A conversation with Annie Black, Social Media Manager at Consequence of Sound (she previously held the same title at Paste for several years).
During our talk, Annie breaks down what her day-to-day responsibilities look like, how you can apply this knowledge to your own social media planning, and the importance of understanding your audience to get the best return from your social engagement.
TRANSCRIPT
Frank Keith 0:00
Hey, everyone, I’m Frank Keith. If you’re new here, I’m the co-owner of Sweetheart Pub alongside Rachel Hurley, who will be switching off hosting weekly episodes of Music Rookie with me. I’m also the basis for Nashville-based band Great Peacock, who I shamelessly implore you to look up when you have some time, preferably after you’ve listened to this podcast.
This week’s episode of Music Rookie features a conversation with Annie Black, Social Media Manager at Consequence of Sound. She previously held the same role at Paste Magazine before jumping ship to Consequence in the middle of 2020. Over the course of our conversation, we’ll talk about social media best practices, tips she has for musicians, as her day-to-day looks a little different as a content aggregator for a magazine, and suggestions on apps you can use to streamline your social media workflow. Optimizing your social presence can be a daunting task, but there are plenty of tools out there to help you along the way, and make it a little bit less of a chore.
So with that, I’ll hand it over to Annie. Let’s jump right in.
Annie Black 1:12
So my job as social media manager of a publication is to help get eyeballs on our content on our website, and also help make the brand look enticing to readers, potential readers, people that have never heard of us. So it’s a little bit of marketing, a little bit of promotion, a lot of writing, a lot of editing, and occasionally, you know, doing the photo/video side of things, too. Every day is different. I just have a copious amount of content that gets sent my way. And it’s my job to distribute that to all of our channels and determine where it fits best and what we can do with it.
Frank Keith 2:04
Are you using any like third party apps to help you streamline that workflow? Are you just logging into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram?
Annie Black 2:12
I am a big advocate for Hootsuite and for Later; Those are my main squeezes these days. Hootsuite is obviously you know, everyone in the journalism world knows about Hootsuite just because it’s been around for a while, but Later is a new one. But I’ve recently started using it for Instagram specifically. And it’s awesome. I do live in the backend of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram as well. But yeah, it’s a lot of having like, 20 tabs open at a time. And just going back and forth, making sure everything’s getting taken care of.
Frank Keith 2:54
Well, yeah, you’re working with a known brand.
Annie Black 2:59
Yeah, I mean, Consequence has been around for a long time. And it’s always expanding, I’ve only been there almost three months now. But it’s definitely established and has a lot of things that they do regularly. Coronavirus has thrown everything for a loop, because it’s really difficult to do a lot of music journalism, when there is nothing happening outside of live streams and Zoom interviews. And, you know, the occasional badly planned live show that pops up here and there. But yeah, so it’s definitely, yeah, Consequence is a brand that has been around for quite some time. I believe 2007 was when it was established, which is wild to think about. And I know, like now in 2020, they have a pretty established line of podcasts. We’re about to do a big relaunch of the website. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that, but it’s happening.
Frank Keith 4:15
I think for the purposes of our audience, in this conversation, if you could touch on, like you mentioned later, you mentioned Hootsuite, I know what you’re doing in there, because I use both of those too. But if you could explain ELI5 on like, best practices of like, you know, if I’m talking to a band, or an artist who’s just starting up, you know, they’re probably having to generate their own content. And I don’t think a lot of people that are just getting started, think about the smartest way to implement like, a social media strategy.
Annie Black 4:54
Every social media platform is different. You don’t want to send out the same thing to all of your platforms, because half the time the audience on Facebook is not going to care about something that your Twitter audience might care about. So it’s really like I mean, just any platform whatever you’re using, even if you’re just doing everything via like Facebook’s Creator Studio or just organically on Instagram, like you just have to really think about what audience you’re speaking to, and how they enjoy their content. So for instance, for Instagram, you want to be really careful that everything you post is visual. Because people aren’t on Instagram to read things. You know? And on Twitter, you want to make it as short and sweet and kind of snarky sometimes, you know? That’s why we’re on Twitter, because that’s where we go and we’re wanting to vent and wanting to read things that are relatable and stuff. And then Facebook is for more of the official things, you know, because that tends to be where the larger audiences are anyways.
