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Is social media helping you grow your fan base? What can you expect in terms of return on investment (ROI)?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share how and why my attitude around social media has shifted, and what I think is the key to digital marketing success.

Podcast Highlights:

• 00:18 – The king of internet music marketing
• 00:43 – Shifting away from social media
• 01:24 – The addictive nature of social media
• 03:21 – How my thinking shifted
• 08:11 – Lessons from independent music campaigns
• 12:45 – “Old fart marketing”
• 14:46 – Automating your social media marketing
• 16:31 – 80/20 your marketing
• 17:53 – The importance of building your website on WordPress
• 19:30 – Where do you put your focus?

Transcription:

David Andrew Wiebe is the king of internet music marketing and, most importantly, social networking platforms.

That’s a direct quote from Scott Kirby of Music Revolt, who shared that with me about four years ago in 2016. It was around that time that I came out with physical copies of my first best-selling book, The New Music Industry: Adapting, Growing and Thriving in the Information Age.

And it’s true, back then I had a much stronger focus on social media. Some of you might be wondering, what happened? And maybe I’m just thinking too much here, and you couldn’t care less. Either way, social media is deserving of some space on the podcast, at least one episode, right? But I actually am planning a more in-depth review of social media in 2020 later.

So I’ll be getting into that in another episode. In this episode, we’ll take a fairly surface-level look at social media and what it has meant to me, and how things have changed for me in the last few years. Now, social media is sexy.

People love it and it’s addictive. And we know it’s addictive because it’s been engineered that way. Just like smartphones have been engineered to be addictive, so has social media.

And the two together are a deadly combination. Everywhere you go, it seems like people have their heads in their phones and aren’t present to what’s going on in the world. They look at the newsreels and the headlines and think that’s actually what’s going on in the world when they haven’t confirmed any of it for themselves.

Now, that might be an entirely different topic, but I still feel like it’s pretty relevant. It’s pretty important to consider what it is that we’re consuming and how we think about it. Because there are so many things that we just don’t think about critically anymore.

The smartphones and the social media and our text messages and so many other things have us so distracted that basically we barely think about anything critically anymore. So that is a factor. Just the fact that I know it’s addicting and I don’t want to spend that much time on a platform as a creator like you are, I’m sure.

Whatever it is you’re creating, you might be creating your first book, you might be creating music, you might be creating some kind of info product, or maybe even an app. I know that this podcast’s listenership represents a broad base of people. There are all kinds of people that listen in.

And when I hear about the kind of quality of people that listen in, I couldn’t be more thrilled. It’s just so amazing to me that people who’ve been in the business and industry for so long and are well regarded listen to this podcast. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for listening in.

I am hugely appreciative of that fact. So I’m going to be going down a million rabbit trails here, just as I have. But getting back to the topic of social media, what has changed? You know, in life, I’ve discovered that there are some things that you simply can’t unsee, such as the time when I read Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four-Hour Workweek.

And I know that this was a transformational work for many entrepreneurs out there and probably for most of you listening. And if you haven’t read it yet, I would suggest getting a copy. And I don’t want to blow it out of proportion, but it might be one of the most inspirational and entertaining books on the idea of lifestyle design.

And lifestyle design is what I’ve been fascinated by and interested in the last few years, to the point where I am now a digital nomad. And I think I shared that before. However, I’m not the kind of digital nomad that is going to go and sit on a beach and make a video saying, Why the hell haven’t you quit your job? That’s just not my personality, and it’s not how I do things.

The point is that I’ve achieved a degree of freedom, and it was my goal to do this. In 2016, I started working completely from home. And in 2019, I managed to extend that into becoming location-independent.

So that was a goal of mine. And my next goal is basically to build a six-figure business. And I’m certainly not going to say I’m well on my way, but looking at all of my various income sources, earning high four figures monthly has no longer proven a challenge to me.

So when people say, “Look at me, I am making $3,000 a month from selling stuff on Amazon.” I couldn’t care anymore. I’m more interested in how I leverage myself such that I can make six figures without like stressing out and having it take up my time.

So I mean, that’s where my focus is now. So what changed for me with reading Tim Ferriss’ book was that I no longer felt the necessity to be like right on top of my email. And as we know, email is a convenient organization system for other people’s priorities.

So other people have plans for you. The thing is, other people’s plans aren’t that grand. They don’t have many big ideas for you.

I’m sorry to say, I would love to say that there are so many people out there that are willing to invest and want to be a part of your team and want to help you out when you’re struggling and when things are down, when it seems like you’re not keeping up and, you know, you’re giving your blood, sweat and tears to your business and you’re still not keeping up with all these projects. There are so few people who will come by your side and say,  “Can I help? Can I help?” I would have loved to have heard those words last year. I’m telling you, I would have loved to have heard somebody say, “Can I help?” Because that would have made all the difference.

Just one person, just one person. It would have made all the difference. And this is the whole thing about social media that is encouraging a fairly individualistic society, but it didn’t need a whole lot of help.

