Email – Page 2 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

SELF-PROMOTION CAN BE SANE

Oh my goodness, this from Delon Om, in an interview with Authority Magazine, talking about the ‘5 things I wish someone told me when I first started.”

Meritocracy is a myth. I always believed that my art would speak for itself- that its merit would earn recognition and validation. Unfortunately, I have learned that is not the case.

It really does feel like the loudest people, or those who devote the most time to social media, are the winners. Like @DonnaMissal said:

“Color me bitter but im tired from yrs of begging for money to pay other artists like directors even half their rate while teens with ring lights are signed for millions.”

Yes, “putting yourself out there,” or doing “self-promotion” is needed, but it doesn’t have to look like what everybody else is doing.

Sure, in the short-term you can build an audience like that, but as Professor Pizza said in a recent interview with me at HEAVY METAL EMAIL:

“The mental math equation went from ‘What do I think our fans would like?’ to ‘What do I think will break through the algo that our fans will tolerate?’ The short answer is you have to start looking at and leveraging trends, which by-in-large, are fucking lame. We’re a thrash band comprised of ghosts of vengeance. We shouldn’t be doing funny hand dances, or the running man.”

I fully believe you don’t need to get on TikTok. Why? Because you’ve already got fans that you’re not reaching on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Not because your content sucks, but because of algorithms!

Now you have a choice – play the algorithm game, or don’t play the algorithm game.

Make your thing so good that people will type your domain name into a browser to see what you’re up to. Have an email list, so you can send an email to those people every now and again.

This is how we did it pre-2006, before Twitter came on the scene. And the internet is still here. People still go to websites to buy things.

They can go to your website and buy things. It’s possible.

Everyone Can’t Be Everywhere

I keep coming back to this move to the next thing. Things like SnapChat, TikTok. The joke of how, “oh, that’s for young teens!”

Am I stuck in the past with this email marketing stuff?

But then I think how I’m probably not going to get hired by someone that’s deep in the TikTok world. My next freelance client probably isn’t coming by way of a video clip that dispappears in 15 seconds. Like, fuck, I don’t even know if that’s still a thing with Snapchat.

Is the idea of selling vinyl records preposterous in 2021? Totally. CDs and cassettes, too. But people, mostly older people, still buy them.

And there’s a lot of those older people in the world.

In the same way there’s a lot of younger people in the world who aren’t buying vinyl records, and CDs, and cassettes.

I think these large groups of people can co-exist, and just do what we do.

The older musicians we know and love aren’t switching it up, adding dance beat bridge sections, or doing clean vocals, or making silly videos (well, some are old dudes are making silly videos). They’re making what they’ve always made.

Are we missing the boat, then?

At some point we have to let the kids have their thing.

Things like razor scooters. What the fuck?
Some of the youthful slang, right?
Okay, most of their music.

So why this guilt, or sense of obligation that these apps that come out, that we somehow have to be on them, too?

Is it the idea that “well, that’s where everyone is?”

Again, kids that rocking razor scooters (or whatever they’re called) probably aren’t buying Red Fang records. Like, why do we need to hang out there?

Sure, lots of adults are on TikTok, drawn in by the “un-ending stream of video content.”

I get that.

But everyone can’t be everywhere.

Everything isn’t for everyone.

Facebook is in flames, and it’ll take Instagram with it.
It will only be a matter of time before Twitter finds itself in the same position.

Are we really these nomadic digital citizens, that when one host dies, we must seek out a new one to attach ourselves?

You still need an email address to buy concert tickets, listen to music on a DSP, or buy records. That’s not changing.

Maybe it’s okay to skid off the runway of the firehose of updates and breaking news, and just get back to the shit in front of us.

Including that vinyl we ordered six months ago and we forgot about, and there it sits on our front stoop, waiting for us.

ON MOVING THINGS, BREAKING STUFF

So I set up my new HEAVY METAL EMAIL project using Circle, which builds amazingly robust and feature-packed community software. That was a few days ago.

