YOUTUBE POOPS, VIRAL AI VIDEOS, AND WHY YOU DON'T NEED A TIKTOK ACCOUNT
If you haven't aced your current channels, stay the heck home
➡️ If you’re the person doing socials for a company and the main draw is YOU, be careful.
From ‘Social Media Managers Are Becoming the Main Character,’ over at Link In Bio:
Are you being paid like a social manager or are you being paid like the face of a brand? More traditional faces of brands that you see in commercials can reportedly get paid from $250K to upwards of $1M per year. I understand TikTok is different, but there’s value beyond social strategy that a company is getting by using your likeness to build their brand.
I also think protecting yourself through a talent contract is important. Things like exclusivity, term, and paid usage could all be things that are negotiated here.
This might not be applicable to bands, but maybe for labels, or people working at media outlets.
➡️ Did you spend time working on the whole shopping integration on Instagram? Well surprise, “Instagram is kicking the shopping tab out of the home feed.” Facebook (the owner of IG) says, “you will still be able to set up and run your shop on Instagram as we continue to invest in shopping experiences that provide the most value for people and businesses across feed, stories, reels, ads and more.”
Sure!
➡️ And are fans watching your music videos? Jesus Christ, no, they’re watching something called YouTube Poops (from Garbage Day):
On short-form video apps like TikTok and Instagram, a lot of channels try and game the algorithm by combining random video clips and sounds to catch users’ attention. The video above is a good example. It’s the video and audio from a scene from Family Guy, stitched together with footage of a pleasing sensory video and a playthrough of mobile Temple Run-style game.
And this also Garbage Day (yes, Garbage Day is a great read) :
The line between meme or internet trend and spam has never been particularly clear, but I think A.I.-generated content trends make it even blurrier.
This video, which is just AI generated still images and a royalty free track called "Labyrinth Of Lost Dreams" from Darren Curtis Music has over a million views since Jan 5th, 2023.
Aren’t you glad you spent $5,000 for your latest music video?
➡️ On a more serious note, “two Seattle area school districts are suing 5 social media companies,” accusing them of “harming students' social, emotional and mental health.”
I’m not trying to be all “oh, stop using things that might lead to bad stuff,” because then we’d never use a bank, drive a car, or shop at a store.
But dear lord - our social media posts appear alongside auto-playing videos of police brutality, racist remarks, transphobic screeds and 100 other horrors, every minute of the day.
Set up your website, start your newsletter, and build your own quiet corner on the internet. We have all the tools and systems for becoming our own media empires.
Kiana Tipton recently posted her social media predictions for 2023 on LinkedIn, including this gem:
As concerns about the TikTok Ban increase, creators will prioritize owned channels + become more cross-platform (are we reentering a modern blog era?)
I think the solo efforts like Gawker and Wonkette and Just Jared (my memory is a little hazy, this was all a long time ago) are due for a come back.
Services like Ghost, WordPress.com, and Substack let you upload native video (see how I did that here), allowing creators to own 100% of their experience and branding and vibes, without platform lock-in.
And they’ve also got monetization tools built in, so you don’t have to send your fans to other sites like Patreon or Kofi in order to make money.
Yes, there's still a place to post content on all the social channels (while the impression rates are still hovering around 2-3% hahaha), sure... but as billboards, directing fans to come to your site to experience more.
If you’ve been following along, I’ve leaned pretty hard into the “link in bio” strategy to promote this HEAVY METAL EMAIL and avoid the ire of social media algorithms.
Alas, the last few days I’ve seen zero traffic to my LinkTree, even though I’ve been posting to Twitter, LinkedIn, and IG stories. I’m sure I’m in some social media purgatory right now.
But that’s okay.
In this same time (Dec 15 - Jan 15) I got almost 1,000 views from Substack, Google, or direct traffic, and 32 new subscribers; that’s a 3.2% conversion rate, and all I had to do was… keep writing.
So keep writing, friends!
Hit me up if you have questions or ideas (seth@socialmediaescape.club)!