 What's going on everybody it's your man Kory welcome to the Digital Dash where I'll be giving you guys tips on how to market your songs and get those numbers booming now. For those of you who don't know I am a digital marketer myself. I specialize in helping artists like you guys get their songs heard through platforms like Spotify, Instagram, YouTube and a bunch of others. Now what I want to talk to you guys about today is how to get verified on social media. Now the reason that I'm doing this video is personally I'm tired of seeing people in the comments sessions on Instagram saying things like I can get you a verified bash for low DME or things like that. I'm here to let you know that most of the times those are scams and what I want to do is give you guys a real list of expectations of what it takes to get verified on these platforms. What exactly it means? What are the things that you would need to do even though I personally believe that if you're pretty early on in your career this isn't something that you need to worry about but for those of you who are a little further along this may be something that you're considering you're wondering how you can get it done and I want to start to point you guys in the right direction. So with that being said let's get right into it. So let's start with the why. Pretty much long story short it's meant as a way of protecting brands and personalities from being impersonated and to protect you the fans and consumers of these brands and personalities from being taken advantage of someone who would want to impersonate them. Now each platform does have its own set of requirements for getting verified. For example with YouTube we have to hit at least 100,000 subscribers before to even let you think about a plan for verification and all the other platforms have their own specific set of guidelines that you must first meet. I mean to be honest with these platforms you don't even really need a third party person all you have to do is meet their guidelines meet their requirements and then reach out to someone at the platform yourself or someone don't even have forms that you fill out and you can get verified that way. Now one thing that each of these platforms does fall back on is how notable of a person are you and that pretty much means how well known of a figure are you are you someone that's likely to be impersonated someone that needs to be protected from impersonation to the point that you need a verification badge. Now a lot of people like to confuse being notable with being famous and that's not really the same thing. Notable literally translates to worthy of attention. What you need to do is prove to these social media platforms that you are someone who has gone in some type of public attention enough that like I was saying earlier you are a person of interest who needs to be protected from impersonation. Now one of the best ways to do this honestly is through press. So this is the point where these journalists and these publicists can really start to help you guys out. Getting a write up on a major publication like Complex, like Billboard or any of these other major sites can definitely help speed up the verification process but they aren't the only ones that can help do so. This is what I was saying earlier that a lot of you guys may not really be in a stage of careers where you need to be seeking verification and you would want to start by getting write up on smaller blogs, smaller publications that you start to build your SEO out and then at some point you can come back and say hey I'll build up some type of social following, I'll build up on the press around myself and have attention around myself that I need this book verification back, I need this check mark. Now of course getting a feature on a major publication like Complex, like Billboard or Fader would definitely help speed up the process but that's not the only thing that you need to do to go about doing so. Now the reason that I was saying earlier that I don't think a lot of indie artists should chase verification is because a lot of you guys are in the early stages of your career where you're not necessarily getting consistent press from reputable sites. So if I was you guys what I would start doing is focus on small reputable sites reaching out to the journalists and the bloggers and the publishers who are connected to these guys to get yourself placed on there so that you can either A, take yourself to some bigger platforms and pitch yourself so that you hopefully land on these bigger platforms or B, you can eventually build up enough press around yourself so that you can take it to these platforms, get out the verification process or reach out to someone directly at the platform and say hey I need to be verified, I need that blue check next to my name. So just to give you guys a little recap, in order to get verified you don't need some sketchy person in the comment section on Instagram who's promising you verification for $10 to get the whole process done. What you need to do is first look at the verification process for these different social media platforms that you're trying to hit and pretty much just follow them. Then you need to build yourself up and build yourself into a notable figure with enough press attention around themselves so that you can validate the verification to that social media platform. Now if you'd like to look a little bit more deeply into each social media platform's way of verifying you I'll make sure to leave an article about that in the description below. Now as always guys, if you feel like you learned anything today, please like and share this video, hit those post notifications as well as I wouldn't want you guys to miss anything. Once again, my name is Kory and I'll see y'all next time.