Then about a week later, after some real-time use of administering a community site… I realized that I went the wrong route. I’ve got no experience running community sites, but I sure know how to run email campaigns and newsletters.

So over the weekend I decided to move things to Substack, for a few reasons.

The people I’m trying to reach (metal folks) aren’t very familiar with “community sites,” but they know what newsletters are.
If I’m going to promote how awesome email newsletters are, I should probably be running one in real time.
Circle has a hefty monthly fee which is very worth it if you’re into the idea of running a community site, which I quickly learned that I wasn’t.

Move fast, break things, huh?

I felt it was better to suffer the “embarrassment” of a quick course correct than trying to learn on-the-go and navigate the world of being the admin of a community site.

HEAVY METAL EMAIL

For heavy metal folks who want to start and grow an email list.

What’s Your Social Media Exit Plan?

Someday you’re going to log into Facebook for the last time.

Same with Twitter.

Someday you’ll uninstall Instagram.

And so will your fans.

What’s your social media exit plan?

People don’t dump their email. And email will outlast whatever zany social media platform comes along in the next four minutes.

Look, you’re a songwriter, not a social media manager.
You’re a photographer, not a marketing guru.
You’re an artist, not a content creator.

You should be spending your time working on your magic, not increasing shareholder value for mega-corps. Every time you post on social media, you build value for that company. That’s why writers get paid to write for website – their articles and interviews get posted, which brings people to the website.

Hey! You should be getting paid!

So slow down on posting everything to social media, and save it for your email list.

Start an account with Mailchimp, Substack, or MailerLite.

The magic is this: send out an email, and it goes to all your fans. All of them. You can’t do that with social media unless you pay money.

Then, every two weeks or so, send out an email to your fans. Yes, you’ll have enough material to send every two weeks.

Include some of the photos you posted to socials (chances are 80% of your followers didn’t see ’em), write a few words about them. Talk about your new work, your new project. The things you’re passionate about.

Tell people you’ll be sharing your recording process. Your behind the scenes work. Your unpublished work. Lyric ideas. Maybe share some tips on how you create some of your magic.

“I want to share my magic with you; sign up here.”

“I’ll teach you something that I learned the hard way in each email.”

“I love horror movies, and each week I break down my three favorite scenes from the best (worst) horror flicks.”

It’s time to think about social media exit plan.

One on one coaching / teaching about email marketing / social media / website / strategy for creative types who don’t want to think all the time about all this stuff. One hour session, $100. Shoot me an email and let’s get started: hi@sethw.xyz

Revue Joins Twitter

I played around with Revue back in late 2019 for Metal Bandcamp Gift Club, but moved to Mailchimp because I needed to control more of the sign up process. Fair enough.

Then today Revue announces they’ve joined Twitter, which is an interesting move, and I think plays into what I’ve been talking about for awhile: use social media to build your email list.

Social media can be great for the quick, off-the-cuff conversations, and lots of good can come from those conversations! But having an outlet for longer form thoughts, fleshed out ideas – email is a great medium for that. And no doubt Twitter is going to make it easy to build your list with this integration.

And if you’re still wondering what you’d even put into your own email newsletter, please read ‘What Would I Even Put in an Email Newsletter,’ which I wrote back in 2018.

The Inbox is Work

Love this, in the most depressing away ever…

… office workers have come to think of email as non-work, or partial-work, or at least work that shouldn’t necessary be compensated, or performed during work hours. In her study of office workers, she hears a similar explanation over and over again for why employees spend their Sunday nights and weekday evenings attending to their inboxes: it would be wasteful to spend the workday emailing, and clearing an inbox ahead of time means the workday itself is less stressful.
how email became work

I make a point during the week to close all my email (and Slack) to work on specific tasks. If I don’t, the allure will be there to check, to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

People will say, “I HAVE TO ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE!”

But you’re not available when you’re at the dentist. Or in a work meeting / zoom call, right? When you take your animal to the vet. When you’re driving.

Those are all things where you need to be fully present, yet doing our work – the thing we get PAID TO DO, to earn a living – we allow ourselves to be semi-present, constantly being distracted by incoming notifications.