FOUR THE WEEKEND: GET ENGAGED
Spend hours promoting your work to just 2% of your audience!
In conversations I’ve had in recent months, folks are reluctant to start (or re-start) sending newsletters. After all, social media is the big new thing. Email newsletters are the lame old thing.
“Our insistence that it be guaranteed to work almost ensures that it won’t.
Forcing something to be big makes it small.”
The above is from Seth Godin and his post, ‘The paradox of big.’
You expect to send one email to a years-old list and have it magically lead to $4000 in sales.
You doubt that’ll happen, so why even bother?
But knowing you can post a Tweet and see it reach 100 people, and 4 people like it, all within 10 minutes - well, that just feels better.
So if you believe email is old and not worth the time, no amount of metrics or percentages will convince you it’s worth the time.
Hit that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email then.
Then just keep shoveling your photos and stories and “assets” into the social media hamster wheel, and be grateful for the 2% of your followers that might see it.
“On our @Buffer account, we reach about 2 percent of our followers on average with each tweet.”
Buffer is a tool I’ve used for years for scheduling social media posts for multiple clients. The company has been around since 2010, and they know a thing or two about social media.
So even Buffer is only reaching about 2% of their followers on Twitter (as of 2014, I’m sure that number is smaller today), and they’re professionals. I just checked my own account (@sethw) and I’m just over 3% for the last 28 days.
Basically that means 97% of my followers never saw a Tweet from me in the last month. That’s about 2,500 out of 2,599 people that didn’t see me post about this newsletter, my Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes, or me posting links to bands I like on Bandcamp.
Read the ‘Tweet reach percentage’ section of ‘How to Use Twitter Analytics: 15 Simple-to-Find Stats to Help You Tweet Better’ from Buffer for more info.
SO, here’s your FOUR THE WEEKEND homework:
Look up your monthly impressions on your social media accounts. Divide by the # of followers you’ve got. If it’s better than 5% you’re a legend (but it still means 95% of your fans are missing out).
Check your own engagement rates - that’s how many of the people who see your posts actually “engage” with your content via likes / shares / replies. Read ‘Your guide to social media engagement rates’ from Adobe for insight on that.
Thanksgiving is coming up, and a lot of people could use help. Donate to your nearest food bank if you can.
Figure out a loose engagement rate from your favorite bands / brands / shops / media outlets. Just take the number of LIKES and RTs, add in the comments, then divide all that by the number of followers they have. This won’t be 100% accurate, but it’s fun to see a ballpark number and compare it to your own efforts.
SMART THINGS FROM SMART PEOPLE:
“Patreon creators … are forced to build their audiences on other platforms and then drive them over to Patreon.”
This from ‘Why Patreon is struggling’ from Simon Owens's Media Newsletter. I had a Patreon for my heavy metal trivia on Twitter project years ago (@skulltoaster), and found I had to spend a lot of time linking my audience to a site I didn’t own or control.
“Your daily disruption is proportional to the level of attention you give to email, messaging apps, SMS.”
Love this from Richard Allardice from ‘Not right now. But maybe later.’ I do my best to dive into my biggest, most high-value work task first thing in the morning before checking email.
“Time is finite and shouldn’t be dictated by others or how you believe others to perceive you.”
From ‘The case for caring less’ over at VOX, which reminds me of this from artist Dakota Cates of Wizard of Barge:
Be known as someone who values their time!
GOOD TWEETS:
Either way, seems like big changes coming to Twitter, a social media network where we can’t export our followers. Start getting your audience to subscribe to your email list before the whole thing implodes!
The above is mostly true (I think you need to post your story to FB from IG for this to work), but still - INCLUDE LINKS. Fuck the algorithms. If only 10 people see your post at least they’ll have a link to click!
It’s true. We need everything to slow down, please.
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