Don’t seat your guests at your restaurant, then explain that the specials are at your other location across town.

EDIT: this post sort of led to this interview with Audience Republic!

So stop telling fans to follow you on platforms that are built to limit your ability to reach them

I know it’s easy to post to socials during your big event, but remember; you’re lucky if you reach 10% of your followers.

Instead, go grab a slice of pizza afterwards. Go dancing. Get home super late, and collapse on your bed fully clothed and exhausted.

The next day, after some coffee and a shower, put together an email newsletter with a handful of the photos and stories from the night before.

Because, come on… when you “take a minute” to post to social media at the event, you’re going to end up checking your email and DMs, open IG, process your notifications – stop it!

Get back to the show, hang out with your collaborators, go make some new friends.

And stop posting your most exciting photos and stories to the places where your fans are least likely to see them

You can put photos in a newsletter.

You can upload audio right to your Substack.

You can upload a video clip right to Substack.

You can write big captions.

When you send it with Substack, it’s also on the web, so new fans can find it from Google.

When you send it with Substack, you can link to it from your social media (good luck with that, but still).

You can link to your upcoming tour dates, pre-orders, or anything you want unlike Instagram (which doesn’t allow links)

You can link to anything and your fans will still see, unlike on social media which throttles your reach when you do that.

It won’t get any easier to reach your fans on social media in 2024

That’s why you should start an email list today, and get subscribers by sending great newsletters.

Had a fun Social Media Escape Club Zoom hang this week (become a trial member and come to the next one).

This week I got us started riffing from Seth Godin’s recent quote, “Your (current) customers need to bring you your (new) customers.”

Through our 30 minute conversation we got on the subject of hyping new projects, and asking our fans to click to check it out, or subscribe. You know how it goes.

And well, sometimes the “check out my new thing” don’t resonate with our fans, as Robin Yang talks about here:

“Seth and I were in a LinkedIn class,” says Robin. “It’s about providing value, right? People aren’t going to do the thing that you want them to do unless they understand what they get out of it, right?

And so if it’s like, “oh, I have a new Substack over here.” But it’s like, why does that matter to me?

And some people have enough of a fan base that inevitably some people will follow them. Like, I’ve always loved whatever Seth’s doing, I’ll follow him till the end of… which like, I think we all will have those “true fans.”

But maybe the majority of your audience is like, well, “yeah, he’s like a good guy, I really value the content that he delivers in his new newsletter here. Why would I… what is he doing with his new social network?” Right? Like, why would I follow him on TikTok? (laughter ensues)”

This is why if you need to have a plan if you’re looking to get away from social media.

Telling your social media followers to sign up for your newsletter won’t get you far.

Sure, like Robin said above, some of your true fans may subscribe, but you’ve got fans at so many levels.

Remember to ask yourself, “what’s in it for them?”

Put yourself in their shoes,

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.

If you get engagement from a certain type of photo you post on social media, tell your followers they can get more by visiting your website, and subscribing to your newsletter.

If you get great feedback from your Twitter rants, consider putting more of them into your newsletter. Ask people to subscribe so they don’t miss any.

Maybe you stream tutorials online for everyone for free. That’s awesome, but remember, you’re making money for Zuck and Musk with each on of those! Ask your fans to subscribe to your email newsletter, and then link folks to your own video stream that corporate dorks don’t get to monetize it.

If you’re an artist that’s still trying to grow a following, you can’t just imitate what the big guns are doing and expect the same results.

A band like Beartooth can do this because they’ve been around for over 10 years, sell out venues in Australia on co-headline tours, and probably have 25,000 people on their email list (probably more).

Another approach is what Teenage Wrist did with their recent newsletter, writing 300 words before even getting to their upcoming tour dates (which are all linked, btw).

“i’m coming at you from the floor of soda bar in san diego, waiting patiently for my generic charger to bring my phone back to full juice.  spiritual cramp is sound checking, and boy do those guys have some shit to say that i can relate to.  deeply poetic verses like, “wake up in the morning and i think i’m gonna die”, “i’m sick of looking at my phone” and “i wanna smash my phone”.  seriously… i’ve spent countless hours over the past four weeks in the back of the van opening and closing my instagram account, refreshing my email, waiting for the fleeting dopamine hit.  it has officially stopped coming.  i need to find a new vein.  i wanna smash my phone.”

You share feelings and emotions and stories through your art, so try doing the same thing when you send an email to your fans.

Neil Mason talks about this in his Artist Development Newsletter:

“Be the artist continually creating a great escape, and you’ll be the artist that people turn to whenever they need one.

And we all need one.

The trick here is to connect the narrative from your music to your social media, your concerts, your merchandise, and on and on.

The best escape artists meet their audience in their emotions by showing they have been there too and they understand.

Then, take your audience on a journey to escape their troubles, and as a by-product, you will escape yours by creating the audience you once wished you had and making the money you once wished you made.

Don’t compete on the final product – a zillion songs are uploaded to Spotify every day, and trying to set yourself apart from that noise is tough.

Like, look at what I do; there are 1,000 other people writing about email marketing for bands and artists on the internet.

But I’m also trying to help you get away from social media, while most of those marketing professionals are telling you how to optimize your TikTok account.

That’s not me, and that’s hopefully why you’re reading this.

You’re watching this video on the new Social Media Escape Club.

A minute ago we were HEAVY METAL EMAIL, but now it’s Social Media Escape Club.

I thought long and hard about that, and I realized no one cares. I could name this thing Zip Zorp and you’re gonna either read it or you’re not gonna read it.

No one’s thinking about this stuff as much as I am.

So – welcome to the Social Media Escape Club. Make yourself at home.

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What happens when you cold-email a bunch of radio contacts about your blackened death metal band?

