44: How Much Time Should Musicians Devote to Social Media?
with Andrew Ousley
What is the right amount of time to devote to social media?
The amount of time that you can to get a result. You have to put a baseline amount of time in, but I also do not believe you need to post x times a week, etc. There are things that trigger the algorithm more, and so on, but ultimately it's from a mental health and a human standpoint, you don't need to post sort of slavishly and follow that. Like, when you have good content and things to say, post it. If you don't, if you go a couple of weeks without posting, nobody is going to say, Oh God, is that person dead? Nobody is sitting at their desk waiting for content. And that's not a criticism, that's just, again, the nature of social media in our world, in our art form. Knowing that you want to represent your career and you want to tell your story and engage with the community, it's what you can do, what you can realistically do, and how much time you can invest in that, is time that you put into it, frankly.
Kellogg:
If you were smart about it, could you do 1 to 2 hours a week and accomplish quite a bit?
Ousley:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think, and again, if that's the most you can do, then that's what you can do. And you have to figure out how to make it work. You might not get to a million followers, but that's not important. What's important is that your social media represents you well and that you build a community that engages with you. If that's a thousand people, but 500 of them respond to your posts, that's a great community and that's fine. I think it's important to also just pause for a minute and say that, like, that artists' social media is inherently bad for our mental health and in many ways is bad for society. And I personally don't like to use social media, even though it's part of what I do for a living. But artists, as a public figure, you must use it.
But I think it is really important to always bear in mind that your, your social media following and engagement and so on, it's not a referendum on who you are as a person and your value. And certainly not your artistic value as well. And so artists, it is meant to make us compare ourselves and it is important to constantly remind yourself to not do that and that those comparisons are not helpful. So if somebody else has 20,000 followers and you have 2,000, don't worry. Like, focus on doing what you can do to make your following help your career and build a community around you. Don't worry what other people are doing. I think it's important to do it, but to not let it rule you and certainly not let it make you miserable.