When you think about it, we were pretty individualistic before social media. And social media has only grown and expanded that trend, which is really one of the unfortunate things. So when I began to look at my email as a convenient organization system for other people’s agendas for my life, I could no longer focus on it.

That just became a second, third, fourth priority. It was no longer the main priority in my life to keep my inbox to zero. And at this point now, I just try to unsubscribe from everything I possibly can so that my inbox is not cluttered and I can see any messages that are coming from clients, from my mastermind group, from my inner circle of friends that I care about.

Aside from that, I mean, really, do I have to? I’m going to try to communicate the best I can. And if you send me questions and you’re on my email list, or if you’re a podcast listener, or if you’re a regular reader of the blog, absolutely send me emails, and I will respond to them. You can just go to the website and contact support if you don’t already have my email, and they will get in touch with me because they are empowered to handle those types of requests.

And they’re just going to send them over to me once they identify that they can’t really answer the question. So you are more than welcome to just pass along your messages. And I’m really happy to see them.

And write a note of encouragement or comment or feedback, or anything that you find worthy. Wow, it’s amazing how much I can though.

So hopefully I’m not boring you to death or anything like that. So some of the things that I’ve done over the last few years, I’ve done a couple of independent musician campaigns, not a ton, but there was a crowdfunding campaign, there was a radio campaign, there was a Facebook campaign, and a few things like that. And I worked on that with either a partner of mine or other team members, or a combination thereof.

So if you hear me saying we, it’s not just me, right? There are other people involved in making this happen. What we find the first thing we check isn’t an artist’s social media following. Now, that might sound weird, or it might sound compelling depending on your experience with social media.

But my experience with social media has inevitably been that a large following can be leveraged, but usually, you still end up relying on advertising. So you have to spend some money to get results out of your following. As well, I still don’t think social media is a marketing engine.

Now, advertising is amazing and you can get some great results, but you still have to nail your ad. If you don’t nail your ad copy and images and everything that goes with it, it’s just not going to be effective. And we marketers, I swear to you, waste a lot of money on ads that don’t work until we find something that converts and works well.

So I don’t know how a lot of these other providers of information for musicians in the music industry purport to be able to teach musicians how to create effective ads. I mean, I guess maybe they give you templates or something. I don’t know, but I’m sorry to say, it’s just not going to work that well without a ton of testing.

And you may be a skilled musician, and you may even have a broad base of internet marketing knowledge, but unless you go deep into how an ad works and how it can get you results, it’s just not going to go anywhere. So the number one thing that we check, first of all, is not an artist’s social media following. What we check first is their email list.

What’s the size of their email list? Number two, categorically, I can say the thing that we check next is their website traffic. Yeah, we haven’t even gotten to social media yet. And then number three is where we might begin to look at their social media following, their YouTube subscriber base, the number of views they’ve gotten on their videos, and so forth.

And we do a complete audit. We look at all of it and measure things out and see what sort of engagement they’ve been getting on their emails. There was one artist, and I can’t mention her name, unfortunately, but she had an email list of what appeared to be a thousand people, and about 30 to 40% of people were opening.

So that 30 to 40% open rate, like that’s ridiculous. You are not going to get those results on social media. Never.

You are never going to get those results. It turns out, though, she had a list of 400 with a response rate of 30 to 40%, not a response rate, but an open rate of 30 to 40%. But still, that was spectacular and magnificent enough that we were able to leverage that email list.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We did a lot of other things that might even surprise you to help drive interest for the crowdfunding campaign. But the number one thing that we utilized was their email list.

And that gave us the greatest leverage of any other platform. A distant second is Facebook. And it was advertising.

A distant third was YouTube advertising. Pretty well, everything else we did may have helped build awareness or brand recognition or just get in front of people’s eyes and serve as a reminder for them to go and contribute to the campaign. But aside from that, really, we counted on the email list.

Categorically, I can tell you that email marketing, if you’ve built your list, and if you’ve done the work to engage them, that it’s going to be way more effective than just about anything that you can do to market your new release or campaign or whatever else on social media, you’re just not going to get those types of results. I don’t know how you’re going to do it. So while I think it’s wonderful that you’re getting such an amazing education on social media and the latest platforms, whether it’s TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram, and how to utilize them and how to best make use of them right now, and which tactics are helping drive the most interest and engagement from others.

I still think that what you might call old fart marketing, quote unquote, is going to be way more effective for you than social media. Again, categorically, I can say I’ve had a lot of niche sites and blogs over the years. I can say categorically that social media accounted for maybe 2% of traffic, like Music Entrepreneur HQ, for example, gets anywhere from 300 to 800 visits per day.

Now, these days we’re a little closer to 300, and things are constantly shifting with organic marketing and SEO and search engines, and so forth. And that certainly can affect traffic, don’t get me wrong. But compared to the way we’re throttled on social media, I get maybe 5 to 10 visits per day from social media.

