Author: Seth Werkheiser

MAKE IT AWESOME

I’m not trying to knock writing on the web, I’m really not. But holy damn, when you can watch a video like the one above, when Cory Henry launches into this solo? Watch out!

I’ve said it before; the writing of a seasoned pro appears exactly the same as an unpaid intern when presented on a website. The pixels, the fonts, the layout – serioualy, after 10+ years of meandering on the web, side-by-side, at first glance, it’s the same.

Sure, after reading a few lines you’ll tell which is which, but those are precious seconds that add up over the course of your day, a month, a year. Add in the fire-hose of shovel blogging, “me-too” editorials, and you see where I’m going with this.

Watch Henry’s solo (around the 4:00 mark, linked here) and you’ll see it – you won’t need to guess if it’s worth your time.

A podcast host either has it or they don’t, like a room full of musicians either bring it or they don’t. 

Because, dammit, you see it. The click-bait headlines. The social media tricks to get people to follow a link. You can just taste the tactics these days, can’t you?

Make the gates of joy and awe spring open when you release your thing. Every day. All the time.

PROVE IT

While working at a cramped Starbucks near a busy university, I couldn’t help overhear a conversation between two people catching up. From what I heard, the one person was a personal nutritionist on the side.

She spoke of a hobby she picked up; Olympic power lifting. She got really good at it. Good enough to place well at some regional competition, apparently.

I’m paraphrasing here, but her reason was thus:

“I wanted to do something that could demonstrate my nutritionist work.”

Anyone can pick up a book and recite its contents with enough study. But it’s another thing entirely to take what you know, add your magic, and hard work, and produce a tangible result.

After leaving AOL Music in 2011 I knew I had the skill-set to help people share stories online. That’s how Skull Toaster was born! I have my resume’ sure, and that says plenty, but Skull Toaster is me showing, “I built a brand from scratch, with an engaged social media following, and a nightly email list with a 40+% open rate since 2012.” Ahem, hiring managers.

The folks at Coudal have been doing this for years. They’ve created plenty of campaigns for clients over the years, but then started making their own products. Why not? They already know how to make websites and ads and Twitter accounts. One of their projects was the Field Notes brand of notebooks, which they did with Aaron Draplin.

“There wasn’t any big corporate plan, or venture capital or a full page ad in the New York Times or anything; we printed up a batch, bought a domain name and let it grow from there.”

Just start. Find people to work with (not ask, “what do you think of this idea?”), and get it going.

STOP LINKING TO YOUTUBE

On YouTube you’re the pink space above. That’s it.

With a pre-roll ad you disappear.

See those videos on the side? Distractions. Noise. All aiming to be more compelling than your video, chosen my algorithms to drive more clicks (and money) for YouTube. Cha-ching (for them, not you).

That’s the fight you enter into each time you Tweet a link to your brand new video on YouTube.

You’re bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Do this instead. That pink space? That’s yours.

Fill your space with upcoming shows, links to your merch, and / or pretty pictures of your cute face. Don’t give up that space to other bands, makers, speakers, or bullshit BuzzFeed videos (because they’re engineered to win).

It’s 2015 – start driving traffic to your stuff instead of landing pages for fancy-pant sites engineered to distract your fans.

ONE TO ONE WINS

How you treat your customer when they walk into your business.
Hello, customer.
Hello, store owner.
Nice day today, huh?
Gorgeous!
What can I get you?

When you see a customer on the street.
Oh, hello customer!
Hey! Hi there! Day off?
Yea, running errands!
Hah, it never ends, huh?
No, but that’s okay.
I’ll see you around!
Take care.

And now, how you interact with your customer on social media.
10% off today!
We close at 5pm.
Tomorrow we’ll have a special.
Don’t forget, we have gift certificates!

When it could be this:
Hey customer, great photo! That’s a great hiking spot.
Oh, thanks! Yea we love it there.
Have you done the Lake Loop with the kids?
No, we haven’t. Might be a bit much for them.
I hear you. We took our three year old on it one time, but he did okay.
Oh, really? Maybe we’ll try it sometime.
Take some photos if you do!
Hah! Will do.

Which one do you think is going to have a lasting impact?

Does it scale? Nope.
Can you schedule a conversation like this? Nope.
Can you automate it? No.

But I bet your coffee shop doesn’t have a self-checkout line, either.
Your tattoo shop doesn’t have an auto-ink booth, right?
As a photographer, you don’t send your Robo-Photo-Bot to a wedding, right?

No, because every one to one interaction is priceless. It’s valuable. It can’t be outsourced, and you can’t just get some unpaid college intern to do it.

DESIGN FOR CUSTOMERS

Goodbye “blogs as media empires.” The signal to noise ratio is too high, and the buckshot approach (more content = more page views) is doomed to fail. You can only carry so much coal on the locomotive of “content is king.”

