Category: YouTubeCategory: YouTube

Our work doesn’t need perfect duplications on multiple sites and platforms, our work needs to have a place where the final version resides.

As Professor Pizza said years ago on one of our first Zoom calls, “Stop giving your best work to social media.”

Everything is a billboard – your YouTube descriptions, your email footers, your newsletters, even what you say when the podcast interviewer asks “where can people find you online?”

Don’t rattle off the 3-5 social media platforms – those are places where you can’t reach all of your fans when you post something!

And sure – those social media profiles are exciting because you update them 12 times a day.

But imagine if you spent the same amount of time updating your website rather than uploading free content to a social media platform so your fans… can just stay on a social media platform (and not see all your posts).

Next year is always right around the corner, and it will never get any easier to reach your existing fans on social media. Time to set up a website and send out some good email newsletters.

I’ve been saying that your email newsletter isn’t your permanent address, it’s a delivery truck – just make sure you’re delivering your audience to your permanent address!

I see so many artists hype their latest video in a newsletter and link it to YouTube. YouTube is a platform where you give up all control over branding, design, layout, vibes. The entire site is built to keep users (your fans) on their site – not yours.

Instead, put the video on your own site, and link to it. Deliver your fans to your permanent address.

From Create Digital Media:

YouTube has disabled the account of plugin developer Sinevibes, citing violations of the platform’s “spam, deceptive practices and scams policy.” There’s no rational reason for that, and it’s the latest chilling example of how severely dominant tech platforms can disrupt businesses.

The article goes on to explain how a lot of this is automated, and that some of these companies are just so big that this sort of stuff happens, but my goodness this is frustrating.

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.