Hello again! I’ve been noticing alot of randomness in my timelines lately when it comes to content posted by musicians. I get it, musicians are trying whatever they can to be seen, and with today’s platforms making it so easy to be discovered, it can feel disheartening to be stuck getting only 200 views and just throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the wall hoping something sticks. Only to see the videos didn’t break the barrier and you lost a few followers in the process.
Well Today we’re gonna tell you what makes the algorithm tick, what kind of content you should be posting, and how to grow your audience without losing hard earned followers.
Cast a Wide Net
One of the easiest ways to find new followers, rack up views, get income coming in is what we call “Casting a wide net”. This means you need to be on EVERY platform. Long form content on youtube, youtube shorts, reels, tiktoks, facebook, stories, carousels. You want to give your potential audience every chance to find you, and casting a wide net makes that possible. Even if your content is pulling small numbers, you have a higher chance of finding new fans just by sheer volume alone. You may find you music does better on 1 platform, and not so well on others, make sure you post content on all of your channels, and do so regularly, to maximize your potential reach. You catch more fish with a net than with a hook, and you’ll find more people with 6 videos than 1.
Understand The Purpose of Your Content (Content “Buckets”)
One of the quickest ways to lose fans, and get burnt out on creating content, is just posting content with one goal in mind, “Get big fast”. It’s a grind trying to get content creation right, and hammering your already existing audience with “Hey I’m (Insert Artist’s name here), and I wrote this song about blah blah blah”. Your current audience already knows who you are, they’ve most likely already heard the song, and they scroll without watching (which hurts your reach), or even worse … they unfollow you. You shouldn’t abandon your current audience just to try to find new ones. Imagine if you hade a Bf/Gf and all you did was swipe on tinder in front of them, they would leave right? Exactly. And guess what? Your current followers watch your content FIRST, and if they scroll, you will never break the ceiling. Your content creation strategy should be a balance between nurturing your current audience and outreach.
So when creating content you need to understand what content bucket you are filming for BEFORE you even start filming. The 2 content Buckets we go by are Nurturing, and Outreach
The Nurturing Content Bucket
If you’re in marketing or have taken any kind of business class before, you’ve heard the term “nurturing” before. This is a phase in sales where you build trust with your audience, you teach them your story, and hope they stick around to buy your product. For musicians it’s exactly the same, YOU and your music are a product, this is where you want your audience to learn more about you. It is arguably the most important bucket you have, as it is where you create your “superfans”. The ones that will stream your music the most, the ones that buy your merch, and go to shows, and engage with all of your content.
All of the content that fits into this bucket should be created ONLY with the purpose of engaging with your current audience. AND it should be at the LEAST 50% of the content you post on each platform. The more you grow, the more of this content you should post. But again it’s ONLY goal is to nurture and engage with your CURRENT audience. Now that doesn’t mean that these videos can’t grow your following as well, but it should be a side-effect, not it’s purpose.
The whole reason this content exists is to break up the CONSTANT onslaught your fans see of “Hey this is my song”, “Hey stream this”, “Hey do this” *Swipe* *Swipe* *Swipe. The more they see this content the less they care, and as I said before they are the FIRST people to watch your content. I’m going to tell you a little secret, you know what the BIGGEST metric these platforms value is? …… It’s watch time, and you know who they test your videos one first? …. Your current followers. So if they swipe, your content is dead before it even reaches anybody else. We will get more into how to leverage watch time in the next bucket, but for now lets get into what kind of content goes into the nurture bucket.
Your Story
The ONLY place you should be telling your story is in this type of content. Yeah sure, sometimes people will stop to listen to your story while scrolling through, but for the most part… this is gonna hurt… random people don’t care about you, your story, or your music. Don’t believe me? How would you feel if you’re in the middle of a Dave and Busters and someone just walks up to you while you’re playing whack-a-mole and starts telling you their life story unsolicited? You’d be off-put by it right? Maybe you’d stick around not to be rude, but the whole time you just wanted to walk away. Guess what? People scrolling through tiktok and instagram, think the same thing, and they can scroll on without feeling rude. Again this doesn’t mean that your story can’t be the reason a song takes off, but this shouldn’t be the purpose of this content.