In the case of Úzkost, vocalist Josh Thieler explains how it led to a memorable house show (and so much more).

Click play, it’s a wild story.

Josh explains how the magic has continued over the years:

“My understanding is, so the college radio stations started playing us and then one of these kids have like, graduated college and then started their own web radio stations. And so then they’re playing us on those, and then other people hear about it, and they’re playing us on their stations. And then some like real legitimate, like the one local radio station here, the Big Rock one has played us multiple times on it, which makes no sense to me.”

The band has gone from 200 Spotify followers to 2,800 as result.

As most of us know, it’s not just about unit sales and DSP playlisting:

“The last show that we played here, a mom brought her 13 year old trans daughter, and it was her first show she had ever been to,” says Josh. “And she’s like, I love you guys so much. And she’s like, bought each shirt, bought every record that we had. And she’s like, I want to play metal someday. And I’m just like, how did this happen?”

During our chat, Alex asked “what would you say would be an actionable tip from this experience that you would pass on to other people?”

“I’m learning that I know less than I did the day before. So try as much as you have energy for, don’t discount the things, you know, Seth pushes emailing lists and stuff. Do that. It’s easy to set up.”

Josh also dishes the age old wisdom for any creative person – networking is vital, but in an honest, organic, kind way.

“Just talk to people in bands. Talk to fans on the internet when you can, when you have the energy for it. Talk to people that write for different sites. Then, like I said, don’t discount any of the things that we look at as dead from the past, like mailing lists, radio.”

That’s the thing – you gotta start somewhere, but you gotta do it at your own pace.

“It’s obnoxious to like start this whole thing by yourself out of nowhere and just be like, okay, here’s everything. Let me start trying to do everything at once and collect all these different contacts and everything. Start somewhere, and you just keep doing it. Once you gather those contacts, it’s super low effort to just send a press release, you know, and you can use the same press release for your emailing list, you know, of fans that you send to your PR contacts and that includes all the radio people that you can find.”

None of this is a magic fix. Emailing your local college radio station this week might not be the answer – you just never know!

And if you’re not in a band, take this concept and run with it.

Maybe it’s not hitting up college radio, but maybe there’s a local print weekly, a flea market, a record store, a DJ night.

This is all built on people, on relationships. Build those up, and see where it goes.

Listen to Úzkost on Bandcamp.

Stories work, friends.

Feeling stuck on what to send to your fans this week? Here’s three things your fans might appreciate in the coming days:

🌮 Oct 4: National Taco Day

Don’t just say, “hey, happy National Taco Day,” tell your story about how you kinda met Jack Dorsey of Square. Okay, I didn’t really meet him, as I was busy stuffing tacos and making coffee, but he stopped by our little shop and hooked us up with shiny new Square equipment. Seemed like a nice guy.

💔 Oct 5: Mike Alexander of Evile passed away in 2009

Just 32 years old, gone far too soon. I got to meet Mike when I was running Noisecreep, when we had Evile in for an interview, and he was a sweet, kind dude.

💿 Oct 7: Candiria’s While They Were Sleeping came out in 2016

This banger turns seven years old this year.

Maybe you’ve got an epic story about getting tacos after a show. Or you have a killer salsa recipe.

Maybe you played a show with Evile, or you met Mike years ago, or just love their latest album. Share something genuine, and the spirit of Mike Alexander lives on, 14 years later.

Maybe you haven’t listened to Candiria in awhile, and this brings up good memories.

All of these are just ideas to show that you’re not just a band with an album to sell, an artist with a new print, or a photographer for hire – they show you’re a real person, with unique experiences and stories to tell.

And people buy from people that vibe with. Just saying.

NOTE: Please double check all these dates. I’m a one dude operation here, so mistakes happen, and yes, I’m gonna miss a bunch of stuff. Use this as a guide!

ANTI-SOCIAL

A vulgar display of social media hostility

“But now, the couple said, the change to Instagram’s algorithm has resulted in some (of Idea’s) Instagram Stories reaching barely 1 percent of their audience,” from ‘Instagram’s Favorite Bookseller Is Ready to Go Offline.’

“Instagram changed the hashtag system,” says Craig Gleason, “you can no longer see ALL the posts connected to a hashtag, only the ones they decide are “TOP” posts.” Not great!

“To be an artist, a writer, an herbalist, a creative and thoughtful person – we are risking so much at the hands of the apps that keep us sucked in,” says Cody Cook-Parrott Grace in ‘I quit Instagram.’

“My beef is more with Facebook and Meta than with the hackers,” says co-artistic director of Punkt Festival Erik Honoré in ‘The anatomy of a Facebook account heist.’

“You don’t need to reach a million people all the time. You don’t need to reach a thousand people all the time… one person can do it.”

This video centers on a simple but easily forgotten idea: impact doesn’t come from scale first—it comes from attention landing in the right place.

After talking with a longtime musician who quietly kept sending extreme metal records to college radio, the result surprised him. Once a station latched on, everything changed: “now instead of playing to old dudes with their arms crossed we’re playing to young kids who are going crazy.”

The lesson is this: “just because a thousand people didn’t see your thing, maybe one person that someday can do something with that is the person that you need to constantly be putting that in front of.”

You won’t always know who they are, but that’s why you keep going.

NO CURE vocalist Blaythe Steuer said from stage at Furnace Fest that he better not catch anyone littering. The band is from Birmingham, Alabama.

I’m sure “mention littering” was not on the marketing plan, but the universe did its thing, and here we are.

Steuer could have said nothing, of course. But he mentioned littering, and this jaded dude who’s been going to shows for 30+ years thought it was funny.

I’ve added them to my Bandcamp wishlist, and streamed their catalog on Spotify.

My experience is not universal, though. Some people definitely littered at Furnace Fest.

Every action is still an action.

You react, or don’t.

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