Category: Social Media

I THOUGHT YOU WERE CRAZY

I got a DM today from a reader of Social Media Escape Club:

“When I first started reading your posts I thought you were crazy. Honestly.”

They went on to tell me how they’ve been ignoring social media for any sort of promoting for their project, and – SHOCKER – it had no effect.

I’ve talked to a lot of artists about all this social media / “having a newsletter” thing, and I’m telling you, people have been beating their heads against a wall with this stuff, but also suffering from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome.

“A proposed condition or theory that tries to explain why hostages sometimes develop a psychological bond with their captors.”

Yes, there are folks who have a positive or neutral relationship with social media. If that’s you, fantastic.

Just because you don’t have a problem with social media, does not mean people experience the platform in the same way.

For some, social media is dreadful, which is then made worse by the idea that without it you’re doomed. And that’s a horrible place to be.

RELYING ON GREY BOXES

Cal Newport makes a great point about artists and creative people being on social media.

If our work is on social media, we leave the chance of “being discovered” to a grey box. An algorithm.

But the “old way” of finding and discovering things on the Internet was through blogs and directories.

Posts and link dumps curated by real humans. DJs on live radio stations. Writers that reviewed music in magazines.

It was slower, sure, but I don’t think we need any more “36 new songs released today” posts, do we?

I think it’s time to get back to directories again. DIY style. Curated links to resources to duplicate tapes, make zines, and lists of art galleries by city and state.

RETHINK YOUR MARKETING BUDGET

This is just one person’s account, of course, but I think we’re going to see more of this.

In March 2024, I ran an experiment in my Portuguese-written blog: I stopped distributing its content on social media (Mastodon, mostly) and messaging apps (Telegram and WhatsApp channels). It has a small following in a few places — ~2,9k on Telegram, ~450 on WhatsApp and three Mastodon profiles (two with autopost) that sums ~5k followers.

The result was that… little has changed.

From Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

Yes, if you do the bare minimum and “just” post when you have new stuff, new things, new projects – sure – some people may find your stuff. The alorithimic gods may show your post to 5% of your followers, and you’ll get two clicks, and that’s nice.

If you want more, though, you gotta give more. Show up, engage, maybe “create content” just for the platform by way of vertical videos and other multimedia assets.

Then you’ll get seen by 8% of your followers, and maybe get four clicks. Great.

Or – what if we made the best fucking work we possibly can, and instead of spending 100% of our “marketing budget” on posting to social media, what if we spent 80% of our time reaching out to our contacts? Emailing galleries, venues, agents, etc.? Spending time in places where we want to spend more time in, surrounded by people we want to be around?

What if that was our marketing budget? Time and care in the creative world that’s already around us.

The “creator economy” existed long before tech-bros came along and tried to squeeze it for every last 3.5% surcharge.

We’ll be here long after they move onto the next market to destroy.

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT

There’s a certain way to do TikTok, sure.

You can half-ass Instagram, and get 12 likes. I get it.

Or you can just do what YOU wanna do, and not worry about being a 12 person marketing and social media team.

Not everything is social media.

TELL ME HOW TO LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC

If I click on your band’s LinkTree / Link In Bio and I can’t tell in 1.2 seconds how to LISTEN to your music, you’re fucked.

Tour dates. Great.
Press kit. No thanks.
Website.

Hmmmm… think about that last one.

While I’m stoked a band even has a website in 2024, what has our experience been with band websites for the last 20 years?

They’re usually not updated, maybe it’s just a bunch of tour dates from a BandsInTown embed, maybe some old photos…

DON’T. MAKE. ME. THINK.

Make one of the buttons “LISTEN” or “HEAR OUR LATEST SINGLE” and link it DIRECTLY to a place where I can listen to your actual music, or click play on a YouTube embed.

This might sound like I’m being old and curmudgeonly, but patience for this stuff wears thin after two decades of doing this 10 times a day.

MAKE YOUR SUBSTACK THREADS SIZZLE!

My first few Threads on Substack were duds, but then I flipped them upside down.

  1. Make something that’ll be interesting for my readers
  2. Reach out to smart people and ask them to drop a comment
  3. Share the Thread post and quotes in future posts

Not only is it a fun way to get input from your friends, but it’s great for learning about your readers (and way more fun than surveys).

MTV IS A GHOST

This is unreal:

“MTV is a ghost. Its average prime-time audience of 256,000 people in 2023 was down from 807,000 in 2014, the Nielsen company said. One recent evening MTV aired reruns of “Ridiculousness” from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.”

This from ‘They are TV’s ghosts – networks that somehow survive with little reason to watch them anymore,’ via Simon Owens.

Such a unique opportunity in front of us, if only we could all look up from our phones for fucking three minutes, shake out of our trance, and believe that we can make something great.

“I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.”

Cory Doctorow

DON’T GO BACK TO THE CRAP

I love this so much from “How Tiny Desk Concerts Became a pop culture phenomenon.”

Folk artist Laura Gibson felt deflated after her 2008 South by Southwest show in Austin, Texas. The Thirsty Nickel bar allowed noisy 6th Street revelers who didn’t purchase tickets to enter, and they had no interest in listening to the soft-spoken artist.

“Mid-set, I was like, ’Why did I drive all the way down to Texas … What am I doing with my life?” Gibson remembered. “I felt like ‘I really just want to go hide somewhere and cry.’”

Two folks from NPR were in attendance and offered Larua to come to their office and perform, and it became the first Tiny Desk Concert.

Laura had to go out and do something and it sucked. Yet she did, plowed through it, and it led to something else.

I think a lot of us had some great fun and success with social media back in the day, but then it sucked.

Laura (I hope) didn’t have to go back to play another shitty venue to keep her career going. She just moved forward, like I see a lot of other artists doing, leaving behind social media.

Yes, we made our connections, had some wins, but “going back to a shitty venue” isn’t how we’ll get to the next level.

(via Kottke)