Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

Saw a Twitter prompt today asking about an album that changed my life, but rather than just reply there for 5% of my followers to see, I figured I’d repurpose that “content” and use it to illustrate a two points.

In my first band back in 1991, guitarist Tim Day gave me a dubbed copy of ‘Sailing the Seas of Cheese’ from Primus. As a bass player he figured I’d enjoy it, and wow, Les Claypool opened up a whole new world for this naive, young Seth, as a bass player, and as a person.

Years of playing and I somehow settled on this “one man oddity” known as Seth W. for a bit. I opened for metal bands, got hardcore kids singing along with goofy songs, and met a lot of amazing people that I’m still friends with (and work with) today.

What’s ANY of this got to do with Social Media Escape Club?!

1. Expand on your social media posts. Put your witty comments and interactions into newsletters and on websites, where they’ll last longer than a few hours.
2. Try new things. Starting a newsletter in 2023 might sound weird, but so does pouring hours per day into social media platforms that only let you reach 5% of your fans.

Sure, you can say, “but no one visits our website.”

Well, your website is a static page with a Bandsintown feed, a band photo that’s three years old, and still has links to MySpace.

Gee, I wonder why no one visits your website?

Start copying and pasting all that content you’re shoveling onto those VC-backed, corporate funded websites that don’t give a shit about your art, and build something of your own that will outlive ‘em all.

Step right up, friends, and pivot to YouTube Shorts!

From Feb. 1, YouTube is introducing a revenue scheme to its Shorts format, meaning eligible creators earn a 45% share of the revenue from the ads viewed around their Shorts videos, while YouTube retains the remaining 55%.

(Sure, YouTube isn’t really “social media,” except that it’s media, and everyone talks about it, so it’s pretty social)

Soon after this announcement, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said “YouTube Shorts has surpassed 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion a year ago.”

YouTube says “qualifying channels can get between $100–$10,000 each month,” and note that, “Shorts views exclusively receive ad revenue sharing from the Shorts Feed, which is separate from long-form video monetization on the Watch Page.”

If you’re ready to compete with kids with 4K cameras, and way more time on their hands than you, check out YouTube’s ‘Create YouTube Shorts,’ and ‘YouTube Shorts monetization policies.’

ANTISOCIAL

➡️ “A House Republican on Thursday is introducing a bill to ban kids and teens under 16 from using social media,” reports the Washington Post, just as the Surgeon General says that 13 is too early to join social media. Oh, and a bill just passed the House in Utah requiring parental consent for minors on social media.

➡️ Elon said “Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads,” but “To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified.” Pay to play! Oh, and he wants to charge businesses $1,000 a month to keep their check marks.

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN

If the work we’re putting in a social media platform isn’t really working, then why keep doing it?

Think about reducing your time spent on social media without completely eliminating it.

Are all those hours staring at our phones worth it for the 14 “likes,” the 3.2% impressions, the 12 clicks?

Imagine if we took one day worth of social media scrolling (like 2+ hours), and instead spent that time on something else?

1. Learning how to edit videos (I recommend ScreenFlow on the Mac)
2. Writing new music (or finishing a year-old song)
3. Setting up a collaboration
4. Building a website (or buying a domain name)
5. Seeing how to build community via Discord, Substack, or Reddit

Don’t burn your social media platforms to the ground, but we can reclaim hours we’re investing in them to learn skills and strategies that will provide a bigger return down the road.

Use the emails you get from other industries as inspiration for your own newsletters.

For example, I got this email from Venmo recently:

The main point of the email was the video, but the links wasn’t to the video on YouTube – it was on the Venmo site.

You already know where I’m going with this.

When you drive someone to YOUR site, you control the branding, the vibe, the links, the experience.

When you drive someone to YouTube, your video is now competing with content that is algorithmically alluring to your fan! Oh no!

Your site can be set up to feature your upcoming tour dates, new products in your store, a pre-order package, or an email sign up link – all things that are buried under the “SHOW MORE” link in the YouTube description area.

