Transitioning your social media accounts to your artist website.

[Peggy]

I found this a very interesting tweet by a musician.  I won't mention his name and have removed his specific info. I don't know his reasoning behind the Tweet, but for many reasons, I would have done it differently.

 

My thoughts are, I definitely believe  there needs to be a separation between your artists account and a peers account on social media platforms.  I also think that during the development of songs, there is a risk showing the public how the "sausage is made", because It takes away the WOW factor.  Developing your music, marketing and promotion strategies with other musicians input is what Songstuff is for

 

So, here's my question.

-  If you have commingled your audience on your social media accounts, how would you separate your audience once you decided to do so?

- How would you use your existing accounts to direct your fans to your website?

- Would you stop using your social media accounts for your fanbase promotion and communication once your website was up and running?

- Do you think following many accounts hurts you or helps you in building and keeping a fanbase?

 

************

Twitter account stats:

Following: 66.3k.  Followers: 466.1k

 

Twitter Post:

**Effective Immediately** Unfollowing EVERYONE on Twitter. The only accounts that will be whitelisted will be fellow artists, songwriters and labels that I know personally or have interacted with. Superfans will eventually be followed but ONLY if they are part of my exclusive community. If you would like to be part of my community, simply sign up on my website at http://****.*** it says "Mailing List," but make no mistake this isn't an ordinary mailing list. This is where we can build a more personal relationship. You will also get early access to concert tickets and merch deals, new music and well me! Its a better more exclusive fan community. Please follow on ****** for concert dates.

 

[Peggy]

2 hours ago, buckoff said:

Are they real followers or did he pay for them ?

Must admit, the same thing crossed my mind.  So his approach could be that he just needs to clear the deck and start over.

[john]

It doesn’t really explain why the account is being closed down by the artist, but you mentioned commingling… and the numbers ring alarm bells. So does some of what the artist says.

 

If it is a personal and artist account, mixed together, that is a really bad idea, for a number of reasons. There’s a bunch of good reasons, but chief among them is “the algorithm”. First you have to appreciate that the algorithm is important to artists and why.

 

You could work your ass off trying to extend your reach, but if the algorithm decides to park you in a dead end, you will need to make fundamental changes to turn it around. Meanwhile if the algorithm A-lists you, you will be buried in the right activity from the right people. So, to say it is important understates it by a long way.

 

The second thing to appreciate is that all your account activity, including how others interact with your account and your activity, is used to train the algorithm. This means the longer that misleading behaviour goes on, the harder it is to turn your account around, and the more radical the intervention has to be.

 

The trouble is, while your friends, colleagues and family members might like you, that doesn’t make them real fans of your music. That makes their interactions misleading. All of them.

 

Now add in artists mixing a fan facing account with an artist facing account. The number of artists that artists unaware of “mislead training” connect with is astounding. Artists sometimes rapidly try to grow their social accounts by follow trading. Activity trading too. This all skews the algorithm.

 

All this and then some buy follows, comments, shares, likes. The one thing all this activity has in common is that it comes from a wide array of very diverse social account profiles. This means that if the social platform, in this case Twitter, does send you some traffic, it will be the wrong people…. People who are unlikely to be interested in your music because they are based on a profile built on people who are not real fans.

 

Add to this, the platform sees the artist regularly posting things like new releases that fall pretty flat. Even the artists they have connected with are not really interested in your music. Sure, a small cadre of friend-artists might be but they are often first interested as friends. All this further skews the algorithm.

 

I could go on, but the quick summary is, it is a very bad idea. Co-mingling, in this context, could be more aptly named cross-contaminating.

 

1 hour ago, buckoff said:

Thats what  crossed my mind , I got some paid for some . If he had 466 ,000 if I read it right , He'd have 1000,s of comments on his songs , I have seen majors get that attention , But not indy's 

Actually, larger indies do get those figures. True, few by comparison. It’s not unknown for indie YouTubers to get 1M+in genuine followers.

[Peggy]

I think he could have gotten himself into "a follow me and I will follow you back"  build mindset, or even one of the chain-letter type follower builds.   I've often seen both on Twitter with indies, instead of a more organic growth.  So as an artists, what you have, when looking at why it's not working, is a cluster-f* of people you're following and followers that aren't really interested in your music or you interested in theirs (if musicians).

[john]

8 hours ago, buckoff said:

if your talking paid FB ads on algorithm, That never worked for me . Without getting upset again and losing my temper , There was no ROI. it could be a older artist trying to capture a younger audience and not working . With Millions on Fb , I should be able to reach 10k fans sell 12 songs a year make a profit , That ain't working 

No, talking about the algorithm(s) that run in the background profiling absolutely everything we do. I can’t remember the exact figure on Facebook, but they have tens of millions of data points per user, and that was about 4 years ago. Every interaction with their platform, captured and used to filter new content they show you, including posts, ads, recommendations etc. This topic started with Twitter, and it’s who I was focusing on…

 

Out of interest, I see people regularly talk of users being shadow banned, ie the practice of the platform isolating your account by letting you make posts, but only you or a very small number of other accounts actually see your post. This way you think your account is live, when it isn’t. To you it just looks like people aren’t replying. Of course they aren’t replying. They can’t see your post!

 

What people are less aware of us that they can effectively shadow ban themselves, without additional interventions by Twitter/FB/Insta etc. The algorithms spots and amplifies trends. If your post is getting interactions, it shows it to more people. Virality depends on that simple principle. Yes it is more nuanced than that, but that is the basic model. However the opposite is also true. If you make posts and you get very low levels of interaction, it shows it to less people. Not only that, your next new topic will be shown to less people. It creates a spiral downwards. 
 

So, if you have stuffed your follower list with other artists who are not interested in your music or posts, you can be in a situation where you have 100k followers but you get 5 replies to a new topic. Facebook et al spots this and your next new topic is shown to 20 followers (ok it takes a few dud topics to get to 20). Depending on how that 20 responds depends on how many other followers get to see your post. 

The days of all followers being shown your post has long, long gone. Especially (on Facebook) if you are interacting as a FB page. Out of interest, this is also designed to get companies to pay for ads. The “boost your post” campaign seems to largely focus on exploiting this kind of frustration with reach.

 

Back to shadow ban… such isolated accounts effectively shadow ban themselves with content shown to less and less people, and a large percentage of who does see it are people who are highly unlikely to interact with your topic… you effectively shadow banned yourself by growing the wrong audience. I don’t think there is a better descriptor for an audience of artists grown through follow-for-follow tactic. While there is a situation you could consider the use of that tactic, it is very limited and should be used very, very carefully, for a short period…. or avoided completely.
 

I’ll not dive into Facebook or Facebook Ads more in this topic. I will start a new topic on the subject where we can all talk about it. Note, not to trigger you Buckoff, but because these are all subjects Artist can and should talk about. Awareness is everything and can save a lot of time and money.