Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

Do you need a sign that you should be in full control of your online presence?

How about two signs?

The Tankcrimes record label has been locked out of their Facebook account for over a month, which means they’ve lost contact with 28,000 followers.

Then there’s Topshelf Records, who had their ads account hacked and “had almost $20k in fraudulent charges,” and now they can’t tell their 35,400 followers on Instagram or 55,645 followers on Facebook about their new releases.

Any of us can be locked out of our social media accounts at any point, seemingly for whatever reason.

Own the direct connection to your audience, or else white knuckle the chaos of the daily social media shit show and hope you never lose access to your accounts.

Instead of freely giving Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk all your “exclusive” content (which they monetize, then turn around and charge you to reach your followers), publish the bulk of your work on your own website.

Why? Because ‘social media is the food court at the mall and the landlord sucks.’

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.

Treat social media like a billboard, and use it to drive fans and curious seekers of your magic to your creative establishment.

Social media platforms are out for themselves.

They are not in the business of sending you free traffic.

They don’t care if you’re locked out of your account.

They take your art, you send them traffic, then they ask you for payment to reach the fans who clicked FOLLOW.

Update your website.
Send a weekly email newsletter.
Burn down your social media accounts.

I’m pissed.

This newsletter began because I’ve been ranting about email marketing for bands for awhile now… ahem… the above image is from 2014.

Rather than keep shoveling my thoughts and ideas onto social media, only for them to wash away within minutes with all the other hot takes, gossip, and drama, I started this HEAVY METAL EMAIL newsletter in 2021.

Social media networks come and go, but you’ll still need an email to sign up for the next one, and so will all your fans.

Yes, your fans check their email.

Don’t take it from me – take it from Laura Kidd. She’s been working on her email list since 2009 and says having an email list is one of the major reasons why she can work on music full time (I’m in it, too!):

So if you’re tired of the social media rat-race, you’re in the right place.

To get caught up, here are my most popular posts as of late:

• “Get ready to shell out $20/mo to reach maybe 15% of your audience,” from ‘THE SOCIAL MEDIA PAY-TO-PLAY ERA STARTS NOW.’
• Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Testament, Black Sabbath, Metal Blade Records, Nuclear Blast Records and more all have “Legacy Blue Checkmarks” on Twitter, and Elon Musk said “those are the ones that are truly corrupt.”
• I interviewed Matt DeBenedictis, Manager of Compliance at Mailchimp who said, “just because you’ve got 20,000 addresses, that doesn’t mean that’s 20,000 addresses that want to hear from you today.” This is a good one to read if you’re dusting off your email list from 10 years ago!
• In my post “CASSETTES & EMAIL MARKETING WILL OUTLIVE EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM,” I wrote “if your 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.”

If you’ve got any questions about starting a newsletter in 2023 for your band, label, photography biz, design firm, radio show, whatever (this ain’t just for metal heads) – shoot me an email: seth@socialmediaescape.club

Also, I published my first note on Substack Notes:

Notes is a new space on Substack for writers to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. This will definitely be where I share that sort of stuff, rather than Twitter.

HOW TO JOIN

Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to HEAVY METAL EMAIL, you’ll automatically see my notes.

Since social media is burning to the ground, here’s a thought about getting people to sign up for your email newsletter.

Avoid using, “sign up for updates.”

Like, it’s great to say “social media is a hell fire and we can’t reach our fans.”

The the context of that is great, yes. But saying “sign up for updates,” I’m sorry, it’s boring as f*ck.

Think about this – if you have a tour coming up, what are you gonna post on social media?

During your tour it’ll be, “we’re gonna post, exclusive, behind the scenes photos from our tour, and the adventures driving around the country to visit all these different cities and all these places that we eat.”

Oh, wait – that sounds exciting!

Say that.

Say, “follow our adventures as we leave for tour in a month. Sign up so you don’t miss a single photo of our adventures. Sign up so you, you don’t miss out on all our crazy tour stories.”

There’s a reason media outlets ask, “got any crazy tour stories?”

It’s because stories sell. Stories are what make movies!

Tell stories, not updates.

I had a wonderful chat with Laura Kidd, an independent artist whose recent album ‘Obey Robots’ hit #14 on the UK charts. Part of what made that possible was from building a 10,000 person email list since 2009 – watch the video to find out more!

One thing we discuss is how we share what we do on socials, and people still have no idea what we’re doing.

I spoke about my Goodnight, Metal Friend mix series here before. Been doing it since 2020, and sharing on Twitter and Instagram – just like you’re supposed to, right?

So I was out with some friends recently, and mentioned Goodnight, Metal Friend, and my one friend – WHO FOLLOWS ME ON INSTAGRAM – was like, “what’s that?”

They had no idea.

“It’s almost like everyone else has their own life, isn’t it,” said Laura in this clip, “and they’re all really busy with their own thoughts, so when I share mine I’m not actually intruding as much as I might feel like I am.”

Keep posting about your new music. Your new projects. Your new services. It’s likely 80% of your fans don’t see those posts anyways.

So be sure to promote your website and newsletter while you still can, before the whole social media house of cards comes tumbling down.

From ‘Frozen Activism’ by The Guerrilla Feminist:

What is the point in having a following if they don’t even see your posts? What is the point in feeling beholden to a platform who has not done anything for its users? What is the point of creating an informational carousel on Instagram when it just seems to go into a void?

I’ve been seeing more and more posts like this.

Videos, newsletters, Twitter threads, Instagram Reels, all saying the same thing;

“I used to be able to reach my fans, now I can’t, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

There’s this prevailing thought that “well, everyone is on social media, and that’s it.”

We can’t go back to websites, they’re dead.
We can’t go back to email newsletters, they’re dead.

Well, there’s a prevailing thought that CDs are dead, too, but if you’re in the trenches you know that ain’t true:

CDs aren’t dead. Vinyl isn’t dead. Hell, tapes aren’t dead.

What I’m saying is that email newsletters ain’t dead either.

Will another hip cool social media platform come along and gain critical mass?

Sure.

So use them. They aren’t your friends. Get the eyeballs.

But also start updating your websites.

Send out a newsletter a few times a month (your competitors are already doing this) filled with the things you post on social media that 80% of your fans don’t even see.

Start this week, because it ain’t gonna get any easier in the coming months to directly reach your fans.