Make these videos to showcase your story, your identity, your personality, give behind the scenes stuff like what you are doing currently, what a song means. This is the place for this, and don’t make it hard, and over produced. Your goal isn’t to get millions of views on these videos, heck these videos don’t even need to be about music, in fact we encourage you to forget about the music in its entirety unless you’re telling a story about it (But maybe have it playing in the background quietly). Today’s audiences are …. well, entitled, they want to know every little thing about an artist, and they want to be engaged and to engage back. Shift the focus sometimes from you, to them, ask them to talk, respond to comments, this will go a LONG way to building a solid fanbase, that way when your outreach content DOES get shown to them, they are much more likely to watch all of the way through, and they aren’t sick of it already.
The types of content that are nurture content:
- Fb/IG/Tiktok Stories
- Images
- Carousels
- And yes, reels/shorts
Stories and images are EXCLUSIVELY for nurture content and they are the easiest to do, try to post at least 1 a day to each platform and sprinkle in reels when you can. PRO TIP: when posting images try to use carousels, as when being shown to your current audience, if they have seen the first image, but not the others, the content can be shown again, just with a different picture increasing your reach. A picture of you, and like a quote or a lyric as the 2nd and/or 3rd image can work very well. Now, we still haven’t decided if the images work on tiktok yet, but you are welcome to try them as well, just use your music or a trending audio with it.
Take your time and think out this content, put alot of thought into it, because I’m gonna give you a tip…. it’s the only content you actually need to put thought into. The outreach stuff? It’s super easy.
The Outreach Content Bucket
This bucket’s ONLY goal is outreach, and it’s ONLY purpose is outreach, thats it. When you’re filming these videos the only goal you have is to get as many people as possible to hear your music, and you are going to optimize these videos for that ONLY. You aren’t going to tell your story, you aren’t going to introduce yourself. The people you are reaching DO NOT CARE, about you, your music, or your story, or that your song is “out now on all platforms” and if you just so happen to be able to GET them to care enough to want to know who you are, or what your story is …. Guess what? They know exactly where they can find that info. Save all of that crap for your nurturing bucket. If they want to know that stuff, they will go and find it. Remember this phrase “Kick in Every Door”. You want to find as many people as possible and FORCE them to listen to your music, not ask them politely. Not say “Please oh Please I’m a small indie artist please listen.” NO! You cram it down their glizzy gobbling throats! They are going to hear at least ONE note of your song whether they like it or not…. and if they like it…. they’ll stick around.
So here is the bread an butter of this article. You want to reach as many people with your music as you can, and you still can’t figure out how to do it. You’ve tried everything, tried doing skits, and funny intros and nothing is working. Well the first thing I’m going to say, is if your music isn’t good, nothing will work. But let’s assume that your music IS good, why are you getting stuck at 200 or 800 views when you post? Well…. Watch Time Is King. You saw me say this earlier, but let me explain.
The biggest metric now that platforms are choosing to use to measure whether or not content is good, is the watch time. When people scroll within the first few seconds of your video, it tells the platform the content may not be good. When people watch MOST of your video it tells the platform the content MIGHT be good, and when they watch all of the way through and even let the content repeat, it tells the platform the content IS good. Now I’m sure you’re thinking “Well that’s OBVIOUS!”, and if you are, why haven’t you taken off yet?
Well, one of the reasons could be your current audience, like I said earlier they may be tired of hearing it, and if they don’t watch it, well, it’s going nowhere, plain and simple. The other reason is your hook. If you don’t already know what the hook is, it’s the first 1 to 5 seconds of your video that makes people decide whether or not they scroll to the next video, and let me tell you…. the audience is BRUTAL. You could have the best song in the world and they are still going to scroll before you even get a chance to sing. So you need a reason to keep them listening right off the bat AND stay till the end. That Brings us To the anatomy of this content. (I will eventually have an in depth article on this that will be linked here, but for now here is a brief dive in to EXACTLY what you should be doing with your outreach content).
