As I write this, it’s Saturday afternoon (June 10th) I’m indoors, dry and not pouring copious amounts of Jack Daniels down my throat at Download Festival. There are various reasons I didn’t go to Download this year, but as Moose and Dews talked about in EP21 of the podcast, we were all burnt out and felt the need for a year off, this feeling is probably a bit stronger for myself having been to Download every year since 2006… an actual decade of Downloads!
Whilst my Facebook and Twitter feed is making me want to hop on a train to Donington immediately, I don’t regret my decision to take a year out as it’s given me a much needed moment to take stock of everything that has happened in the last twelve months and the direction of travel we’re now heading in with Primordial Radio.
Currently, our Seedrs campaign is at 68% with £88,458 raised and 31 days to go. This is fucking incredible. I know in the last couple of weeks there has been a sense of frustration because not every single person on our social pages has supported the campaign, whilst I totally understand this frustration; it goes to show again the value of people over pages.
You likely don’t need me to tell you that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram massively limit who can see your posts, so when you look at our Facebook page and see that we have 4,348 likes, don’t just take it with a pinch of salt, think more like a pint of salt. It reminds me of one my summer jobs when I was a student, for my sins I knocked doors for Sky TV, ignoring the fact it was a commission only job (UUGGHH) it’s safe to say it was a pretty grueling experience. But it did teach me a couple of things; the importance of just being a decent human being when talking to people on the door and the law of averages.
The golden rule to make 1 sale was you needed to knock 100 doors, 10 people would be interested and 1 person would buy, and by and large, this formula worked. I have to say though; I did once see a guy making a ton of money knocking doors selling “please no door to door sales stickers…” genius. Anyway, when you compare this formula with our Seedrs campaign, we’re absolutely smashing it.
Having a huge number of social media likes may look great and of course, we want to grow our socials like anyway does, but it can often give you a false sense of how many people are genuinely interested in what you do. The best indicator we had pre-campaign was undoubtedly the Long Road To Brewin’ and from that we were able to roughly calculate that between 500 – 600 people showed up across the whole week, right where the number of investors is at now (570), so don’t panic!
If like myself your F5 button has all but faded from refreshing the Seedrs page and you’re feeling annoyed, anxious and frustrated. Take a moment, make a brew (or get a beer) and remember just how far we’ve come in less than six months. If we don’t hit our target, I won’t lie and say it’ll all be plain sailing but from just where we’re at right now, we’ll make it work… one way or another.
I’ve said it before on the podcast but what I’m most grateful for with Primordial Radio is how this whole journey and sense of community coming together has brought me back from a bitterness abyss. Social media is and will likely always be a hugely important aspect of what we do, but who and what we are, shines through most in the real world, at a festival, down the pub, at a gig… Because how the fuck could any of us explain all of what Primordial is, in 140 characters?!?
Our Twitter bios might tell us who we are, but they don’t tell us why we are. I would take the passion and loyalty of one member of the #PRFam over thousands of Facebook likes any day.