Month: February 2018

Stop Paying Facebook to Reach Your Fans

Steve Lambert of the non-profit Center for Artistic Activism wrote a fantastic piece called, ‘Why Facebook Is a Waste of Time—and Money—for Arts Nonprofits,’ and I (of course) love it. With a Facebook account with over 4,000 “likes,” they were only reaching about 3% of their audience.

“This is by design,” writes Lambert, “people think the Facebook algorithm is complicated, and it does weigh many factors, but reaching audiences through their algorithm is driven by one thing above all others: payment. Facebook’s business model for organizations is to sell your audience back to you.”

It turns out that Facebook doesn’t even offer a discount to non-profits to reach their supporters. Classy.

“For now, we’ve found our email newsletters much more effective because at least we know the message reaches the subscribers’ inbox. And while we are no longer investing our time or our donors’ money into Facebook, it’s not a complete departure. We’re letting automated systems repost from our website and from other social networks.”

Emphasis mine. At least you know they got it. Then you can see who opened, and who clicked a link. You can also see who didn’t open your email, and a week later send it to them again. Don’t be dismayed that you don’t have 4,000 email subscribers, or even 400.

When you get 100 people to hand over their email address, then you’ve got a subscriber. Likes and faves are easy, but someone opening an email (in 2018) is raising their hand and saying, “I want more of you.”

 

 

Forever a Student

My 42nd birthday is approaching quickly. That’s 4+ decades of behaviors, instincts, ways of dealing with things that come up. For some things it takes four decades, for other things you learn real quick. For me, wisdom is one of those long journeys of understanding.

Wisdom doesn’t show up one day in the mail, easily openable and ready to use. Wisdom often comes to us through the things that interfere with our comfort – be it an untamed, untethered idea, the person who drives us bananas, or a sunset begging us to stop our productive rush, rush and just watch it.

Another way I like to approach it is in the moment I’m about to dismiss someone or something, I instead think: So you are my teacher today. What am I being asked to learn from you?

From ‘THE WISDOM OF THE THINGS WE DISMISS‘ by Caitie Whelan

My four year old MacBook Air was acting up recently. I got that spinning beachball while I was in the middle of some important work (so important I can’t remember what it was). I caught myself wanting to launch into the response that I’ve seemingly been programmed with since I was a young boy, even before we had personal computers.

A feeling of hopelessness, “why me?” This computer problem, in this split second, was bullshit. The worst thing ever. Not fair.

That happened in a second, and in the next second I flipped the script. I made myself laugh. I celebrated like I just scored my dream job, or a unexpected check showed up in the mail. I raised my arms, smiled, dug deep and laughed in the face of my “world ending” computer problems.

Yeah, weeks later my laptop is fine, the work got done, and no one died.

That day the spinning beach ball wasn’t my enemy, ruthlessly mocking me. It was my teacher, and I was the student.

Anyone Can Contact You

Listening to Roderick On the Line episode #275 (here, at the 41:00 mark), Merlin Mann talks about the old method that ANYONE can contact you – email, phone, (and recently) Twitter – and maybe how we need to step back away from that. It’s not working.

  • Anyone can interrupt your dinner
  • You can receive an email on a quiet Sunday morning
  • Your lunch date can be ruined by 1000 angry replies

This open communication can be weaponized, with bots, and scripts, and RTs. If you piss off the hive, they’ll come after you. Then your phone is buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Your inbox is now filled with sewage. Twitter becomes unusable, breaking under the stress of what it was not intended for.

I’ve been near someone whose tweet went viral. Whereas our phones are mostly a comfort, it felt like a thousand angry demons were pushing their way through their touch screen, buzzing and flashing. The small rectangle on the armchair of the sofa became the trap in Ghostbusters.

Buzz, buzz. The chaotic force from the internet; “it’s in there.”

Let’s Raise Money for Students Run Philly Style

I’m running the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia this May, and I’m looking for your help in raising $500 for Students Run Philly Style, an organization that mentors kids with running.

Kids these days are doing incredible things, like winning gold medals, making rad things, and talking with more sense than most of our elected clowns in office.

So hey, I’ll run 10 miles in May, and you chip in a few bucks to help make a kid’s life better, deal?