And the idea that an app or HTML5 or social media is going to save your media outlet or business is wrong. If you don’t have customers you are doomed. A coffee shop can’t stay open if people just come in for the smell everyday; it must sell a cup of coffee on occasion.

You need to read ‘Don’t “design for mobile”, design for your customer relationship.’ If you don’t have people who will actually buy something from you, you can’t last.

Do you think companies are going to keep throwing money at media outlets that aren’t bringing clicks and engagement?

This was dug up from the Wayback Machine here.

Here Until It Isn’t

Good morning, friends. May this day be filled with firecrackers and assorted jabs to the fragile jaws of your airborne enemies.

Okay, so this wasn’t really written on this blog in 2013, but it’s something I posted to Twitter, which someday won’t exist. If I don’t pay my hosting bill, this will go away. I don’t have much say about the future of Twitter, but MySpace, AOL Music, and RDIO all came and went.

ENGAGE

I don’t think it’s possible to “do a media site” these days without engaging with an audience. My favorite barometer of this? I can visit most any US city and have lunch with someone. Or crash on their couch. That’s from 10+ years of doing music blogs.

I don’t care about 80k followers. I care about 100 people I can get coffee with.

To move to the next stage in the social media evolution, brands need to start focusing on actively engaging their fans over a sustained period of time. An active fan is one who has a relationship with a brand and, at least once a month, reacts to posts on the brand page, indicates a liking for various content, retweets a brand’s messages or creates original content on the page.

I built Skull Toaster from the ground up based on the idea of engagement. The result? Paid subscribers and merch sales, with no banner ads, no Top 10 lists, and no SEO tactics.

If I can make $1 Tweeting metal trivia, you can increase your income by engaging your customers in human ways.

Coffee shop: engage with your customers about upcoming events and local issues instead of just Tweeting your specials.

Music lessons: send tips and links to artists you admire instead of just “new student specials!”

Musician or label: engage your fans about other stuff: baseball, ‘South Park,’ movies, video games.

Bike shop: engage your customers with amazing bike videos that you find online. Send out photos from recent rides.

It’s about more than hyping what you do (HEY, READ MY POST! WATCH OUR NEW VIDEO! 10% OFF AFTER 5PM!), and just being someone that people want to talk to.

And when people talk to one another, sometimes it leads to sales.

Or at least a coffee.

NOTHING IS NEWS

I remember December 29th, 2009. I was checking email around 12:30am while laying down to sleep when I got the news that Avenged Sevenfold Drummer James’The Rev’ Sullivan passed away. A few emails later we had a post up at 1:15am.

This year, on Christmas Eve, I saw some Tweets that Netflix was down. That meant some editors and bloggers had to mobilize. A post had to be written! Hurry!

Dec 24, 11:06pm – Netflix Hit by Outage, Blames Amazon
Dec 24, 9:46pm – Amazon AWS Takes Down Netflix On Christmas Eve

The same happens with my celeb / pop writer friends during the holidays, hoping that no movie stars get caught kissing someone that ain’t their significant other.

In 2009 this worked. It works today, late in 2012. But it can’t continue. There’s too much. When everything is a story, nothing is a story.

YOU JUST HANDED ME A CDR AND WALKED AWAY

If you’re reading this, I probably @replied you and your band because you followed me (@sethw) on Twitter.

What you’re doing is the cyber-equivalent of handing me a CDR at a show and walking away.

A bit about me:

I played in all sorts of bands from 1991 to 2001.
I booked shows. I built websites for bands. I published zines.
I founded Buzzgrinder.com back in 2001.
I was the founding editor of Noisecreep.com for AOL Music.

In those 20 years I have never discovered or fallen in love with a band because someone handed me a CDR and walked away.

But during those 20 years I’ve made a lot of friends, and those friends were in bands, or ran labels or distros or booked shows. I discovered and fell in love with a lot of great bands because of that.

So if you think randomly following me on Twitter is going to help you, you’re wasting your time. And it’s a shame, because I know a lot of great people in the music industry, like publicists, engineers, A&R people, writers, editors, label owners, managers, bloggers, promoters, and tour managers.

Use this advice if you want. @reply me on Twitter, or shoot me an email.

Let’s be friends.

Then maybe I’ll listen to your music.

LESS SQUARED OFF

Over time, our digital footprints add up and create a cyber world that starts to take on some of that very same messiness. Change a font or a layout or where something is, and it bothers us. You can take advantage of that need for comfort by making your digital work a little less sterile, a bit less squared off. Seth Godin

As I told Tim recently:

“I’ve stumbled upon Lain Sellar and Zoe Veness and find their work amazing. It’s something about hand drawn, black and white, stuff that gets me.”

That’s the logic behind the design of this blog. It’s not quite hand-drawn (like this piece by Zoe), but it’s not glossy by any means. There are plenty of web designers out there that can do slick. I want to do more “less squared off.”