This is a response to a comment left by Craig Lewis on what of my Substack Notes:
how do you practically make that move to talking to those closer to you/simply putting out quality content if no-one is seeing/interacting with it?
If you never post on socials etc, no-one ever sees what you do. If you have an audience already, it’s cool to get stuff out to them and they will hopefully do you a good turn and shout about it for you.
But if you’re still building an audience… back to shouting into the void?
“I think that anybody who is encouraging you to make a TikTok hit is probably brain dead. Don’t listen to them. Usually, those tactics don’t work. I’ve never done an actual ‘tactic’ and had it work.”
Experts say not being on TikTok is a missed opportunity, but we miss opportunities every day because we are singular creative beings and must do the dishes or cover a shift at work.
There are people you didn’t reach yesterday because you didn’t display your art in a small gallery in Denver, CO, or play a set in a nightclub in Paris last night.
Sure, “everyone” is on TikTok right now, but “everyone” is also at an art gallery.
Where are you?
Why aren’t you in the same room as the creative people you love? Start a Zoom call if you can’t meet up locally. Imagine the opportunities that could develop from that energy and support!
Why don’t you have a call with that local curator / booking agent / producer this week? You’re probably just two conversations with the right people to get that set up. Opportunity!
Oh, you haven’t talked with anyone about a potential collaboration in the last year?
Here’s a recent example: a client I work with remotely invited me to an album release get-together in Brooklyn, NY, later this month.
I could stay home and create content for LinkedIn… or I could book a hotel room, make travel arrangements, and be around people I already have connections with.
I believe there are opportunities in my already-existing universe, and I don’t need to continuously throw pebbles in the ocean of “social media possibility” to get more.
How many opportunities exist right now in your creative universe? In your own inboxes? In the contacts in your phones? People you bump into at the coffee shop? On Discord?
We’ve all missed opportunities, but maybe it’s time that we intentionally invest our efforts in the opportunities that better align with our own magical journeys.
P.S. thanks Dino Corvino for that Monster Children tip
Peter Kirn at Create Digital Media talks about SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and how they’re devolving into money machines for corporate shareholders.
“It’s a simultaneous reminder that we need to build something new, maybe this time not for the investors, but for the eu-IVs – for each other.”
Let’s stop waiting for the next publication or platform to save us. The fix isn’t waiting for tech bros to share a tenth of a penny more in streaming payouts – the power is with people reading newsletters and creating websites.
“Yeah, but Seth, these things cost money!”
Well, buy a domain name or wait by the phone for the next big platform – I turn 50 soon and I ain’t got time to wait.
The mass scale of social media was a mirage and we all fell for it. Going viral is the draw to get you in the casino, and you pay with hours of your precious life feeding the social monster for your chance at 12 likes.
Let’s start using the internet as a tool to find our freaks and build our communities. Make things and launch projects.
Make the weird shit you want to see in the world, and don’t just do it for likes or shares – reach out to the other weird shit people and start conversations.
It’s like we’re meeting at the mall food court – find your fellow weirdos and then get the hell out. Go to the record store downtown, go to a friend’s house and watch skate videos, hang out at a park – these are all the things social media platforms are afraid of.
Are we replacing Pitchfork tomorrow? No.
Will another site become the new Bandcamp?
Probably not.
But why have we become compliant little pawns in all this?
Are we so powerless to change the current situation that we sit back and hope somebody else fixes everything?
And then what? That person will sell the company to a Nabisco+Tide hedge fund subsidiary, and we’ll be back where we started.
Maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.
Local music scenes seem to get along without local press, huh?
Gallery openings keep happening with zero coverage from local media.
I’ve seen individuals host creative Zoom sessions with 45+ people spanning several time zones.
I see artists speaking directly with their fans with reliable email lists, selling tickets and albums in the process.
Now imagine if all these pockets of culture and art and magic started organizing and working together.
Over on Substack Notes, Sarah Styf asked about using a lead magnet, to which I replied with this meme because I am a very serious email marketing thought leader.
Do what you want with your thing, of course, but seriously, for Social Media Escape Club, I am the lead magnet.
Today, I want to talk about feelings. Specifically, the feeling that you want your people to have when they get an email from you or see something you wrote online.
See, I could ask a question like, “in what year did Metallica’s ‘… And Justice For All” come out?” and the answer would be 1988.
But I thought about it, and no one gets excited yelling “1988” in line at the grocery store or hitting reply while at a show.