And that’s from everything, right? That’s from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. And I mean, those are the main ones I’m using now, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t using a lot of others in the past, because I was. And I still utilize Medium quite a bit too, just to share articles and some other ideas that maybe don’t pertain to the music industry.

I don’t do that as much because I gotta keep my focus. And that might be my greatest weakness. And I’ve said that over the years, that focus might be my Kryptonite.

At the same time, you don’t publish four books without some semblance of focus, am I right? So I do okay. Anyway, the thing is, you can automate social media. And that’s another thing that, while it’s kind of a foregone conclusion for me, might not be for you.

There are tools like MeetEdgar, Hootsuite, or Buffer, and some cost more than others, to be fair, that allow you to put a lot of your social media on autopilot and have you posting all day long. And most musicians I’ve found are scared to post anything because they think, you know, oh, if I post 10 posts per day, my following is going to be bothered. And again, I can almost categorically say that your whole following is not seeing your posts, even if you post 20 times a day.

And so you’re kind of arbitrarily limiting yourself. Now, you shouldn’t just scream into the void and hope that somebody’s going to hear you. You know, that’s not the point.

But you need to get in front of people frequently and often. And that’s going to take something. And I don’t know if it’s worth spending that much time on social media.

I don’t know if it’s worth the ROI. And by that, I mean return on investment, if you’re not familiar with that term. It’s not worth it, spending that much time on social media, just to get a few people’s attention.

If it’s different for you, awesome. If you’re getting tons of traffic from social media, awesome. If you find those people are converting and turning into customers and email list subscribers and YouTube subscribers and everything else, great, just keep doing what you’re doing.

Don’t listen to me. But in my experience, what works is what works. And again, it might fall under the category of old fart marketing.

And what doesn’t work, doesn’t work. So I would never eliminate social media. But if I were to 80-20 my marketing, I would not be betting my chips on social media.

Okay. So I think this is an important message. I think it needs to get out there.

I think it’s one that a lot of the experts are not touching on. As amazing as they are, as smart as they are, as knowledgeable as they are, they’re not getting to the point, which is that if you were to 80-20 your marketing, most of the time, in my experience, social media is not going to be part of that 20%. And if you don’t understand the 80-20 principle, it’s the idea that 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your effort.

So 20% of your effort is probably playing shows and emailing your fans, and having conversations with possible prospects. Those kinds of things tend to be high return. So I think things like social media should probably be in the margins of your life.

You know, set aside a good 15 minutes for it per day, 30 minutes if you think you might need more, and move on, move on, move on, move on, do something else. Some of the things I just mentioned, you’re going to get way more value from those than your social media. Now, getting back to automating your social media, I like to use WordPress for my website.

And again, this is something that is a contentious issue. Let’s just say there are other players out there that are much louder and have more of a presence on popular online platforms that are selling their services. Wonderful.

I mean, as long as you build a website, that’s better than not having a website. I’ll give you that much. My preferred method for myself and you is to have a self-hosted WordPress website.

WordPress has a lot of support, a huge community. It is the number one content marketing management system out there, or content management system out there. There are so many amazing plugins that allow you to share on social media automatically when you publish a new post on your website.

It’s as simple as that. It’s as simple as that. And you can schedule posts out until the cows come home.

You can write stuff up, schedule it in WordPress, have it come out at a specific day, at a specific time, based on whatever research you’ve found, based on whatever works best or whatever best practices are out there and have it shared on social media on the dot every single day or every single week or every single month or whatever, however often you post your content. So to me, that’s a no-brainer. I still want the traffic from social media.

I just don’t want to put hours and hours and hours of my own time into it when it’s not going to give me the returns that I need. So, where do you put your focus as far as digital marketing is concerned? You put your focus on your website, and you put your focus on your email list and the rest. I think we all just need to be educated on the priority of subscribers or followers.

How Joe Pulizzi Ranks Subscribers & Followers

Joe Polizzi from Content Marketing Institute has this awesome image that he uses in presentations showing what the top ranking or the highest value subscribers or followers, or customers are. So I’m going to include that in the show notes, which is going to be at musicentrepreneurhq.com/183 slash 183. So I hope you’ll check that out.

Closing Segment

I hope you begin to understand the grand picture of digital marketing. I hope you don’t waste all your time on social media. Feel free to do as you please.

You don’t need to listen to me. I just feel that this is a really important subject that we need to cover because otherwise we all just get sucked into that big black void where really loneliness happens. There’s no connection.

People don’t talk to each other. And like I was saying last year, all I needed was one person to come and say, Can I help? It would have made all the difference for me. It would have made all the difference for me.

And that did not happen. Okay. So let’s not focus so much on social media.

Let’s give it the time and space that it deserves, which is most likely in the margins of your life, unless you’re achieving amazing things in social media, in which case, please just keep doing what you’re doing. Do not listen to me. Okay.

If you’re doing great, do not listen to me. Thanks for listening. I’m David Andrew Wiebe, and I will see you on the stages of the world.