Social media numbers teach many lessons.
Carter Vail is quirky musician I follow on Instagram. He’s not a metal guy at all, but he writes some catchy tunes that I think any music nerd could appreciate.
He’s got the numbers that most any independent artist strives for:
- 137,000 Instagram followers
- Reels with 35K, 100K, even a MILLION views
He started his Patreon in December 2022, and posted to it twice. In the new year he’s been promoting it through IG (and elsewhere probably), and posting a bit more, and he’s now at 13 patrons and about $65 per month (before Patreon and PayPal fees).
The lesson here is that even with 137K followers and millions of Reels views THIS SHIT TAKES TIME.
Remember, social media can be a full time job (go look – there are job listings that pay lots of money for it).
So if you’re an independent artist / musician / photographer / band / producer – you can’t expect full-time results without the full-time effort.I know this isn’t a SOCIAL MEDIA newsletter, but I’m 100% in favor of using social media as the delivery truck to my own stuff, and I’m sure you are, too.
So control what you can control:- Post consistently. Schedule posts if you have to, but make sure you’re putting up something every day or so.
- Make it easy for people to support you. Link to your Bandcamp, have a Patreon or a Substack, and make sure your online store is working.
- Focus on getting people to your website. This should be the hub for all your operations; your store, Bandcamp, Patreon, tour dates, news – get in the habit of keeping it updated and fresh!
- Offer fans a reason to get on your email list. Exclusive deals, pre-sales, behind the scenes reports, tour diaries! For inspiration look at the editorial features all the music sites.
Social media is the food court, and you don’t wanna hang out there all day.
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.
PATREON NUMBERS
Below are a handful of bands, media outlets, notable characters, and reaction channels with Patreon pages.
Go check out what they’re doing, and how they’re promoting it on their websites and social channels.
William Ramos, 1,081 patrons
While She Sleeps, 1,017
Two Minutes To Late Night, 854
Banger TV, 720
Ne Obliviscaris, 712
Alissa White-Gluz, 588
Nik Nocturnal, 485
IGNEA, 469
Lords of the Trident, 431
Bullet for My Valentine, 248
Darkest Hour, 240
Jamey Jasta, 226
66Samus, 224
Northlane, 211
ELEINE, 192
Matt Pike, 117
Requiem Metal Podcast, 79
Alex Skolnick, 66
SeenFeen, 54
Cane Hill, 45
Into the Combine Podcast, 43
Judicator, 29
Lambgoat, 11Some of these folks have been putting out seminal albums since the 90s, and some release cover songs with members of TOOL. So use that list as inspiration, and get out there and do great stuff.
To get us started, “social media triggers children to dislike their own bodies,” this according to a study over at The Guardian.
Also, Meta is being fined by the EU for “forcing users to accept targeted ads.” Oh, and “Meta’s New Vision Of The Future Doesn’t Mention The Metaverse Even Once.”
Is Facebook heading towards another pivot? Shocking!
“Influencers discovered they could earn tens of thousands of dollars on the platform by making simple reaction videos,” writes the New Yorker.
“As long as fifteen minutes a day allows them to forgo full-time jobs and focus on music, they will continue to pump out face-filter videos.
“I do it every day to make sure I can pay my rent, dude,” Koch said.
To make you feel even worse, please read ‘30 ways influencers cheated their way to millions of dollars,” with lots of screenshots and info on “how Twitch streamers fake their numbers,” “fake Instagram engagement,” and more.
Yes, I’m all about leaving social media, but while we’re there we need to maximize our efforts to get folks to visit our sites and subscribe to our newsletters.
When Sarah Palmyra (with her 896.5K followers on TikTok) was asked how to engage with her audience, she offered this bit of advice:
“Stories are a really great way to engage with people. I just ask my audience questions, what do you wanna see next? What do you think about this? What do you like about this? And then that’s when I really check my direct messages and see who is saying what. And I have those real conversations just one-on-one.”
I’ll leave you with this:
For posts published by Instagram business accounts, the average engagement rate almost doubled in the past year and is up to 1.94%. Carousel posts still have the highest engagement rate (3.15%), while photo posts have the lowest average engagement rate (1.18%).
If the average engagement rate on Instagram is around 2%, imagine how low the actual click rate is for the “link in bio” game we’re all playing?!
Gee, it’s no wonder that we’re not seeing huge traffic to online stores and tour date pages!
I’ve been leaning on the “link in bio” strategy since November (since “Tweets with a link garner 28.76% less reach” says Buffer), to drive traffic from socials to my various projects (see my Linktree here), just like I hope you’re testing out. Hit me up if you have questions or ideas (seth@socialmediaescape.club).
People who buy vinyl and cassettes? They check their email.
People who buy concert tickets? They check their email.
People who order merch? They check their email.
You don’t need a social media account to buy any of the above, but you need an email address.
And every smartphone comes with an email app pre-installed 🤔
Yes, I preach the good word of email newsletters, but don’t think of it as “writing a newsletter,” think of it as “communicating directly with your fans.”
All those photos you share on Instagram and Twitter that only 5% of your fans see anyways? Yeah, use those.
You can even include a link, unlike when you keep posting URLs in your Instagram post (please stop doing that).
Maybe you’re afraid that your first email newsletter will suck, right?
Guess what? My first HEAVY METAL EMAIL post sucked. This one is a little better.
I got better at it because I kept doing it.
My first week running Noisecreep sucked, but eventually we got to follow Bring Me The Horizon around Times Square in 2010.
Let’s be honest – your first Tweet was definitely horrible.
