% of the views in the US during Q3 2022 did not include a link to a source outside of Facebook,” according to Meta. Posts from a Page with a link got seen less than 10% of the time. Yikes.
• ‘Meta keeps booting small business owners for being hacked on Facebook,’ via Forbes

Twitter:

• ‘All the Music Stars Who Have Left Twitter After Elon Musk Took Over,’ via Billboard
• ‘ATLANTIC RECORDS DENIES USING BOTS To Juice His Or Other AR Artists‘ Video Numbers,’ via TMZ

TikTok:

• Oops – looks like this link was broke in the last email; ‘Meet the indie musicians who are making a living on TikTok,’ via Mashable
• ‘TikTok’s Viral Challenges Keep Luring Young Kids to Their Deaths,’ via Bloomberg

Instagram:

• ‘We at Instagram Want You to Know That if You Don’t Use Reels We Will Hurt You and Your Family’ – satire from The New Yorker, but it feels true.

P.S. interesting Twitter thread about securing your Official Artist Channel on YouTube.