Music Marketing Rant #721 - Hydraulic Empires & the control of communication by social networking companies
As the Stormcellar Marketing Department, I've been following various web-based things, reading and thinking for a decade.
I generally keep that stuff to myself because I believe I should be 'doing' not 'telling'. So we do. But we follow the best of our own internal analysis and common sense.
But the time has come for me to say it loud for my fellow muso's.
ATTENTION MUSO'S USING SOCIAL MEDIA: DO NOT INVEST YOUR TIME IN BUILDING SOMEONE ELSE'S BUSINESS FOR FREE.
Commence Rant!
Facebook have dropped off the number of 'friends' who get our media posts by 50%.
They call this a 'reduction in "organic" traffic'. ROFL. 'Organic' meaning 'not paying facebook'.
Facebook want us to spend $ to reach the same people who actively sought to know what we're up to by 'following' our page.
Like some kind of street dealer, they started free, encouraged you to 'establish a social media presence' and now if you don't pay, well, all that time and effort....
Imagine having to pay for 50% of your emails to get through?
Humans have been using control of resources for power since before the time of the Pharaohs.
When we started out, the dominant player was Myspace. How'd that work out Justin?
We started this site before we joined FB cos that's how we roll and despite many Marketing Pros and other Music Service Providers seeking to help us by relieving us of our cash in return for electronic status enhancement, our use of FB has been dropping and dropping.
We did some ads, played the game and then decided 'nope'.
Even so, our 'Follow' base has been rising - even despite refusing to spend anything on FB.
Recently, I've been getting complaints from Cellar Dwellers who actively want to know what we're up to and aren't getting the feed.
Yes I know there are 15 simple steps FB say will fix that but I call BS.
They know people are not going to fiddle with their settings too often.
It's much easier for us to just pay FB to make sure they see our post/gig/video/comment/pic.
Nope.
We don't don't truck with SUBSCRIBE!!! SUBSCRIBE!! or LIKE!!! LIKE!!!
Rosie hates spam so much we barely even send out a newsletter.
But we know that you come here and read this and that when you want to know what we're doing and intersect with us, you check the gig guide.
But are we here to spend our time making ourselves the Masters Of The Invisible Palace?
Social media is an echo of what you do, not what you do.
Social Media are not producers of content. You are.
You populate their world with your life and they then turn around and sell your information or seek to Pavlov you with 'OH GET A RED STICKER!! GET LIKES!!'.
On the occasional rant I've had on this subject, I've quoted concepts such as 'the map is not the territory' and argued that the perception of the world through the prism of Old Media and Clickbait Media is not truly representative of reality.
We were in Middle America before the 2017 Election and what we saw/heard varied tremendously between what the folks in the US thought and what the media was telling me they thought.
I add another argument:
Would it make sense for everyone on planet earth to be obliged to use One Single Email Services Provider? So why would we all use one Social media provider?
No. But we're led to believe that 'social media' is made up of the dominant player and 20-30 smaller satellite companies.
Bah humbug say I. Here's what's become of Messaging on the web - from XKCD
Social media is doing the same thing.
How many websites, accounts, cost per month, subscriptions and adverts should we participate in?
We like making stuff and doing stuff. We're tech so we do Social Media, streaming, youtube, twitter etc.
We're so Original Geekster we have integrated messaging across platforms. It's all highly nerdy.
But we are not up for supporting large corporations with free content and then having them charge us for the privilege.
We will still use Social Media, but we're spending less and less time trying to build their imaginary world.
We have our own imaginary world thank you very much! Right here, no ads, no clickbait.
I'm not sure quite what the right approach is, but I am increasingly leery of the main Social Media platforms and I think I'm going to change how we interact with them.
Rant over.
