Hello, everyone! Welcome to the beginning of a brand new week. We are kicking things off with a little help from our friend Seth Werkheiser, and we hope you’ll heed the advice he has to offer. The piece you’re about to read was originally part of Seth’s popular ‘Novelty And Nonsense’ email list. If you like what you read, click here and signup for future mailings.
This site exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
On YouTube you’re the pink space above. That’s it.
With a pre-roll ad you disappear.
See those videos on the side? Distractions. Noise. All aiming to be more compelling than your video, chosen my algorithms to drive more clicks (and money) for YouTube. Cha-ching (for them, not you).
That’s the fight you enter into each time you Tweet a link to your brand new video on YouTube.
You’re bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Do this instead. That pink space? That’s yours.
Fill your space with upcoming shows, links to your merch, and / or pretty pictures of your cute face. Don’t give up that space to other bands, makers, speakers, or bullshit BuzzFeed videos (because they’re engineered to win).
It’s 2015 – start driving traffic to your stuff instead of landing pages for fancy-pant sites engineered to distract your fans.
Seth Werkheiser is the quiz master of metal trivia at Skulltoaster. He’s also the founder of some music sites you may have heard of, including Noise Creep (2009) + Buzzgrinder (2001). He’s anti-Facebook, anti-clickbait, and anti-growth hacking. You should most definitely follow him on Twitter. Yes, right now.
