FOUR THE WEEKEND: MOTIVATE YOUR FANS TO SUBSCRIBE
"Sign up for updates" is for department stores and car dealerships
The biggest part of the SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN is the escape - how we get our fans, followers, our audience motivated to actually click a link and give up their email address.
Here’s the simplest and most boring (and probably the least effective) way to do that.
Updates, huh? Thrilling.
After years of offers from boring companies we know what those “updates” will be; boring sales, special offers, tour dates for shows eight time zones away. Those are important, but your art / music / magic deserves better than just “updates.”
⬛️ ANNOUNCEMENTS: Tell the people on your email list first - they just gotta sign up, like below:
Or something like this:
BONUS: set up your landing page like Prosthetic Records.
⬛️ GIVE AWAYS: You could collect emails by doing a giveaway with a heavyweight service like Gleam (below), or something more basic with Tally:
TIP: Make sure your give away is for your fans, and not everyone. Give away some merch, or a record. If you give away an iPad you’ll get lots of people on your email list, but only because of the iPad, not your project.
⬛️ VIDEO:Maybe you made a reaction video, reacting to your own music video. A personal message to your fans, or showing off your new clothing line, an acoustic version of a song, a lyric video, or a behind the scenes look at a recent photoshoot.
Get yourself a Vimeo Business account, embed the video on your own website, and set up a contact form at the start of the clip.
When people visit your site, they’ll be prompted to enter their email address. Be sure to include some text near the video, assuring your fans are signing up for your newsletter, of course.
Don’t just use the same old boring text and expect amazing results. You don’t write boring songs, or make boring products, do you? So don’t skimp on the presentation of your offer to your fans.
Okay, enough ideas - here’s your FOUR THE WEEKEND tasks, due by Monday.
Regardless of what email service you use, ‘Bringing your Instagram followers to Substack’ is required reading.
Look at other genres and see how they’re rolling out their new music. Go ahead and copy one or two ideas for your own project.
Decibel Magazine revealed their Top 40 list already. Rather than shovel your thoughts about it onto social media platforms that monetize your content, consider putting your year-end list on your own website, where you can encourage your fans to sign up for your email list. First person to send me a link to their list on their website or newsletter by 12/1/2022 gets a $20 Bandcamp gift card.
Did anybody complete last week’s tasks of setting up a LINK IN BIO? Send me your links and I’ll feature them in next week’s FOUR THE WEEKEND.
QUICK BITS:
Notion social media manager Alex Hao over at
:“So rather than making “growth hacking” a core part of our strategy, and risk becoming beholden to it, it’s something we leverage sparingly—when it can surprise and delight a user-base that is familiar with our “normal” content. And when you’ve already cultivated an engaged audience via other strategies, jumping onto a trend that aligns with your brand yields some killer results.”
Remember, as part of our Social Media Escape Plan we have to do well on social media to drive people to our websites and email list. Post memes? Post only serious stuff? You have to find out what resonates with your fans if you’re going to entice 1000s of your followers to your email list.
🪦 And R.I.P. Metal Insider’s Metal By Numbers feature, which hasn’t been updated since July.
A good thing to remember for sites with features like this - they can be turned into stand-alone newsletters - like
!I’d subscribe to a newsletter of editorially curated (meaning, not all) new videos and songs.
Where’s the email newsletter of just amazing concert photos from the week?
GOOD TWEETS:
Sorry, I am team Slug-dge on this one.
I guess I know what I’m doing on Feb 12, 2023.
Imagine just sending an email newsletter every week, instead of posting to nine different social media outlets? Dreams come true, friends!
Need help starting an email list? Or bringing an old one back to life? Reply to this email (seth@heavymetal.email) and tell me what’s going on.
☕️ Support HEAVY METAL EMAIL: buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi, Venmo (@Seth-Werkheiser), Cash App ($ethwerkheiser), or PayPal. You could also level up and upgrade to a paid subscription here on Substack.
My linktree is here: linktr.ee/legionaod