The Anatomy of Outreach Content
The parts of outreach content are simple. You have The Hook, The Text hook, The length and The Midhook, The Stinger Ending.
The Hook (The First 1 to 5 seconds of your Video)
The hook is the part that musicians struggle the hardest with, when in fact when it comes to content creation, you litterally have it the EASIEST. YOU’RE OVERTHINKING YOUR HOOK!!!!!!!! Not even kidding, your music IS the hook, period. If your music is good, and you’re good, you don’t need ANY other hooks. No bait and switch, no long drawn out story no gimmicks. JUST the music, people go wrong with the setup, and so many times even I myself find myself scrolling on musicians using gimmicks to get people to listen to their music. They are played out, everyone has already done it, the audience is tired of it. Sure some of it still works, sure you can try it occassionally, but heres what I want you to try for your outreach content.
Make your hook just the music. Don’t do a long instrumental or Say anything. Get straight to singing I mean within the first 3 seconds I want you to have already started singing. If you do want to say something, it needs to be said within those first 3 seconds AND you’ve already started singing. Like “I wrote this song for my grandma” Breath *Sing* that should have taken 3 seconds, even less if you can swing it. ANYTHING longer can go in the next part.
Don’t complicate it, Just try singing, Later on you can experiment with different hooks. I saw one recently that was “The best way to cook breakfast” and it was a tight shot of eggs on a blackstone and it panned out to a guy holding a mic and singing while he made breakfast. THAT worked, but for now JUST sing. If you take a look at the most recent viral successes like Zach Bryan and Oliver Anthony their breakout videos they IMMEDIATELY started singing, no talking, just singing. Noah Kahan? Said a quick sentence…. and started singing. (Another odd similarity between those, they didn’t make eye contact with the camera so try that as well).
So why does just singing work as your hook? Well there’s a few reasons, the first is, as I said earlier, your current followers are who the platforms test your content with, and if they followed you because they like your music, they a more likely to listen, and they are alot more likely to listen when you aren’t telling them to. The next reason, is if your music is good, people are going to WANT to listen no matter if it’s on spotify, instagram, or tiktok. And the last reason is … if you attract an audience based on gimmicks…. guess what they want to see in the future? More gimmicks… Sure that video that says “I wrote a song with 3 random words” got alot of views, but the second you try to get people to listen to an original song, it falls flat, because thats what they wanted. (This is also a good time to talk to attractive ladies, be careful that you don’t get followers based on your looks, the last thing you want is an audience that only wants to see thirst traps, because they ALSO will not listen to your music. Just a little advice)
The Text Hook
This is simple. This is your Secondary Hook, and it’s just words over the video that work as a hook. this can be “I wrote this song for my grandma” or “This song is about xyz”. For the love of god don’t say “this is my song title” or “Now streaming on all platforms” *SCROLL*, they don’t care, but use the text on screen to hook the listener in just long enough to actually listen to your music. Also, Use the caption as a hook as well.
One question I see alot is also “Can I post the same video with different hooks?” Absolutely! In fact I encourage doing 4 or 5 different hooks, upload all of those videos at the same time and keep the first one that breaks your current view count barrier and delete the others.
The Length and the Midhook
You ever heard the term “Don’t Bore us Get to the Chorus?” Well that kind of applies here, and this is going to feel just wrong when you hear this…. The Shorter the video the better. Remember what I said about watch time being king? Well, these platforms don’t measure watch time in seconds, they measure in %. And shorter videos can rack up that % alot quicker than a longer video can.
So, heres the great news we recommend only doing ONE part of your song in a video. Just the chorus, or just the verse, or just the bridge. Keeping it short allows you to rack up watch time and in turn trick the algorithm into thinking this is good, viral content and increase your reach. Aim for between 15 to 30 seconds. Anything longer and the listener could get bored, or just get the point, follow/like and move on. And while follows and likes can be good for the videos, at the end of the day you want that watch time % to be over 100% per listener. The good news about this is you can do a video on each part of the song, one for the chorus, one for the 2nd chorus, one for the verse ETC. Now it’s ok to do a verse and then a chorus in a video, but don’t go chorus into a verse. Try to keep it at 1 part of the song at a time. If they want to listen to the full song, they aren’t dumb, they know where to find it and they will go . And if you’re pushing a single song hard, use the pinned comments to post a full version, and use your bio to tell them where it is.