Could you imagine a heavy metal trivia show on TV in the mid 90s and contestants yelling out 1988? No way.
So I asked, “This ‘bass-less’ Metallica album came out in 1988.”
And I could imagine people excitedly tapping their phones and replying, “AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!” This led to people talking about the production of that album, discussing their favorite song, or talking about Cliff Burton (sorry, non-metalheads, if I lost you here haha).
Now, reverse engineer all this for whatever creative project you’re producing.
How do you describe what you’re doing in a way that would make someone feel something?
Say you’ve got a book tour coming up.
Instead of “BOOK TOUR ANNOUCEMENT,” your subject line could be “Will I see you in Boston? New Haven? What about Providence?” Wait, what? My favorite author is coming to Boston? The New England area?! That’s where I am – I better click!
Instead of “I have a new course,” say, “If you want to learn how to write a month’s worth of newsletters in one sitting, sign up for my new course.” People want to save time and make money and make an impact – make them FEEL that.
Instead of “join my sci-fi community,” say “we’re debating the best / worst sci-fi movies in our Discord and you should join us.” People have thoughts about sci-fi movies. I have a sci-fi tattoo. People don’t get tattoos that say COMMUNITY (unless they’re big fans of Dan Harmon, I guess).
Instead of “come see me at the market next week,” maybe say “my favorite things about setting up at the local market.” Sure, you’ll be selling at the market. But talk about all the things people love about markets – the food, the smells, the people, the dogs!
You don’t have to outrun a bear; you just have to outrun your friends.
You need to outrun people writing bland subject lines and boring social media posts. You just need to get people to feel something when they get your emails or visit your website.
Stop being precious and “trust the wildness in your heart.” Get a little wild, or loud, or weird. It’s how you’ve built a following, an audience, an email list.
Since we’re on social media less, we need to share the work of other artists and creative individuals in spaces like this. Enjoy.
“Creators talk about Instagram as a game, a conversation forever circling “gaming the algorithm.” But the game is less like monopoly and more like poker. The house always wins.”
“Every night after the house is quiet and our work is done for the day, we’ve been checking in to see the daily videos that photographer Noah Kalina has been creating since the start of January – have you seen any of them?”
“Recently I was asked to do an interesting illustration job. I spend many hours cooking up a proper job proposal, as it was quite a project. I asked a really fair price for my work too. A week later I got an email saying they went with another illustrator, as my social media audience wasn’t big or fitting enough.”
“On my USB, I have a folder for mail. Friends leave files in the mailbox. And then I go through the front door. There’s the TV. I have videos in the TV folder. I can go out and continue to the table where some PDFs are lying around. I go to the closet. There’s a suitcase that’s a zip file. It goes on and on”
Connect with 3 new fans each day, and you’re building a broad and deep audience.
Imagine — 1,095 new friends who can open doors to opportunities and insights.
Create value and connect.
Start there, then rinse, and repeat.
Make sure you figure out a way to connect in a sustainable and energizing way. If it’s pure pain and misery, you’ll end up quitting the quest to get your social media followers to your email list.
I answered this question on Substack Notes, but putting it here too because someday Substack as a Platform won’t exist.
Q. Honest question — how do you treat building an audience without a social presence? I mean you could be active here on Substack (which is also an evolving social network). Still, I’m curious about your view on distribution channels, specifically for relevant people who might be interested in your content. From Itay Dreyfus.
A. The people who’ve already signed up deserve my best writing, my best “output.” And if almost 900 subscribers of Social Media Escape Club (woah) aren’t sharing my work on their networks, then I need to get better.
Growing up in music, we learned about bands because friends saw those bands and told everyone. Those bands were THAT good.
So I started making videos JUST for my subscribers (free + paid). I started doing Zoom hangouts with subscribers. Getting to know my readers more and more has helped me write better posts and continue to grow just from people sharing my work.
And I spent a lot of time trying to network on social media channels – I had over 2500 followers on Twitter, 600-ish on Instagram. I made videos, designed cool things, all that… but that was time spent seeking MORE eyeballs, time I coulda have been spending on the people who’ve already subscribed and said, “Yes, I want more of this.”
I deleted my Twitter account last summer, Instagram on January 1 of this year, and LinkedIn will be next.
Because today? This newsletter is where I’m at. This is where I’m showing up. If you don’t wanna click over here, that’s okay.
There’s a Taco Bell commercial featuring Portugal. The Man – not for their actual music, but as a “feature” to highlight how broke the band was, but at least they could eat at Taco Bell.
