 for this period of time, just like any new feature when it drops, right? When it rails drops and they say use it fast, when TikTok is new and they say use it so you can grow fast. While the perception still exists, you probably need to deal with them as many people. Increase your connections with other people as much as possible because you're going to get them opens when people see that blue check. I'm still in habit of seeing a blue check and thinking, oh, who is this, right? Not necessarily this has to be somebody important, but it makes me curious who is this DM to me. So you probably got like one to three months to go hard. I care about not being able to have my profile hacked and if it does, I can get it back. Yes, I care in terms of validating my identity. Yes, however, those things I honestly don't care about enough to pay for like I would organic traffic. And I've heard rumblings that organic reaches supposed to return or grow from having a meta-verified profile versus not. Have you experienced seemingly greater organic traffic yet? Good question. I haven't, I don't think I posted enough after it to really gauge that because I think I maybe had like two or three posts since having it. And they did do really well, but my reel is typically pretty good when I haven't posted in a while anyway. So, you know, I was kind of attributing it to that, but it could be not. That's something that I mean, I have a couple of tests that I wanted to do with it that I was telling you yesterday, like I have a list of like 30 people I want to DM to see if like, you know, my responses are higher. You know what I'm saying? I can add this on the test. I can throw in some posts and see if I'm saying something. Because I also thought they would have some type of like separate analytics tab. Like maybe like they gave us, you know, some new insights that we could see since we're paying, but they don't. So I'll have to figure out how to even like gauge that. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, nothing, nothing I can say. I mean, I will say in a couple of messaging instances, it feels like I got some responses back quicker because of it. I've got some followbacks from some people that feels like, you know, probably the sauce right there for this period of time, just like any new feature when it drops, right? When they once rails drops and they say use it fast, when tech talkers know when they say use it so you can grow fast. While the perception still exists, you probably deal them as many people increase your connections with other people as much as possible because you're going to get them opens when people see that blue check. I'm still in habit about seeing a blue checking thing. Oh, well, who is this? Right? This has to be somebody important, but it makes me curious. Who is this DM and me? So you probably got like one to three months to go harder, get your check, start DMing people and maybe look, you cancel the account and six months, right? But DM, the hell out of everybody, maybe even run some ads and use this perception in this moment of time while you got it. Because it is something that actually does increase conversion. Like you said, like, because I remember when Adrian got his a year ago, he was like, yeah, his DM responses went through the roof and even fans like kind of saw him as more important and started to like, I mean, gauge with him more in their DMs. And like, when he sent them a link to go check out his song and stuff like that, they would actually convert higher, all of that. So that perceived importance really is something that can be used in the conspiracy side of it. I don't even know if there's much conspiracy at this point. I think it's just clear, like we all know they're trying to monetize as much as possible. These advertising programs have been fragile, more fragile than they would like it to be, especially when you increase privacy and things like that. China monetize in this way might not have worked before. Now we're so stuck on all of these platforms and once you make it a norm and you actually add in real situations like bots and false identity for the business standpoint, it's honestly nothing. It does make sense to be able to validate like, oh, this is my company. I'm Washington Post. I'm some public figure. I'm a politician. Me paying $120 a year is like a drop in a bucket compared to the rest of my expenses. And they know that too. I think they know that. Yeah, or it's a drop in a bucket compared to what would happen if your account got compromised, you know what I'm saying? Because if you've ever had your account hacked or someone doing some crazy shit through your account, that's a long process for most of the time. And just that time and that mental burnout, a lot of times it isn't worth it, but you got to do it, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, I've seen, you know, clients and influence the homies and, you know, just lose their accounts to hackings. And these aren't like massive people. Like the biggest, I've known someone to get their account with that maybe like 1.2 million followers. You know, so imagine being like, I don't know, like Kim Kardashian and getting your account hacked, you know what I'm saying? Or being like Nike and getting your Instagram account hacked, you know what I'm saying? Should probably be earth shattering for the time being, you know, so like you said to, and that's what it feels like. That's who they're targeting, right? And there's been a couple things that Meta's done. I think Twitter, Twitter, in my opinion, probably kind of capped it off. But Meta's been doing it, but you can tell they're making features to appeal more so to like businesses and that side of their demographic more so than just the consumer