 It's the network. Baw, what's up Brandman Network? It's Sean once again and this is video number three of the reprogramming series, extremely important topic, social media. Artists have to start thinking about social media differently because they get berated with all these ideas that you have to post on social five, six, seven, eight times a day and you have to be high volume and you just got to get out there, get out there, get out there. There's some truth to that, but not really. What do I mean by that? One, too many artists get distracted with social media thinking that social media is their only way out. Social media is a great thing. I promise you that. It doesn't mean you don't need social media. Don't even get that twisted with everything I'm about to say. However, your primary focus most likely should not be social media unless you are dope at social media or have the ability to become dope. There's some talent that's required there because when you actually are an artist and you're trying to lead with music, you want people to accept you for your music versus this grand personality that I have, then you got to lead with music. Is that simple? I'm spending all my time on Instagram and just posting pictures and snippets and clips of my documentation. I'm trying to get people to see that stuff, but I'm never focusing on YouTube with my music videos or Spotify, Apple Music, the streaming platforms, then you're going to have an issue. A lot of artists aren't great at social media or don't even like social media yet they're spending all their time trying to figure out their weakness. Social media, when they make dope music, they just need to figure out how to get their music heard. Figure out how to get your music heard. That's it. Spotify, Apple, SoundCloud, Deezer, Amazon Music, but Spotify is going to be the key thing for so many people, maybe SoundCloud, because those two allow for more indie, they're more indie friendly, some of the things that you can do to encourage your music to be heard. Focus on that and then focus on the videos. Focus on the things that relate to your music and get people to like your music and your music videos, and then when they go to your social media, they'll like you for your social media. They'll be keeping up with you, this artist that I like, versus trying to become interested in you. Most artists wrongly get people interested in this other idea of them, this social media personality, and then they never get people interested in their music. This is a twofold thing, because sometimes people's music just isn't quality, but I don't mean that you cannot, or you should not. I'm not even saying that you should not post on social media and make dope videos, make funny skits or any of that stuff. Don't even get that twisted. What I mean is, if you have a gift for that and you're dope at that, go ahead and do that. Go ahead and do that social media stuff, pop it, tweak it, work it, do whatever you got to do, get your views, especially sometimes there's a lot of people who have a lot more talent for that than they do in their music at the time, because their music is still developing. Do that if you got that talent, but if you're posting and you're moving and you're doing all this work and your social media, you're just not good at social media, then stop wasting your time. Stop wasting your time and just go towards the goal versus this indirect thing to try to get people back to your goal. Because getting those things popping can be a lot easier than social media. Record labels, and I know you might not be trying to get side, but so many record labels, Spotify holds one of the greatest weights, if not the greatest weight. That's the conversation that I've been hearing just in the industry, rooms that I'm in. So many record labels, right? From very credible people, like they're saying, Spotify, Spotify. That's a very strong indicator for them. Social media, that's a whole different game. You have to be a phenomenon. That's an entirely different type of thing, right? If your music is truly popping or your music is truly popping individually, then they're like, oh, we can do something with this, right? If not, if you think logically, right? Even if it's not making this person to a big artist because we feel like that, if their music is popping individually, then we know we can at least tweak the publishing, right? St. Glyce, all that stuff, right? So understand, work on your Spotify. Work on the other streaming platforms. Work on having great music videos and getting those individual things seen. But the problem is most artists, a lot of times, they don't want to push that stuff. Why? Because to get it seen, it costs money, right? I understand. So that goes back to video number two. It costs money to get this thing moving. So people try to say, you know what? I'm just going to try to blow myself up on social media. And once I blow myself up on social media, I'm going to bring attention back to my music, but you're wasting your time. All that effort you just put in the social media, maybe you just go make some money, get a side job, whatever, especially since you're failing at social media in the short term, right? Just put that to the side, focus on getting money and pushing this. Now, it doesn't mean that you don't need to post on social media ever. You shouldn't either. What I say artists should do, especially those who are inclined to say, I have dope music. I just want people to hear my music and people who don't even want to build that social media, like be posting all the time. Simple solution that really everybody should be doing. Post in a simple content strategy. That's it. You know exactly what you're going to do. You create your content buckets. And we talk about this in a content workshop. You post, post, post, you're not really thinking about it. It's easy to push that content out. It's not necessarily about being high volume. It's just only for consistency sake, even if that's three video, three videos a week or three, three pictures a week, whatever that might be. Or maybe it's one picture a day, whatever it is. It needs to be low effort and creativity, right? And you push that out. Three pieces of content. And then every once in a while, you come out with something really creative. You understand. Like there's just like an inspirational moment and you can add it. You can sauce up your social media that way. Great. But not too much energy in that, not too much effort in that. Push the music, push the music, push the music, push the music. If you don't have the most interesting social media in the world, why are you trying to get people to see it? Have interesting music and then have people care about you. And now that I care about you, I'm going to go look at your social media page just to keep up with this artist that I care about. But if your social media isn't dope, it's not going to make me care about you in the first place. And then if I don't care about you in the first place, I'm not going to even check out that music that I got. I mean, that you have, right? Then, of course, the more ideal scenario is, oh, I do care about you based on your social media because I think your social media is dope, but I might not like your music, right? So let's just start. Let's just start with the music. So many people are getting distracted. Again, if you have the talent for the social media, do it. Utilize it, go. It's a great source. It's a great tool. Build your own platform. But especially if you don't have that talent, especially if you don't have people around you who already got phones that you can just leverage even if you don't have good content yourself, right? Push the music. I know it's harder. I know it might seem like, oh, the only way to do it is cost money. It's going to cost money ultimately. People just fool themselves by thinking, I'm going to get myself big and they waste their time. You're wasting your time working without anything that's going to give you a real result. You're keeping yourself busy following a fake dream because you're posting to a page that's not going to grow. Don't waste your time doing that. Now, of course there's things we can do to help grow it. Cool, but I'm talking again specifically if there's no talent there for social media or you just don't like doing the social media thing. Be real with yourself and focus on figuring out how to get the actual product to be heard. I'll leave it at that. I'll hop off my soapbox. That's video number three, social media. Do not let people fool you into thinking that you have to go crazy on social media. It's not the truth, but of course it is a tool to utilize and it's extremely beneficial if you can use it right and do want to put in that time to do that. So that's it for this video. This is time for video number four. Let's get to it. It's the Matt word.