THE SOCIAL SHOTGUN APPROACH IS OVER

Stay creative and make sure you're actually reaching your fans

Photo by Laura Stanley

Welcome to ANTISOCIAL, a vulgar display of social media hostility.

➡️ Here’s Dave Karpf (an Internet politics professor at GWU) talking about reach on Twitter. It’s going down, friends!

When I tweet something, it isn’t actually viewed by 42,000 individuals. It’s seen by the subset of those 42,000 people.

…

I didn’t reach 42,000 people by tweeting my article. I reached less than 3,000 people. And that has been pretty consistent. Unless I write something spicy that gets a lot of retweets, the view-counter tells me I’m reaching 2,000-3,000 people.

That means he’s reaching about 7% of his Twitter Audience.

Go look at the big music media outlets and bands and run those numbers. Or maybe don’t. Yikes.

➡️ Wondering why your Instagram posts aren’t clicking? Maybe because the algorithm likes promoting hate instead!

White Christian nationalist “groypers” are thriving on Instagram, posting memes with racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic tropes while others pose as clean-cut conservatives to lure in new, college-aged recruits. 

➡️ Heads up - your tour announcements and product drops on Facebook might have to compete with Donald Trump once again - fun!

President Donald Trump will soon regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Meta, the parent company of the two platforms, claims that “new guardrails” are in place to keep the former president in line.

➡️ Oh look, Elon Musk continues being bad at being a “free speech absolutist”:

Twitter has censored links to a BBC documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the Indian government, despite CEO Elon Musk’s previously stated commitments to free speech on the platform.

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN

Okay, some more “glass is half-full” pieces to provide some hope in getting your fans from social media to your website / email list / store.

This from Louise Stigell from Confessions Of A Terrified Creative, in her post ‘How do I market my art without social media?’

Social media is the "shotgun" approach to marketing and selling art. We put our art out there and hope and pray that someone will stumble over it and will want to hire us or buy art from us. This approach might have worked back in the day, for some. But even then, many successful artists I've read about have said that a miniscule amount of their sales or leads have come from social media.

Stigell is writing from an artist’s perspective, but I think it’s still a good read for any creative person out there.

So think less shotgun, and more direct.

Export your Bandcamp sales emails, and send a for-real newsletter to your fans (be sure to provide an opt-out if some of those emails are a year old or more).

Make quick videos of you replying to comments from social media, and upload directly in the replies for that ONE PERSON. Wow your fans.

Start working with other folks - collaborate on a project together. Make cool stuff that you want to show your friends. Make videos. Make a zine. Make a shirt. Release a mini-movie on a site with your talented friends. Document a skate trip or hike.

You’re more exciting than a show about storage lockers - put that out into the world.

And of course, make sure your fans actually see it. Don’t just scream about it over and over again on social media platforms that “let you” reach less than 10% of your fans.

➡️ Get in touch: seth@closemondays.com