side of the social media platform, right? Which is the point you made earlier, they're trying to maximize revenue, right? So hey, like we just gave you all, we just gave you all the features you all wanted. We brought the chronological timeline back. So we don't care about the grievances you have about what we're doing to the blue check because this shit going to make us money because we have a whole different flip on it, you know what I'm saying? Then the flip that was created from it that, you know, if you look at it from Meta's perspective, they never had any control over that to your point, right? It was always supposed to be like this, this person is where they study art. The people ran off with the whole cloud thing, you know what I'm saying? They created that perception. Going back to the point I made earlier, paying for verification isn't new. If you are someone that's tried to get verified in the last three, four years, you've been hit with the wall of a publicist, right? Meta wasn't making no money off of that. Every time a publicist collected a 10K, 20K, 30K check for it, they can see a dime about that, right? And they probably know this, you know what I'm saying? And they probably were aware that it was going on, but because it was so fragmented, it was kind of like what could we really do until they had the bright idea to do this, you know what I'm saying? So I try to put myself in their shoes and see it from the lens of like, if I was a Meta exact, you know what I'm saying? Or like if I was, if I was Mark Zuckerberg running Meta, and I'm like, I get it, you know what I'm saying? Like I get it from that angle. And then you go to your consumer side. And even that, I still get it because the thing that gets me about the grievances with is that, you know, there were grievances about how hard it was to get it and what it represented, right? Now they've removed that and then their grievances that no longer exist. And it's like, you can't win either way. You weren't going to qualify for it in the old setting. When you wanted it, you do qualify for a new setting and then you don't want it. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's crazy. It's like, there's no win-win in this situation. So so I, and I feel like they probably thought about it going into it, right? Like, who, who are we going to lose here? Like, what is the lowest common denominator of person we're going to lose? People that wanted it did not qualify for it because the people that already have it don't really care that much because it's not like they lose it. And then the people that do want it within the new system are going to get it. You know what I'm saying? Going about their life and just, and just acclimate to the new system we create. So like I said, who, who get, who hurts in that situation? The people that wanted it don't want to pay for it. You know what I'm saying? Look, and I'll say this, man. This is my last thought on it. Artists, y'all are being exposed right now. I have seen so many artists get blue checks that are not at a level where you have a strong fan base. You couldn't get verified through regular verification. And it's not a shot on whether you should be verified or not. It's a shot at the fact that y'all are paying for this verification and the things that I see that y'all will not pay $5 a month or $9 a month more. That will be more impactful for your career. You don't want to pay for an email system to collect your fans emails. You don't want to pay for an ongoing subscription to some type of education program. All these things that I keep seeing artists not paid for. But to get that little bit of perception, just a little bit of perception, that little fix, social proof. Artists are so addicted to social proof, whether it's I'm going to do bots just so I can get my views up, my streams up, whether I'm going to pay for fake followers or whether I'm going to pay for this verification. I just want to feel like I'm up. Being up is a whole another story. But if I could feel like I'm up, I could work on getting up eventually. It's a weird thing, man. Yeah. And to your point with the perception thing, it's like getting it and not even using it right. It's like, I had a conversation with my barber the other day, really interesting conversation. He's really young dude. He's about to start his own barber shop. And he's telling me like, he's like, yo, I got the notification for meta. He was like, you know, I'm thinking about signing up, but I think I want to wait until I hit 10,000 followers. And I was like, Oh, why you say that? He's like, because I can make it look like I achieved something and that's why I got it. He's like, there's a lot of people around me who still don't really like no, you know what I'm saying? If I like wait until I hit this number, you know what I'm saying? I can at least like make it look like something happened and you know what I'm saying? Maybe wait one or two days and then verify my, I was like, that's smart, bro. You know what I'm saying? That's smart. You know what I'm saying? That's, that was kind of the way to use it in the old system, right? We had clients say things like, yo, I got this album coming out. So look, I'm going to drop this single. I'm going to drop this music video here. I'm going to get this complex feature of this complex, this other complex feature of pitchforking. I'm going to be verified by this Friday and I'm going to drop another video, right? It's all a part of the rollout. That was always to me like the right way to use it if you didn't have it yet, make it look like a celebratory moment. So your point that window of being able to do that is going to die within probably one to three months. So if your artist that has something coming up