You know, as a music publication, especially one that came up in like the mid to late aughts and through like, the OT teams or whatever, like the average age of our users probably like, between like 26 and 34. Just an estimate, you know?
Frank Keith 6:30
It just kind of hammers home the point is you have to know your audience whenever you’re going to do a push on social media.
Annie Black 6:37
Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, like, you have to think about the average user of whatever platform you’re on to, because like, the average user for Facebook is a lot older. Like a lot of people under the age of 25 aren’t even on Facebook anymore.
Frank Keith 6:51
Do you have anything else like you just you know, free advice to throw out there.
Annie Black 6:58
So I would suggest, especially for bands like, this is me as someone who uses social media and because I’m behind Consequence’s socials, all I see all day are what bands are doing on their personal social media channels. And like, making the content. Showcasing your personality, I think, is the most important. I know, that’s a very obvious thing. Because you want to personify I guess your social channels based on who your band is or who your brand is.
But I think that’s really important to show that you are a real human. And not just like, “I’m in a band, and this is what I do. I play music,” you know, like, I think that some artists have really gotten the hang of it like Phoebe Bridgers, for instance, like her socials, just like they’re hilarious. She has such a unique voice. And she uses that on her socials to her advantage, you know, which is why she’s so popular. We just did an interview with her recently for one of our podcasts, and she calls herself coffee shop famous. So like, for instance, if she were to walk into a coffee shop, odds are someone at that coffee shop would recognize her, you know, but like, if she was at Target, she might be able to go completely unfazed, like without anyone knowing who she was. But then you look at her social channels, she has this huge, huge popularity and following and it’s because she’s hilarious. And she knows that she’s hilarious. And she uses that, you know, so like, obviously, that’s a big, hard-to-replicate example, because not everyone is Phoebe Bridgers. But I think that’s a good model to follow is finding something about yourself, that is unique, that people might be interested in, whether it’s your humor, your sarcasm, or like, if you’re really, really good, like finger picker, guitar player, you know, like, that’s something not a lot of people can do so showcase that skill. Showcase something that separates you from the rest of the music world, while also, I don’t know, showcasing your personality as a human being more so than just like, “I’m in a band,” I think that’s really important.
Frank Keith 9:39
Yeah, I totally agree with that. You can’t just be “buy my record, we’re in a band.” There has to be more.
Annie Black 9:47
Exactly! Like, sure that’s important to do sometimes. But like another thing that I think is important for that, for instance, is like, let’s say you have a new album, or a new EP, or, you know, new merch, or something and your publicist, or your manager or whoever is like telling you “Hey, let your audience know that you have this new album coming out or new EP coming out,” make sure every time you send out that message, it’s different so it’s not a repetitive thing. That’s something in social media that like us as social media professionals have to do is take the same piece of content and then just pick at it until you have something new emerging from that. And I think that that’s really valuable as well, for artists, especially because album cycles are exhausting on a lot of different platforms and ways, and they’re also exhausting for your viewers. Because your viewers, if you’re an artist that has, like, a good following, they already know that you have a new album coming out. They’re well aware, you don’t need to beat that hammer super hard. Find something special within that and, you know, repackage it a little bit. Don’t just give the same information time after time after time.
Frank Keith 11:21
Thanks to Annie for taking the time to speak with us. You can keep up with her work day-to-day by following Consequence of Sound on all social media platforms. If you’re interested in more insider information like this, be sure to check out our weekly newsletter. You can sign up on sweetheartpub.com.
And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and we’ll notify you when the next one comes out. If you have any specific questions, feel free to tweet us or shoot us an email. We try to make ourselves as easy to find as possible.
Now, until next time, go do something useful.