I started running in July of 2016, after a few years off the bike and feeling sorry for myself. I fired up one of those Couch to 5K apps and got my ass moving, and holy shit, I run now, and I love it. It taught me a good lesson: do something with consistency, and in time you’ll see results. I’m not talking just about the 40lbs I lost, or that I can run 20 miles a week, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment, and helped me get through a pretty serious funk.

So if running can do that for little old me, imagine what it could do for a some rad kid in Philadelphia? Your support buys shoes and pays for entry fees for races. You’re gonna help some kid feel like a million bucks! Donate here!

Kickstarter is a Grand Ending

Seth Godin started a podcast called Akimbo and I’ve listened to his first episode at least three times now. I’ve been reading his books since the early 2000s, and watching his videos. He’s got a podcast now? Boom. Subscribed.

“In order to have a Kickstarter to succeed, you need to begin with a following. You need to begin with people who trust you. A Kickstarter is the end of a multi-month or multi-year effort to earn trust and attention. It’s not a Grand Opening, it’s a Grand Ending.”

Listen to Seth talking about Kickstarter right here.

I got hired for something like that years ago.

Someone put together an entire movie, and needed like $10,000 to really launch it or something. Did they already have a Twitter following of people passionate about the subject of the film? Nope. Did they have a Facebook group where they chatted with people, shared behind the scenes footage, and listened to people’s tales?

Nah.

They made social media accounts AFTER it was done, not before. They wanted to get the word out to a bunch of people they didn’t even know, so they’d give money to a person they never heard of (until they needed money).

Companies Come and Go

As I’ve been thinking about leaving Patreon, an email from Derek Sivers popped into my inbox and alleviated all doubts if I was doing the right thing (emphasis below is mine):

“Don’t be dependent on any company. They come and go.

Think long-term. You’re going to be creating stuff, making fans, and building relationships for the rest of your life — much longer than these companies will last.

It’s so important and easy to have your own website. Instead of sending your fans to some company’s site, send them to yours. Get everyone’s direct contact information, so you don’t have to go through any one company to reach them.”

Sure, have your music on a few sites, but don’t let that be the ONLY place where people can find you. Have a home base.

Cut the shit that “no one visits websites anymore.” That’s because you all stopped updating your sites in 2004 and told everyone “check us out on Facebook,” which means now you can only reach 12.6% of your audience unless you enter your credit card information. How’s that working out?

Fuck Off with Your Partners

Recently I signed up for an email from a media outlet. Since I do a bunch of email marketing, I like to see what some of these companies are up to, and how they work.

The first email was a bunch of links to their stories. Headlines. Big photos. Yawn. Okay.

The second email was from their partner. As in, they put together an email campaign on behalf of an advertiser and sent it to me.

The email was a give away that was 100% useless to me. Like, it was practically for tampons, which – as a dude – I literally have no use for.

The company assumed I was into “tampons” (I’m avoiding mentioning the actual give away, email me if you want the details), and just blasted it out.

They could have written a series of articles about tampons, menstruation, recent stories about feminine hygiene products being withheld from women in prison. Then, over the course of several emails they could track who clicked on those links to those stories, and safely assumed, “hey! I think these people are possibly interested in feminine hygiene products!”

Then they could build a smaller but better-targeted segment and get better opens and clicks for their client.

Instead, they sent an “email blast” and I unsubscribed. I’m sure they’re not losing sleep over me leaving, but they sure ain’t doing their “partners” any favors.

 

Valuable to Whom?

Erin Bartram’s post, ‘The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind‘ hit me square between my vision orbs.

“But your work is so valuable,” people say.  “It would be a shame not to find a way to publish it.”

Valuable to whom? To whom would the value of my labor accrue? And not to be too petty, but if it were so valuable, then why wouldn’t anyone pay me a stable living wage to do it?”

If it’s so valuable (or, “if I’m so smart”) then why can’t I pay rent with the knowledge/ wisdom/experience? If I had a week’s salary every time I asked this question after failing to land yet another job, well, I’d be pretty well off.

For each automated rejection email in my inbox, or every time I don’t even get an interview, or I’m told “oh, we’re not hiring for that position anymore” (after being told the company wants to fly me to their office for a few days), well… I just double down on my personal projects (like Skull Toaster) and go for a run.

Could Patreon become a Facebook?

Patreon will always need to grow to keep making money, and to do that, they’ll need more people visiting their site.