Writer Natasha Mascarenhas told a story she learned from her professor, when asking “how long is it going to take to become great?” His answer was basically, “no one cares about the first 500 stories.”
Get your crap emails out of the way now, when you’ve got 100 dedicated fans on your list that won’t care either way.
FOUR THE WEEKEND TASKS
Due Monday, friends.
1. Start thinking about your Social Media Escape Plan. Not just because of horrible algorithms, but for when you get locked out of your account.
2. Valentines Day is 38 days away. Come on, there’s nothing more metal than love and heartbreak! Plan something fun for Feb 14th, I dare ‘ya.
3. Have you messed around with the LINK IN BIO thing yet? Come on, Buffer says “Tweets with a link garner 28.76% less reach.” It could be worth testing for your own projects.
4. Try actually replying to a few fans on your social media channels. It’ll make their day, and maybe it’ll appease the algorithmic gods.
You can say “LINK IN BIO,” or you can do something like this (watch all the way through the end, it’s so well done):
Am I saying you have to make videos just like this? No.
Do you you have to make dance videos? No.
Do you have to point at words? No.Do you have to do something?
Yes.
There’s a whole new year ahead of us; are we really going to keep “doing socials” like we’ve always done, and expect improved results?
Making fancy videos like above is hard work.
Saying “watch our video” with a link is light work.We have to find that sweet spot that works for us that will get fans to click a link and subscribe to our email list, or pre-order our latest product.
But, maybe you don’t have to do all the work.
I was chatting about the importance of artists’ telling their stories with Steve Tom Sawyer the other day, about making video clips in the studio, on the road, while shooting a music video.
And Steve raised a great point – why should the artists always have to do that?
He’s right.
Find someone on your same level, trying to put together a body of work, and build something together. There’s a lot of talented A/V people out there, hustling and doing the work.
So in the new year, ask for help. Partner up. Build a team.
Work with good people on good projects and good things can happen.
That said, wanna talk? seth@socialmediaescape.club
Punk Planet founder Dan Sinker wrote this and it couldn’t be any more vital.
WHAT’S YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN?
Here’s a very basic plan.
Set up a landing page for your email list (like Prosthetic Records did here, using Mailchimp). It’s not hard.
Next, Tweet about it.
Imagine you have 10,000 Twitter followers, and you know around 10% of those people see your Tweet. That’s 1,000 people.
Then imagine 5% of those people click to subscribe to your email newsletter. That’s 50 people.
That’d be 50 people that you could reach directly when you’ve got something new to announce.
Now say 5% of those 50 people buy something from you for $20. Let’s round up, it’s three people.
That’s $60.
And that’s if you post “join my email list” once and never do it again.
But you should at least schedule some Tweets to let people know they can sign up to stay in touch.
Yeah, I know, 50 people is smaller than 10,000. But it took you half a decade to get to 10,000, so it’s going to take a minute. Develop a strategy and you can someday get 10-20% of that audience subscribed to your email list.
Then you can reach this audience whenever you have a new release, a product, tour announcement, or new video.
But you gotta get creative.“‘Sign up for updates’ is for department stores and car dealerships.”
It’s boring as shit, so I gave you a few ideas how to accelerate your Social Media Escape Plan
Your FOUR THE WEEKEND tasks this weekend:
- Start an email list if you haven’t already. Check out my Resources page for help with that.
- Set up a Link In Bio service, and then try mentioning (not linking) that in your posts. See what happens.
- Read how Linda Bloomfield got around 1,800 people to sign up for her email list with just one tweet. See how Elder announced their email list, too.
- Valentines Day is just 45 days away. What’s your plan?
ANTISOCIAL
A vulgar display of social media hostility.
Grab a fistful of cookies and doom spiral with the multitude of “social media trends in 2023” articles, with missives like “YouTube Shorts Takes Off,” “Budgets on the line as bosses demand social receipts,” and “First steps into the metaverse.” Good luck!
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.
- 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.
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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
Linda Bloomfield ran #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter since 2018.
Then she told her 16.5K followers “I’m moving this to a newsletter,” and 1,200 people subscribed.Tegan and Sara started a newsletter earlier this year, and they promote it to their 544K Twitter followers usually twice a week.
Paid subscriptions on their Substack start at $6/mo, and they have thousands of paying readers.
“A lot of the writing and connection that we crave, it just doesn’t exist on social media anymore,” Tegan says. “Social media has become this super curated, very flat-feeling world for us. So Sara and I were hesitant as we looked into the future with all our projects, like, ‘How do we promote these things without feeling disingenuous?’”
They’re not repurposing the newsletter content for socials. For what? To gain more followers they can’t reach?
No.
They publish a story, they link to it. Subscribers get it delivered to their email inbox.
The same inbox where fans get email receipts from records and concert tickets they buy.
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.
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.
I can’t get handle the food anymore on social media, so I started Social Media Escape Club, because I can’t live on milkshakes and fries anymore.
Let’s all stop hanging out at the food court at the mall every day and start thinking about our Social Media Escape Plan.
I help creative people quit social media, promote their work in sustainable ways, and rethink how a website and newsletter can work together. Find out more here. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Join us — start a 30 membership and hop on our next Zoom call meeting!
Trying to figure out your email strategy, grow without social media, maybe not sure what to send to people? I’ve got Email Guidance spots open, and here’s how it works and how to book.
Prefer a focused conversation instead? Book a 1:1 call and we’ll dig into your work together.
Email me: seth@socialmediaescape.club
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