Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

Fact: people watch TV shows about storage lockers.

It just makes this post from Lauren Nicholas hit home:

Treat your content like episodes of a TV show. What makes people tune in week after week? What compels people to binge just one more episode? What hypes folks’ excitement after a hiatus?

There’s a TikTok show called Buying Time, where people come in and buy expensive watches. It’s bonkers.

It was made by Adam Faze and the Mad Realities team:

Now, is this realistic for an independent creative? A writer, a band, a photographer?

Heck no, but the point isn’t “making a show.”

You already are the show.

Think about it: if a TV crew (or a writer from Rolling Stone) followed you around, what would they capture?

I promise, your everyday process is interesting, especially your fans.

People watch other people cooking. Cooking shows are a thing.

You are more interesting than $2 burritos, and look at how Taco Bell sells them:

So tell people about the interesting things you’re doing, like the Rick Rubin quote I included in my newsletter from this week:

Everything was trying to make something cool to play for our friends that they would like. That was all it ever was.

Are you bugging your friends about things you think are important, or are you showing them the cool stuff you’re making?

Make cool stuff, show your friends.

WEEKEND TASKS

Here’s four things you can do before Monday:

1. Go look at some media sites outside of the music world and see what sort of features they’re doing. Check out skate / BMX / art / poetry websites / socials / magazines and see how they promote their work.
2. Buy a domain name at Hover this weekend (that’s a referral link).
3. Clean up your “link in bio” links, please. Dear lord, no one is skimming through 20+ buttons.
4. Haven’t updated one of your social media sites in awhile? Write a new post, and tell people to visit your website.

Instead of promoting my Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes a few times on social media this week, I just wrote a better newsletter. Less time on socials mean I’m making these mixes every week – more time making cool stuff, less time shouting into the void about it.

Because, yikes:

I’m just using “link in bio” on socials to drive people here, to HEAVY METAL EMAIL. Even with this little traffic, I still managed around 35 new subscribers in January from direct traffic, without the social media eyeballs.

Hey friends – it’s the end of the year, so I don’t want to drop any big new ideas here as we’re all in wind-down mode, so I figured a wrap-up of the three biggest newsletters I sent this year would be of help to get you ready for 2023.

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1. I had no idea that ‘MORE THAN PLASTIC’ (from Nov 9) would be a hit (for a newsletter about newsletters), but that’s why we make things and release them into the world, right?

In this newsletter I stressed, “You are more interesting than what you’re selling.”

You aren’t just a bass player, you are a songwriter.
You aren’t just a guitar tech, you’ve got stories.
You aren’t just a writer, you weave stories.
You aren’t just a photographer, you capture timeless moments.

Yes, email campaigns of vinyl mock ups and merch bundles are fine when you’re sending to 5,000+ folks, but if you’re just getting started then do your best in telling your story, selling your journey, and inviting your fans into your process as much as you can.

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2. In October I wrote ‘UNHOOK FROM SOCIAL MEDIA,’ which was me yelling from the rooftops (as usual) about breaking away from the over reliance on social media platforms to reach your fans.

This quote from Cody Cook-Parrott keeps me up at night:

“I have had to completely unhook from the algorithm because I have never had lower social media engagement. I have 80K+ followers and often get 300 likes on a post.”

Do we keep spending hours on Instagram every week to get to 85K followers, all so you can hit 325 likes? Fuck that.

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3. My third most popular post was all about the LINK IN BIO, which I’ve been testing out since early November and seeing solid results.

I refuse to believe our reach / impressions will ever get better than right now. It’s all downhill from here.

Yes, I bring the doom and gloom, but there’s no way you can count on winning the attention roulette game every time you have something to announce on socials.

ANTISOCIAL

A vulgar display of social media hostility.

This isn’t about social media, but “The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize” is pretty fucked up, though I don’t think we’ll see any fake bands on the Spotify metal playlist, right? RIGHT?!? (h/t Kallie Marie)

“Piers Morgan’s Twitter account sent out explicit, derogatory tweets to his 8.3 million followers Tuesday,” which is mind boggling. Two-factor your Twitter account, friends.

“Between January 1 and June 30, more than 21 million fake accounts were detected and removed from LinkedIn,” says LINKEDIN.

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?

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.

The Elon Musk drama continues (he laid off about half of Twitter on Friday), and I believe the mess will trickle down to all of our marketing efforts, so we must move forward with our Social Media Escape Plan.

Did you know:

Tweets with a link achieve 7.2% fewer retweets
Tweets with a link garner 28.76% less reach

This according to Buffer (thanks, Jocelyn for the tip), a company I’ve been using for years that lives and dies by scheduling social media posts for big and small businesses and brands.

And that’s before half of the company was gutted.

Think about that; if you include a link in your Tweet – for your pre-order, new video, email newsletter – it could reach almost 30% less fans than if you posted something without a link.

I refuse to believe our reach / impressions will ever get better than right now. It’s all downhill from here.

So what now?

Well, let’s try something with this week’s FOUR THE WEEKEND to-do list:

1. Check out the “link in bio” links of some other metal folks like Testament, Anthrax, Relapse Records, and Death Wish Inc.
2. Now set up your own “link in bio” service (I use LinkTree), and make it the main link in your social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).
3. I’ve always said “it’s okay to repeat yourself” because most of your fans won’t see that one social media post from a Tuesday at 2pm anyways, so re-post something from earlier in the week to your socials this weekend and ask folks to “click the link in bio.” Trust me, most of your fans didn’t see it anyways.
4. If you haven’t yet – set up an email list! The social media game we’ve been playing for the last TEN YEARS will get worse before it gets better. Encourage your fans to subscribe to your email list before it all burns to the grown and lose contact with every follower.

SMART THINGS FROM SMART PEOPLE:

“While Instagram might be using save as a signal to rank posts, it is far more likely that people are saving it because it’s worth remembering, and creators are conflating these two things: That something that resonates will get saved more, not that saving more will make something resonate.”

This from an interview with Sebastian Speier, a former Design Lead at Instagram from 2018-2019. This interview is a year ago, which is like 10 years in Internet Time, but I still think it’s relevant.

“Artists have been forced into a digital diaspora, where they have to exist everywhere but don’t own anything anywhere. Fans bounce quickly from artist to artist across different social networks, DSPs, etc. When you publish only on these platforms, you can lose part of your art and identity ‒ you become a commodity, putting your work in a box that looks and feels like everyone else’s box.”

This from an interview with the people who make Tell.ie (a more robust “link in bio” service) over at YourEDM.

If your only online presence is on various social media networks and Spotify and Bandcamp, where do you truly display and show off who you are?