There have been a lot of questions on my mind this week, with varying degrees of relevance to one another. Will Gaitok from The White Lotus get any better at his job? What secrets are going to be revealed in the season finale of Severance?
Are social media channels saturated? And if they are, what should creators do to diversify their channels? Other teammates at Beacons have been thinking about the last question too. (Maybe they've also been thinking about the first two, but I haven't asked.)
A few days ago, our Creator Partnerships Lead Bryan posted a case study on LinkedIn about how musician Jon Bellion used email marketing—rather than socials—to drive screen-shattering engagement on the release of his long-awaited new single, WASH.
Oh yeah, and he did it all on Beacons. |
What exactly did he do? After ending his engagement with his label, Jon wanted to do his marketing differently as a musician. He wanted to own the fan relationships and have more control over a direct channel to his fans.
He announced he was ONLY going to communicate by emails, and quickly got hundreds of thousands of his fans to sign up in a few weeks. Organically.
This week, Jon (& the Beacons team who has been working with him) got to see this in action. Two days before its official release, Jon released this long-awaited single exclusively through his Beacons email
marketing list as a Wetransfer download.
As for the payoff—Bryan explained it best: |
So what are the takeaways? What can other musicians—or creators of any niche—do to win the game of email marketing and direct-to-fan communication, like Jon did? Bryan goes on to explain: -
Doing direct-to-fan marketing doesn't mean you can only reach a small number of fans. When done right, you can reach your fans at scale, much more effectively than only posting on socials. This is especially important for big announcements, when you need your ride-or-die fans to show up.
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Socials are great for building your audience and getting reach. Email is great for building deeper relationships with fans. It's not either/or, it's both/and.
- Don't be afraid to release exclusive content early to your best fans. They crave it. They deserve it. Don't let socials crowd you out from them.
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For musicians—download files of songs might seem anachronistic. But that's part of the experience of exclusivity. It actually enhances the exchange, makes it intimate, makes it human. The format IS the message. Rather than scaring them away, Jon's fans knew the assignment.
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"Will you love me when my phone turns off?" Jon is asking the hard-hitting questions. Let's do this for you too. If you want to get started, reply and say "DIRECT TO FAN." |
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If you've been following along on our socials or in these newsletters, you've probably caught on that we're releasing something really big in a few weeks. Beacons is building a new way for creators and brands to partner, and completely changing the way creators can build relationships with fans.
It all comes down to data. Our new system will keep track of your success on Beacons and make sure the right brands see your engagement stats so they can send you paid partnership offers.
Mark your calendars for April 8th: that's when this new feature is launching on Beacons. But in the meantime, there's something important to do to make sure you can use this feature: connect your socials accounts!
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Connecting your social accounts is the key to taking advantage of these new brand deal features. When your social accounts are connected, your engagement stats will automatically sync. Brands will be able to easily find you and match with you for their campaigns.
Not to mention, connecting your socials gives you access to the amazingly rich functionality on Beacons that truly helps you take your business to the next level: -
🧠 Smarter, auto-updating insights: Up-to-date analytics that help you understand how to grow your audience and your income
- 📊 Auto-updating media kit: Show off your stats in real-time, so brands can see your latest engagement and performance
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🖇️ Multiple social accounts linked in one place: Keep all your Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch accounts organized without the hassle of switching apps, even if you have multiple accounts on every platform
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💬 Drive conversions from IG: With Smart Reply, you can respond quicker and more effectively to your fans and brands with automatic Instagram DMs
- 💰 More brand deal opportunities: Connected creators are featured and more easily discovered by top brands for more brand deal opportunities
Make sure you're connected today so you're ready to take advantage of the exciting new brand deal features on April 8th 🤝 |
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👉 Btw, have you check out our Canny feedback form? You can submit feature requests for us to build here directly. We look at this every day! |
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This week, I caught up with an old marketing colleague and we had a riveting conversation about content marketing. (Nerd alert.) It got existential. As we were talking about the future of the marketing industry, we boiled our thoughts down to one question: what really is content these days? The term "content marketing" used to be pretty synonymous with blogs. "Content" meant written content, and content marketing was some combination of thought leadership, product marketing, and SEO, usually in long-form text.
But today, that doesn't feel so true anymore. Content can literally take any form. In fact, most people would now associate the term "content" with photos and videos. But a lot of the principles of content marketing from the heydays of B2B blogs remain the same: build content pillars around a set number of topics, establish your authority and trust on the topic, and be consistent. Which begs the question—what forms of content are going to be next?
Right now, I'm bullish on LinkedIn posts. It feels like a callback to blogs in some senses. It's longer form than X, but still easy to digest. And although it's not "new," it still feels like there is a lot of green space for creators to build a following and define their brand.
But what do you think? What forms of content and channels will be on the rise in the next year? I'm very curious to hear your thoughts. |
Even though we're constantly releasing new features to help creators monetize and build a business, the Beacons team is alwaysssss grinding on our original product: Link in Bio.
In fact, we're continuing to make improvements and build new things every week that will make it easier for creators to set up their Link in Bio, spruce up their page, and define their brand online.
One of the coolest examples of this that I saw this week was this template gallery that Kat, Creator Success Lead (& Chief of Vibes) built for Beacons creators. |
This gallery is full of examples of clean, beautiful, eye-catching Beacons pages that you can use as inspiration for your own Beacons page.
Shoutout Kat for creating this super helpful resource—check it out and lmk if you make any updates to your page with this new inspo! |
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The sun is coming out in Brooklyn and my seasonal depression is lifting. I think we made it through the winter, guys! (Knock on wood—no more freezing weather pls.) Have a great weekend <3 |
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