that's worth celebrating, think about saving it for that. And if your artist that doesn't have anything worth celebrating yet and you look like it from a perception standpoint, think about not getting it yet. You know what I'm saying? Because like you said, like that was what made me suspicious of it was seeing people around me like that that had it and the artists that are doing that. And even I know y'all aren't going to care, y'all are going to do it anyway. Y'all are hurting the quality of the very thing that you're worried about dying off. You know what I'm saying? By doing that, like you are a part of the problem in that sense, you know, because you're not willing to wait until the perception aligns with what other people think before you jump on it. You know what I'm saying? So now my barber told me that I was like, that's a genius idea. You know what I'm saying? Like that's beautiful. You know, and like I think it makes sense with them what you got to do. You know, he's at a good pace. He's probably like six or seven thousand now. So he's maybe like another month and a half off from it. You know what I'm saying? From the way he's kind of growing on there. I'm like, everybody gonna be good, man. Just wait, bro. You know, you're doing everything else right. Right. In his case, he's cutting hair. He's getting referrals. He's doing the content. Like, bro, you're gonna be able to go to a point where it makes sense. Ari should be looking at the same way like to your point. If I'm doing everything else right, I'm investing in everything else that makes sense. There's gonna be a point where it makes sense for me to do this. You know what I'm saying? But it might not be now. Quick second. Have you ever seen an artist catch some traction and then they start to move? The numbers start to grow. They might even go viral, but then fast forward a year from now. Somehow their numbers haven't really grown that much. They drop back close to the same monthly listeners they had before the traction and viral moment. Well, that's because you have to know how to convert those moments into careers. And we've done this again and again with not only songs, but artists. And so has J.R. McKee, who's been a part of helping artists like Lil Dirk, Rod Wave, Justin Scott, and Money Long. And we just did a collab where J.R. McKee does a step-by-step breakdown of how he took Money Long from zero to millions of monthly listeners and winning a Grammy over Beyoncé, Mary J. Blize, and Jasmine Sullivan. Check out this breakdown while we still have it up. You can check it out at www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work. Again, that's www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Back to the video. All right. So for this next topic, Jacory has some answers. They might be early, but his perceptions already changed before he actually got verified and it's completely shifted after he got verified. So Jacory, just go ahead and lay it out for him in terms of your verification because you've got a good amount of followers. You've got a good amount of clout already in the music industry. How has your perception changed in just because of this verification? Yeah, man. So my thoughts only have kind of changed, but I walked through where I was before and where I kind of am now. So before I really got to get into it, I would say I was skeptical like everyone else, right? In terms of what it would do for the perception of the blue check, what it would mean in terms of how regular people looked at accounts with blue checks and things like that. And as I did more research into it, especially when Twitter was doing it, Twitter was kind of the first one to go with it, right? Like, hey, we're doing this to protect you and your identity and all these different things that are kind of coming along with body counts, right? Now, before I signed up for it, I was like, oh, that makes sense, right? I get it. I see the body counts. Me, you have been victims of the fake Corey and Sean accounts before, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, all right, it makes sense. You know, I don't have a master following, but apparently they're hitting everybody, you know what I'm saying? Whoever got an account is worth replicating that going for them. I'm like, that makes sense, right? And the way I understood it at first was that that would still be like guidelines that you have to meet in order to qualify for it, right? The way I read into it was like, oh, you must still meet XYZ qualifications to be able to get it. So I'm still thinking like, hey, this isn't something that can get overly saturated, you know what I'm saying? Because they have these regulations in place. I don't mind paying because, you know, back in people have been historically paying for the blue check anyway. So I was like, hey, what's the difference between me paying Twitter $15 a month and me paying the public's AK to get me verified? You know what I'm saying? In my head, it's just nothing. So I rationalize it that way before signing to go for it. Like Sean said, I've been signed up for Twitter Blue for probably like, whenever it came out, it's like two, three months ago at this point. And I signed up for Instagram meta verification like two and a half weeks ago. So I'll say this, what I like about it is that on both ends of it, there's additional support, right? Instagram has this separate support chat you can go through, which is, I don't know if you've ever tried to reach out to any type of Facebook and Instagram support before, but it's terrible, you know what I'm saying? I sent the test message to my support right, asking them some dumb shit just to see if they get back to me. And they got back to me pretty quickly, probably within like almost