“But I have a Facebook Fan page.”

“I have 1000s of Twitter followers.”

All that’s good, but if you can’t communicate directly with your fans, then you don’t have anything.

*Disclaimer – None of this is new or groundbreaking information, but I still thought it was worth writing about. The more times bands and musicians hear this, the better.

In fact, I had to remind myself of this a coupe of days ago and send a quick email out to my list!

So why is this a necessary step in a world where everyone is completely glued to social media?

1) You don’t “own” your social media profiles.

I was a musician even back in the days of Myspace. That was the end all be all of the indie music industry at that time! People judged you by how many Myspace friends you had. In fact, I’m sure people even got record deals based solely off of these numbers.

But now?

People under a certain age don’t even remember that Myspace existed!

And all the time we spent building up our profile is pretty much for nothing.

I know it’s difficult to fathom, but the same thing could absolutely happen to Facebook or Twitter or whatever social network.

And if that happens and you don’t have any other contact information for those people then your communication has just been cut off.

But you know what?

2) You can’t control what Facebook shows people.

Even if you have tons of likes on your Facebook page, there’s still only going to be a small percentage of people that the Facebook algorithm will show your post to.

Now that Facebook ads have blown up, Facebook has no incentive to help you promote yourself for free to people that they think might not be interested in your content.

You can buy ads, but if you go that route you need to have a solid strategy for making money off them. Otherwise you’re just spending your cash on building awareness, which is probably a losing strategy for most people.

3) Twitter’s newsfeed moves too fast to keep up with.

Maybe this is just me. I’m terrible at Twitter.

But one thing i’ve noticed is that I can never seem to keep up with Twitter because of all the noise.

You tweet something, and depending on how many other people your followers follow, it might be gone in seconds. Then they have to go to your profile and try to find it again, if they even care enough to. And if you’re a prolific tweeter, that makes it even harder to find something.

So you can (and probably should) announce your gigs and album releases and whatever else you’re sharing on Twitter, but most people won’t see it unless they happen to be looking at just the right time, or you tag them in the tweet.

4) Email let’s you target exactly who to send your messages to.

Unlike Twitter’s crowded, fast moving newsfeed and Facebook’s alogrithm, with email you can decide who to send your messages to.

You can segment your lists, send to everyone or even just select a few people you know will be interested.

While you can’t be guaranteed that people will read your email, you can be sure that it will get to their inbox. It might go into spam or the promotions tab, but at least it will get there. And I think it’s a lot easier to search for an older email than it is to search for a tweet or Facebook post.

If you have fans spread out over large geographic areas, you can just send to people in the area that you are playing. Or you can email everyone to let them know about your online concert, or crowdfunding campaign or whatever.

You can drive traffic to your website or a video or even a Facebook post!

5) If your email service provider is going to shut down, you can just export your list and carry on.

If Facebook shuts down, it’s taking your audience with it.

If Mailchimp shuts down, you can export everyone on your list to a spreadsheet and add them to another provider and still be able to communicate with your fans.

Conclusion

In much the same way that you need to have a website in addition to your social media presence, you absolutely have to have an email list to go along with that.

You need to OWN all your internet properties and be able to communicate with people in whatever unrestricted manner best suits you and your fans.

Please, please, please don’t make the mistake of not doing this. It will come back to bite you at some point, I promise.

If you have questions on how to get started with email marketing, hit me up in the comments or send me an email. I’d be happy to talk it over with you.

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Reposted from MattieRocks.com