I’ve been using Patreon since late 2014 for Skull Toaster (you can see it here), and it’s served me well. I am thankful beyond measure that I have the support that I do from the audience I love.

But something that Jason Kottke mentions in his recent interview with Nieman Lab really struck me:

That’s the other thing I really didn’t like about (Patreon); I wanted to keep control over my membership experience. I didn’t want to outsource it to Patreon if in three years they do some sort of Facebook-esque thing and start hosting more and more content on their site so that it becomes more about them and less about the creators. I could just see that happening, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near it.

To get people to support your work via Patreon you have to tell people to visit your Patron page. You do this via social media, in videos, your email list, in messages to friends.

Posting content on your Patreon page a good way to get people to your Patreon. If you make a public post titled “Here are my five favorite music videos from January 2018,” that will get you more clicks than “go check out my Patreon.” That’s just how the internet works.

More clicks increase the chances of getting more support. Not because your fans hate you and aren’t enticed by your pleas to “check out my Patreon,” but because your fans are busy watching Netflix, Instagram Stories, replying to FB messages, and answering texts and emails till 1:30 am.

You have to post stuff that will get noticed, and cut through the clutter of social media in 2018.

The downside, though, is that putting more of your content on Patreon gives you less control. It becomes Patreon’s content in a way, surrounded by their branding. Their colors. Their photo format (they already have the worst blogging interface, uggg).

I think Kottke could be onto something here.

Driving traffic to Patreon is good for Patreon because it can lead to more supporters which puts money into Patreon’s pockets (as it should! They do a great job). But when (not if) Patreon flips the script (which they tried in December 2017), you’ll be left with a bunch of your content sitting on their servers – just like so many of us have already done with Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.

Seriously – if you’re not sending 100s of clicks a month to Patreon, you’re not much help to Patreon.

As Derek Sivers recently wrote in ‘Use the Internet, Not Companies,’

“It’s so important and easy to have your own website. Instead of sending your fans to some company’s site, send them to yours. Get everyone’s direct contact information, so you don’t have to go through any one company to reach them.”

Jason Kottke mentions Memberful, which allows you to set up subscriptions right on his own website. “If you go to my site and sign up for a membership, you never actually go to Memberful’s site,” said Jason, “it’s all done with JavaScript overlays and stuff on kottke.org”

Driving traffic to your own website should be an artists number one priority. Your website is where people get the latest, most accurate information about what you’re doing (or where you’re playing). Or buy merch, or join your email list.

As we should have learned from the MySpace days, directing your fans to a 3rd party site (like Facebook, etc.) for something as sacred as your original content can be a risky move when that 3rd party site makes big changes, disappears, or starts charging you to reach your fans.

 

What Would I Even Put in an Email Newsletter?

When friends complain that only 12% of their fans are even seeing their social media posts, I like to mention EMAIL NEWSLETTERS.

Well, “newsletters” is a silly phrase, but hear me out.

The usual come back is, “I don’t even know what I’d put in an email newsletter.”

Which is a total lie.

For years you’ve been providing social media networks with your content for free, willy-nilly. You, and 324328 other bands and labels and distros and brands. All those behind the scenes photos, updates from the road, show reports, new product announcements.

Yeah, that’s the stuff you put into a newsletter. Then you start “sharing” less of that on social media.

And instead of telling your fans on social media, “join my email newsletter for updates!” (because that’s about as exciting as a local insurance company pitch), you instead say things that media outlets say:

Subscribe for behind the scenes photos of recording, touring, and/or writing.

Subscribe for a “first look” at our limited edition vinyl.

Subscribe to see the new places I explore and find out how you can be cool like me, too.

See? Now instead of giving Twitter and Facebook and Instagram your exclusive content (for free), and being asked to pay for the privilege of letting your fans see it, well, you keep it for yourself and email it directly to your fans.

Oh yeah – those 2,340,982 fans you got on social media. The 0.8% of them that you’re reaching on a good day. Yeah, those 2,340,982 people aren’t suddenly going to join your email list. That’s okay. It’s a process. Work on getting five people to your list. Then 10.

It sounds lame and boring, but have you considered those 5 or 10 or 25 people are TRUE FUCKING FANS? They stepped away from social media for eight god damned seconds to sign up for YOUR email list.

In 2018? That’s impressive.

Plus it’s a start from getting away from the stranglehold that social media has on you reaching your fans.