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.

Stop building your entire existence on rented property, and set up your own website + newsletter.

WEEKEND TASKS

Here’s four things you can do before Monday:

1. When’s the last time you cleaned your LINK IN BIO links?
2. Buy a domain name from Hover (that’s a referral link) and think about setting up (or updating) your website.
3. Make your own “pick one” images (like this one), and put it on your website. Have your band mates chime in and make it a whole feature – hey, it’s what all the music sites do, and people click on ‘em! Get ‘em clicking to your site instead and sell some albums.

4. Double check and make sure you set up 2FA for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and just about every other service that is critical to your operation.

The biggest part of your Social Media Escape Plan is fighting for that direct connection with your fans.

Your fans followed you on social media for a reason, so don’t worry about coming off as annoying when asking for a pre-save, pre-order, to click a link, or sign up for your email list – most of your followers won’t see your post anyways!

1. Post often. Schedule those posts around the clock, especially when you’re not online – some of your fans are in different time zones!
2. Mix it up; make videos, vary your images, use screen shots, adjust your text, try some audio. Variety is the spice of life, so that must be true on socials.
3. Make your pitch compelling. Remember, you’re more exciting that $2 burritos.

➡️ Here’s Dave Karpf (an Internet politics professor at GWU) talking about reach on Twitter. It’s going down, friends!

When I tweet something, it isn’t actually viewed by 42,000 individuals. It’s seen by the subset of those 42,000 people.

…

I didn’t reach 42,000 people by tweeting my article. I reached less than 3,000 people. And that has been pretty consistent. Unless I write something spicy that gets a lot of retweets, the view-counter tells me I’m reaching 2,000-3,000 people.

That means he’s reaching about 7% of his Twitter Audience.

Go look at the big music media outlets and bands and run those numbers. Or maybe don’t. Yikes.

➡️ Wondering why your Instagram posts aren’t clicking? Maybe because the algorithm likes promoting hate instead!

White Christian nationalist “groypers” are thriving on Instagram, posting memes with racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic tropes while others pose as clean-cut conservatives to lure in new, college-aged recruits. 

➡️ Heads up – your tour announcements and product drops on Facebook might have to compete with Donald Trump once again – fun!

President Donald Trump will soon regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Meta, the parent company of the two platforms, claims that “new guardrails” are in place to keep the former president in line.

➡️ Oh look, Elon Musk continues being bad at being a “free speech absolutist”:

Twitter has censored links to a BBC documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the Indian government, despite CEO Elon Musk’s previously stated commitments to free speech on the platform.

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN

Okay, some more “glass is half-full” pieces to provide some hope in getting your fans from social media to your website / email list / store.

This from Louise Stigell from Confessions Of A Terrified Creative, in her post ‘How do I market my art without social media?’

Social media is the “shotgun” approach to marketing and selling art. We put our art out there and hope and pray that someone will stumble over it and will want to hire us or buy art from us. This approach might have worked back in the day, for some. But even then, many successful artists I’ve read about have said that a miniscule amount of their sales or leads have come from social media.

Stigell is writing from an artist’s perspective, but I think it’s still a good read for any creative person out there.

So think less shotgun, and more direct.

Export your Bandcamp sales emails, and send a for-real newsletter to your fans (be sure to provide an opt-out if some of those emails are a year old or more).

Make quick videos of you replying to comments from social media, and upload directly in the replies for that ONE PERSON. Wow your fans.

Start working with other folks – collaborate on a project together. Make cool stuff that you want to show your friends. Make videos. Make a zine. Make a shirt. Release a mini-movie on a site with your talented friends. Document a skate trip or hike.

You’re more exciting than a show about storage lockers – put that out into the world.

And of course, make sure your fans actually see it. Don’t just scream about it over and over again on social media platforms that “let you” reach less than 10% of your fans.

➡️ Get in touch: seth@socialmediaescape.club