Now if your content is going to be a little longer, you’re going to need a MIDhook. This is just a change in the middle. Now being since we’ve said only post 1 part of the song, I’d do that and only that, but we know you aren’t going to listen. So, the midhook in your case would be the change from a verse to a chorus, it’s just something so where if the listener is starting to get bored they get pulled right back in. This should be natural. Zach Bryan’s was going into the hook of “Heading South”. Oliver Anthony’s was inserting more shocking lyrics. Try to listen to your music as subjectively as possible, and if you feel yourself zoning out, or like you would swipe at that point, then cut it there, or do something different. One fun trick is going from an acoustic performance, to the studio version or a full band live version.
The Stinger Ending
End your video right after the last word. Don’t smile. Don’t hold a note. Don’t say a thing. End it as soon as you can, and maybe even earlier. The SECOND the viewer thinks a video is over they are scrolling to the next one, and like we said, we want the Watch time % as high as possible, not at 99% or 100% we want them scrolling at 101%+, so we want the video to repeat BEFORE they get the chance to scroll again. Just end it. You don’t need to say follow me, or you can find my music on xyz platform. The audience isn’t dumb, they know how this works, they know where to find your music and your other content. Let them find it on their own, just get that video to replay. Why do you think all of those piracy accounts cut those episodes of like PAWN stars up like that? So it replays and you get mad so you have to go find part 2. then they do it again and part 2 ends up in the FYP and it just keeps going. (Just don’t do that, don’t make it to where people can’t easily find the full song)
What Kind of Content is currently working?
Right now things that are working are live acoustic videos or singing to a track, as long as you are actually singing, people have been seeming to prefer this. So if you’re going to have a mic, don’t lip sync. But on the other side lip syncs are working well as well, just again, don’t try to pass it off like you are actually singing, audiences for the most part can tell and are turned off by it. Artsy lip syncing videos are taking off, so you can show off your aesthetic in these. Keep your videos only in 1 shot, don’t do a bunch of edits and cuts, keep it 1 solid shot. Another one that is working is full band live shows to an audience, but layer in the studio version. Alot of just walking and lip syncing (again all one shot) are also popular, as well ass doing something else like the dishes, or cooking and singing the song is working. Bringing your parents into the fold. There’s alot of different things working right now so just try doing these and if you think of anything unique that can show off your personality or your aesthetic play around with it, try not to post the same background or type of video every time, but do things within your means. You don’t need to go all out to get great content. I recommend shooting like 10 to 20 over the weekend in different outfits so you have content to post throughout the week.
That’s it. Just remember to keep a healthy balance of the 2 buckets. Ideally you want 80% nurture and 20% Outreach, but if you are just now starting out, having the outreach be the main content is fine, but if you start to notice followers starting to fall off, then take a break from outreach for a few weeks, nurture and engage your current audience and then slowly bring in a little outreach back into the fold. Now I want to keep this short and sweet but there are 3 more quick things. If you have been posting alot of content that has fallen flat, or the only followers are your friends and family, or you are finding that you’re being shown to the wrong audience, Try starting a brand new account and make sure that first video is an outreach video. Tiktok especially boosts up new accounts first posts to see 1 what its about and 2 is it good. The next thing is try to post at least a couple times a week, the more consistent you are the better. If you can keep up the paste to post every day thats great, but its an exhausting pace to keep up with, and if you ever need to take a break, you have to recycle old content or the platform kind of “dings” you for it. The other thing is, use 1 or 2 hashtags that are just your genre, just so the platform knows who the audience is for. Once it figures that out and starts showing your video, you can get rid of those.
Ok now I’ll stop talking, get out there and start filming content.
