G’Day everyone! Let me give you a quick introduction about myself. I’m an Australian acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and have been playing guitar for over 25 years. It has been my full-time job for the last ten. During that time, I have gained about a million followers across social media, which is large by some accounts and small by others, though in the fingerstyle guitar niche I guess it’s pretty good going.
I don’t think many people would disagree with me that social media is both a blessing and a curse. If you have a video or song go viral you certainly know about the ‘blessing’ part of it, but when you have hundreds of messages and comments a day to deal with alongside normal business going on, things can get pretty overwhelming.
At the end of 2019 I felt I was at breaking point, brought on by a huge effort in 2019 creating and spending hours a day replying to comments and messages only to have one of the lowest performing financial and streaming years to-date, so I deactivated all my social media. Immediately I felt a weight off! And although I had planned for it to be permanent it only lasted about a week; the hooks are too far in at the moment with brand deals, competitions, and other things that really require social media. But even having that week away was a hugely liberating experience and I came back with a little bit of a better understanding of how I can make music and social media sustainable into 2020.
I counted how many hours it takes me to reply to one weeks’ worth of messages and comments on average and if I sit down to do it in one go it’s 8-10 hours. It’s really lovely to receive so many messages but it can also be massively fatiguing, combined with no monetary incentive, which, while never having done music for money, is difficult when I barely get time to practice guitar and the in the face of falling 2019 stats.
Even during the time it’s taken me to write this blog I’ve had several hundred notifications come in, partly due to just being announced as a winner in an international guitar competition - the ‘blessing’ side of social media, but your mind does race from one thing to the next, and I can’t help but think of the quote by Mozart that the quickest way to do many things is one at a time.
I found myself reluctant to release videos and new content. Part of me almost wanted to make things intentionally bad, just so I wouldn’t receive so many comments when I did release it. I found myself getting stressed at the thought of releasing new material; that’s crazy, but it’s the mindset I even still find myself in although I’m dealing with it better now.
I don’t think logging out of or deleting apps is enough, certainly not for me. I will try to go cold turkey every now and then and will see how I go. Not deactivating Instagram and Facebook meant I still had the pressure of the knowledge that people were still messaging and commenting and I would have even more work to catch up on when I returned. It was even worse in some sense.
I know there’s no rules to replying to comments and messages, but it’s hard not to. You are even rewarded by the algorithms for doing so, and it is nice to see engagement from creators. Going into 2020 I will just really try to only comment and reply to a select few things, most likely at random or to comments that really stick out. Live videos are also a good way to maintain that engagement without spending hours and hours a week, and if some people don’t understand, well that’s just too bad and you’re probably better off without them as a fan anyway!
A big thing I found when I did reactivate my social media was that I really felt a new found detachment which was amazing – my brain felt clean. It’s starting to fade, which scares me a little, so I’m starting to plan my next cold turkey deactivation! I wasn’t worried about how many likes or comments I or other people had. The competition side of things had gone. I no longer wanted to create content based on how well I think it would do on Instagram, but wanted to create work that I liked. And ironically it was the content I created before social media that ended up doing the best on social media anyway. When I deleted my MySpace page around 2007 I had over 100k friends on there. But deleting it was the best thing I ever did because all of a sudden my music became better. Exactly the same thing when I achieved a few viral videos - that was things I did before even having an Instagram or Facebook page.
I’ve spent the 40 hours a week on social media, replying to every message and comment I could, devising new strategies, spending money on advertising, and at the end of the day it didn’t really benefit me, so now I’m free to create and write how I want to write, and so are you. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. People will always find good music and will always listen to good music, Instagram account or not.
Going into 2020, my plan is to focus on my music and videos. I’ll create less content, but it will be higher quality content. I won’t worry about how I think it will go, but will focus on if I like it or not. I won’t compare myself to others. Numbers can be bought, viral videos can happen out of nowhere, anything can happen.
Listen to the interview with Alan on “Now Hear This Entertainment” Episode 269 and visit his official website.
Talk about this blog and your likely love/hate relationship with social media in our Facebook group.
Bruce
20 January 2020
By: Alan Gogoll