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.

In order for your Social Media Escape Plan to work in 2023, you have to grab the attention of your fans.

You’re not just completing with the algorithm, but you’re competing with social media posts that are more interesting, more funny, more fun.

You’re competing with Netflix and Oreo cookies and SPORTS.

Posting “hey, sign up for updates” with a link to your landing page is boring.

SELL IT, FRIENDS. Like this:

So if 100 people see that link, maybe 10 people click the link, and one person will sign up.

That’s just the way it goes, which is why you have to be consistent, and not lose hope.

Post that link several times throughout the week – don’t worry, not everyone will see every one, so don’t worry about coming off spammy. Just make sure you’re posting other things throughout the week, too.

And, yes; we all should have been doing this since 2015.

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew hit up Congress on Thursday to defend his app against skeptical lawmakers who are concerned about its potential threat to national security.

How’d it go?

“I think this actually increases the likelihood that Congress will take some action,” said Mike Gallagher (R-Wis).

What’s all the fuss?

“Governments have expressed concerns that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, may endanger sensitive user data,” says the NYTimes.

Politics aside (hey now!), what’s this mean for the bands that use a platform with one billion monthly active users?

Here are some bands (and their follower counts) on TikTok based off of Apple Music’s Headbangers and Spotify’s Heavy Metal playlists.

Metallica 2,500,000
Slipknot 2,000,000
Sophie Loyd 448,000*
Iron Maiden 386,700
Lamb Of God 151,500
Megadeth 140,300
Avenged Sevenfold 90,600
Powerwolf 78,800
Judas Priest 36,300
Nita Strauss 31,400*
Killswitch Engage 23,600*
Extreme 3,948
Of Mice & Men 3,085
Self Deception 167*
*Not verified

What happens if TikTok is shut down and you lose contact with 100,000 fans?

How might that affect your next album pre-order?
Or tour announcement?
Or letting your fans know that you aren’t cancelling your appearance at some big summer festivals?

Ahem. Have an email list (just like most of the artists on that list above).

Sure, some fans follow on other social media networks.

Remember when Elder lost access to their Facebook account in September of 2022?

Access to 78,000 Facebook followers gone, and now they’re left trying to get word out to their Instagram audience of 42,500 fans about the situation.

This will get worse before it gets better.

TikTok could shut down.
Twitter could go bankrupt.
Facebook is doing the Metaverse still, right?
Instagram is all about video, er… Reels, Notes, no – carousels!

We’ve got zero control over any of these platforms, so start your Social Media Escape Plan TODAY.

Get one fucking fan onto your email list today.

Get one customer in your online store to opt-in to your newsletter.

Get 100 fans in the habit of going to your website, and converting 5% of them to subscribe to your email list.

Stop whining about about reach, and fighting over vanity metrics and build a direct line of communication to the only thing that matters in this whole damn thing – your fans.

I’ve been seeing some depressing posts from all sorts of creative folks lately, grieving about their miserable social media “reach.”

And it’s not just independent folks selling shirts, jewelry, and design services.

Earlier this year I wrote how Fear Factory posted about the 13th anniversary of ‘Mechanize’ to their 780,300 total followers, and around 6% of their fans saw it.

So just like major bands with massive social media followings, smaller creative folks can’t reach their full audience and they’re losing sales. They can’t reach new customers, and they can’t reach their existing customers.

AHEM.

So what’s our Social Media Escape Plan, friends?

It ain’t gonna get any easier to reach our fans on socials.

It’s only gonna get harder in 2023, so time to think about email newsletters again!

If social media imploded today, could you still reach your fans?

And if social media only let you reach 10% of your fans, what is the threshold of that reach to where it becomes not worth it?

Is it 8%? 5%? Do you even know how many fans you’re reaching on socials? Are you paying to reach your fans?

And if you have 5,000 followers on Twitter, or Instagram, and it just seems like the effort really isn’t worth it, are you really going to just walk away from them? Just put up a single post saying, “hey, make sure to follow on Spotify,” or whatever?

What’s your Social Media Escape Plan?

Because it was 144 days ago when Elon Musk took over Twitter, and it’s a miracle it’s still standing.

Meta is gonna fire 10,000 more people.

TikTok might get banned in the U.S.

These are platforms we rely on to reach our fans, and they’re completely out of our control.

If anything happens to these platforms, we lose the ability to reach our fans.

So get in the habit now of asking your fans to subscribe to your email newsletter, then build a content strategy today on how and when you’re going to reach your fans with an email newsletter.

Don’t wait until you lose contact with your fans to start thinking about this.