It’s almost as if Seth Godin knew what I was going to write about today:
“When things don’t go the way we hope, one alternative is to look hard at the system that caused the problem. And another productive strategy is to figure out what to do with what we get, instead of seeking to find the villain that’s causing our problem.”
Right now, phones can shoot music videos, laptops can become studios, taking pictures with a disposable camera is chic, and we can post everything to the internet in seconds.
But the days of posting something on social media and getting 10,000 people to see it are over. That ain’t coming back.
If you’ve been a subscriber, you know I always say this – it will never get easier to reach your fans on social media.
Don’t blame Spotify, or Apple, or Meta – these are all companies that were built to make money for shareholders. They’re doing their job; are we doing ours?
Are we making the best art that we can?
Are we writing 1000 words a day?
Am I practicing my bass for 15 minutes a day? (No, I’m not)
If you were the lone creative weirdo in high school back in the day, well…, you’d better read some books and find some magazines because you’re on your own.
Now we have websites, Zoom, internet radio, email, and a thousand messaging apps – there’s no reason to do any of this alone.
We know the villains in the current landscape. We know what we’re up against.
Time to stop playing games we don’t want to play (and can’t win), and figure out what’s next.
My three quick ideas on that:
Write a good newsletter to your fans that they’ll want to read
Set up a website and fill it up with all the cool stuff you do
Delete the social media apps from your phone this week
Will that raise streaming rates and bring back organic reach on Facebook? NOPE. But it’s action, something we can do right now, and it’s a step toward new possibilities.
It will get harder to reach your fans on social media in 2022.
The best time to start an email list was 10 years or 10 months ago. The second best time is right now. Today.
Buckle up.
In the world of email marketing, there’s something called a “lead magnet.” It’s a freebie, like a digital download (PDF, video, etc) that people use to get people on their email list.
People will say, “sign up and get my free guide on how to gain 1,000 Twitter followers in 10 days.”
Why do this?
EMAILS ARE VALUABLE
There’s a reason why Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, LiveNation, etc. don’t give you the emails of people who support your work; they’re gold.
So how do you get people to sign up for your email list?
Use your own lead magnet; offer something your fans want, and give them a way to get it in exchange for an email address.
For instance, we’ve all seen this sort of post on social media.
Not even 50% of your fans will see a post like that. And when you’re ready to release your hot new song, you have to start the attention-roulette game all over again.
Instead, let people sign up to be reminded when your hot new song is available.
Run those posts for a week or two, in between all your other posts.
Now that you have their email address, when your new song is ready you can email those fans directly, without worrying about social media algorithms.
This isn’t easy, though. It takes some planning. Much more planning than tossing up a social media post on a whim (and then wondering why it didn’t do much).
COLLECT THE EMAILS
In the example above, I used Tally to gather emails (I just used it for my Black Friday give-away, too). For my day job we’ve used TypeForm to collect emails for new project campaigns. You can get fancy with Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Elementor, Carrd, or even Substack, or Revue (which ties in super well with Twitter).
SEND THE EMAILS
Once you’ve collected the emails from your fans, don’t you dare send them to a BCC list in Gmail. Sign up for a Mailchimp account at the very least. You could also use Substack or Revue from above, though, though they offer less design options.
All that to say – when you’re ready to go live with your new song, video, or whatever, you send an email to your email list audience first. These are people who said “hell yes, let me know,” so treat them like the royalty that they are.
Statistically speaking more of your fans will see the email and click it than social media.
Example: 100 email subscribers, 29 people opened it: 29% SAW IT 1000 followers, 125 people saw it: just 12%
Sure, you probably won’t have 100 people on your email list right away, but you’re probably just starting out with email marketing, and you’ve been on social media for HALF A DECADE. Give it a minute.
Use this method multiple times over months and years, and you’ll grow a solid email list.
THIS SEEMS LIKE A LOT
The allure of social media is that most everyone can do it. You see what other people are doing; you just write some text, add a link, and hit publish. Then you’re done!
Unfortunately, most of your posts aren’t even seen, which means you have to keep posting, and staring at your phone, and “engaging,” to get any sort of results. This is hours of time that you could be working on your craft.
Or you could send one email a week and probably get the same results.
So, if you have some questions, reply to this email.
If all of this seems like too much, you could hire me to set it up for you, too (for about the cost of selling 10 CDs, or five vinyl records).
Reply to this email and we’ll make something happen.