a day, like $15, $20 or something like that, right? They gave me a generic FAQ link, but I did ask a basic guy's question. So I get it, but they got back to me, you know what I'm saying? Which to me is huge because I've been on the other side of that where it's just crickets. So the support thing is cool. There's not like extra analytics or anything, but the support thing is kind of what I rationalize. I can get to them. They have like a thing for if your account gets hacked, right? You can go through them and they'll help you get it back. A lot of really cool things that come with it. But what I also learned in the process is that there aren't any real benchmarks to meet to pay for it, right? And what made me realize this is I'm selling some of this is before we shot the pie episode the other day, I was just in like the shade, room, comments or something. Now I seen Smiley with a bunch of likes. I'm like, oh, who's this person? I clicked it because they were verified and I clicked on it. It was like a regular account. She had maybe like 400 followers. It was following like seven, eight thousand people. She got it. I'm like, all right, that's not fair. Followers are an accurate representation of influence and what you've done, right? So, maybe she's just one of those non-social media savvy industry people. It happens, I've seen them. But then I start really paying attention to the blue check marks that will pop up in my stories and the people watching my things and just who I know this over time was getting it first red flag for me outside of the girl. There's another girl I know personally that has it. I know her personally, you know what I'm saying? She has it. And then I just started looking at some of the people in my stories, like I said, and there was a couple followers that like I've just I've just I've been watching them follow me for the past couple years, like talk to themselves. I know where they are and things like, you know, based on what they're doing, like, you know, and the qualifications I thought have to be met like they shouldn't have it. So that's when I started to look more into it. And I realized what they're doing with the check mark where they're moving away from is right, this display of clout, I guess is a good time for a display of influence in a particular field. And now what is more so representing is this person is who they say they are. Yeah. And so looking at who got it, I'm like, Oh, these are all real people. These are their real accounts. They're just not maybe influential in what they do. But they're all real, right? So all the blue check mark now is a signifier of, Hey, this person is who they say are this is a real person. They are whoever they're trying to tell you they are through this account. And that's fair, right? Yeah. In terms because I was supposed to be the original purpose and Facebook has been very good about keeping like fake accounts away. But these other platforms haven't necessarily like Facebook has been that to like an annoyance, whereas like, bro, I can't create a business ad account without attaching it to my personal profile of shine. Like that. In that part doesn't even make sense to me. But yeah, you know, when the internet gets the way the internet has gotten, I could understand how there's value to having it back that way. But like you said, there's someone you know personally. So you know the lack of the cloud that exists, right? So that's going to change that perception completely of what it means to have that right over time. It's not quite there yet. It's still relatively new and fresh and people have that habit of seeing a blue check and reacting a little bit to it. Oh, who's this? Let me see what it is. But after enough times of seeing who it is and it being know the body quote unquote, right? Then you eventually just say, okay, blue check is just somebody who's paying for verification because I also got somebody that I asked a relative of my you'll say which relative because I don't know what does it seem on a platform like call them a nobody but they know what I mean, right? And I ask, are you aware of this meta verification thing, right? That people can pay to be verified on meta? And the person said yes. Like, ah, okay, that's already an X, right? When you have the normal people be aware that this thing can be done, that that tarnishes brand because of anything, we're not really trying to impact each other that much. Yeah, you want the cloud within your industry, whatever that looks like other professionals. But if it's a secret to all professionals, but the normal people don't know, then you still get the impact because most times we're trying to influence people outside of our industry more than people directly, right? So, okay, dang. She knows. Second, this person was also asked to join the meta. So, it's the same thing, right? They all got that prompt. Everybody got that prompt to pay to join meta. And if everybody can be somebody, then everybody's nobody, right? I feel like it's going to change. They're trying to make and sell out how you all are technically somebody, you know what I'm saying? Like, which is why we're giving it to you. You are a person. So, you are somebody, but not somebody in that way. And that's interesting because that was my point to like another artist that I wasn't wrong about. I was like, yeah, man, you know, like, regular consumers aren't even keeping up with this. So, they won't even know an end. Like you said, when they send their prompt out to everybody, oh, shit. You know what I'm saying? They sent the prompt out. You know, most people, I don't know if you're aware of, you know, whenever an Instagram rolls out a new feature, they give that one little story thing up top where you can watch