VIDEO DIDN'T KILL THE EMAIL STAR
Multimedia is cool and all, but text still rules
If you’re a talented host and actress and presenter (and a million other things) with a big following on Instagram and TikTok - you should still have an email list.
Whitney Moore is super active on the socials - videos! photos! witty observations! - but she also has a website (hooray)!
So when fans get clicking and visit Whitney’s website, they can sign up for her email newsletter for “weekly exclusive pics, info on projects, and fun stuff from around the web.”
As you can see the email is mostly text (‘Always Bet On Text’), so it’s probably easy to set up each week. There’s the ‘Photo of the Week,’ too, but you’ll have to subscribe if you want to see that.
An email newsletter is still a solid way to stay connected to your fans when the social media algorithms throttle your reach, or when you get locked out of your account.
And you don’t have to be skilled in video editing, or learn how to make those fancy audio teasers for your podcast, either.
You just… write an email, instead of contorting yourself into 13 different job titles, like Professor Pizza from Axeslasher said in an interview we did:
Creating on those platforms feels an awful lot like working for Facebook and not myself. 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.
And don’t put all your eggs into baskets you don’t own. Don’t rely on Facebook to be the website for your business, or your label or band.
Leverage the attention that you still might have and drive folks to your website so you can build your email list.
As I said last year in ‘Cut Your Social Media Time in Half:’
Set up an email list, get your fans from social media to subscribe, and send them an email once a week.
As you grow your email list, it’ll start to be more effective.
You’ll spend less time preparing and sending an email than you do on social media, and it’ll sell more albums, more tickets, more shirts.
So yeah - even if you’re doing a video show on YouTube or TikTok, or a podcast, it’s still a good idea to partner it with a written component, sent out once a week direct to your fans.
You’re already making videos, or publishing podcasts, or getting your photos featured in magazines, or putting things on your website - now just wrap them up nice in a weekly newsletter so your fans can actually see the cool stuff you make.
QUICK BITS:
Metallica “sold more tickets than any other hard rock, metal, or punk(ish) artist in the last 40 years,'“ BeReal is maybe the hot new social media thing, while Twitter “is supporting a group that is seeking to revoke reproductive rights nationally.’ Yowza.
This album from Ithaca is very good:
Tegan (of Tegan and Sara) writes ‘How To Craft a Set List and Why,’ which is a great example of an artist writing about something which might be super interesting to their fans, and while “Zero-Click content is uncomfortable but it’s worth it” might sound confusing, you should make some coffee and read it (and take some notes).
GOOD TWEETS:
SAY HELLO:
I just want to help bands sell records, so we all get to keep doing this cool stuff. That’s been my motto from when I launched Buzzgrinder in 2001, and when I started Noisecreep for AOL Music back in 2008.
When albums get sold (shirts, pins, CDs, prints), photographers get hired, designers make album art, producers make records - the rising tide lifts all boats!
So look - life is short. Hit reply and say hey, or leave a comment below on the website. Someday I’ll be worm food, so in the meantime I’m here to help.
Let’s talk.