SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE FOOD COURT AT THE MALL AND THE LANDLORD SUCKS
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE FOOD COURT AT THE MALL AND THE LANDLORD SUCKS
Time to set up your own shop and build relationships directly with your fans
Linda Bloomfield ran #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter since 2018.
Then she told her 16.5K followers “I’m moving this to a newsletter,” and 1,200 people subscribed.
Tegan and Sara started a newsletter earlier this year, and they promote it to their 544K Twitter followers usually twice a week.
Paid subscriptions on their Substack start at $6/mo, and they have thousands of paying readers.
“A lot of the writing and connection that we crave, it just doesn’t exist on social media anymore,” Tegan says. “Social media has become this super curated, very flat-feeling world for us. So Sara and I were hesitant as we looked into the future with all our projects, like, ‘How do we promote these things without feeling disingenuous?’”
They’re not repurposing the newsletter content for socials. For what? To gain more followers they can’t reach?
No.
They publish a story, they link to it. Subscribers get it delivered to their email inbox.
The same inbox where fans get email receipts from records and concert tickets they buy.
Look, you command a room, and you command your narrative online.
So lead your fans.
Lead them to your website. Show them your newsletter.
Not all your fans hang out at the food court at the mall anymore, subsisting on a diet of pizza, smoothies, and chicken nugget outrage.
Social media is the food court at the mall, where your posts appear next to sports news and racist tirades, and the landlord keeps raising the rent.
It’s time to leave the food court at the mall.
Your art is your restaurant.
You set the menu and you set the hours. You adjust the lights, the atmosphere and the vibes are up to you.
HEAVY METAL EMAIL is my newsletter that I write twice a week because I can’t get handle the food anymore on social media. I can’t live on milkshakes and fries anymore.
Let’s all stop hanging out at the food court at the mall everyday, and start thinking about our Social Media Escape Plan.
ANTISOCIAL
A vulgar display of social media hostility.
Twitter banned links to social media competitors (and using “Link In Bio” services), but then a day or so later scrapped the new policy, because of course.
META might be hit with an almost $12 BILLION fine in the EU for “breaching antitrust rules.”
Research from the UK based Center for Countering Digital Hate says “the TikTok algorithm takes just 2.6 minutes to show vulnerable girls videos touting restrictive eating plans and self-harm content.”
Note that this section will be moving to its own Monday newsletter for paying subscribers starting in the new year, so upgrade to a paid subscription (get 15% off an annual subscription if you order by 1/1/2023).
LISTEN UP:
While lots of folks are slowing down in the biz, the rate at which interesting albums keep popping up in December doesn’t let up! This one from Iceland’s Misþyrming is a banger.
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Ha, love this! I wish I could quit the food court entirely, but I keep going back for the curly fries! (Or maybe it's that I left and bought a food truck instead?) Either way, happy to no longer live at the mall!