it. They did one of those about it. You know what I'm saying? It was like a whole little rollout for us. I was like, oh, not everybody knows. Never mind. Because they're trying to maximize revenue. We don't care about just industry people and y'all's cloud or you, if you're an artist and you look like you're a big deal. No, we just want as many people to pay for this thing as possible. Period. Period. So, I get it. I get it. But again, that will tarnish over time the current perception of what it is and there's going to have to be something new that creates perception, maybe followers and engagement start to matter more from perception standpoint. I don't know where it's going to transfer. Do you have any theories on what that's going to look like? And it might be different on every single platform, but do you have any thoughts on what that might look like? No, I don't, to be honest. I was just talking to an artist homie about that and I was like, yeah, I can't even imagine what that would be because the blue check mark has been that for with like what the last like five, six years or something like that. So, and even that was something I didn't really see coming. You know, that was kind of groundbreaking for his time, whoever kind of came up with that idea. Well, what I think they might do, what I think they might do is probably start rolling out more like high level perks over time. And then I think that, you know, the same way you can have a free Spotify account, but when that ad comes on, while you're in the car, you feel a little bit ashamed. So, you know, you should be paying for the premium Spotify account. I feel like they're going to do some things and make Instagram feel the same way, right? So where like the plot was in the fact that you have the disposable income to continue paying for this thing every month and getting whatever comes with that. Like that's the problem that we're giving you, you know, because that's the only thing I can see. Like the other than that, let's say they came up with some other like visual cue, but then they would just be starting the whole cycle over again, you know. Yeah, amen. So it's going to be an interesting thing to watch. Like I know some people don't like the fact that there's no difference between the old school verification and new school. Like now you can, you can't even tell the difference anymore. I know Twitter made that update recently, but these platforms don't have any incentives to keep that separate. They don't, right? So they're being soft about it, probably as possible right now, but I would charge those old folks. If I was them, like I wouldn't say, oh yeah, you had a check before. So now you don't have to pay for the new like system because you've been grandfathered in, they might treat it like that, but they have all the ability in the world to just force everybody to pay, even the people who were verified for free back in the day. Because that's what's their incentive. They never cared about, like you said, the social perception thing in the first place. That was never why they did it at all. Tech companies aren't thinking like that. We're the ones who run off with things like the like button. They weren't overthinking the like button and followers to that extent in the beginning. It was just something that they built. And now of course, like, you know, they just, they don't think about marketing and PR. Like, you know what I mean? It's the consumers who always flip it to the marketing PR and the businesses that always flip it to the marketing PR. They're just saying, how can we keep people on this thing and make it as addictive as possible? That's all they care about. I mean, even to the point of not looking to say, I kind of like it because I think like, because I kind of like the deep valuing of it, you know what I'm saying? Because like I said, it's going to force the whole platform to think of a new way to systematize influence on it, right? Like I said, because like, we probably stopped trusting followers a long time ago. I haven't really trusted followers since like 2019, 2020, maybe, you know, right, then the blue check mark is going to your point might have to just be engagement and quality of community or something like that, right? Or maybe all these other different features that Instagram is rolling out like subscriptions and, you know, now you can send people gifts through their reels and maybe those maybe monetary achievement of being a new social status on there, right? Maybe like some type of like button, like this account made 100K this month, you know what I'm saying? You're like, oh, shit. This influencer got 10,000 followers, but he made 100,000. Right. Maybe that's just kind of me thinking out loud, but I kind of like it, man, because I got into a debate with just another music industry homie about it. And I was like, yeah, but you pay 20 Banfield check mark, mine was $15, $30. I'm in two months. You know what I'm saying? Right now, we in the same position. We in the same place, but you get here on a 30K playing ticket. I got on a $30 playing ticket, man. You roll the spirit, and we have the same resort, you know what I'm saying? Children, you know what I'm saying? At the same open bar, you know what I'm saying? On the same beach. I'd be mad if I was on that side. Well, this is going to be something to follow and see how these platforms continue to evolve in this conversation, but put your comments down. If y'all have any additional questions or commentary that you would like to add from your personal experience getting verified or use something you would just like to hear us kind of confirm or use some of our connections to get y'all more info on. But that's it. Just another snippet from no labels necessary. Peace.