 Hey everybody, what's going on, it's your man, Cory. Welcome to The Digital Dash, where I'll be giving you guys tips on how to market your songs and get those numbers. Boom and now, if you're new to the channel, I am a digital marketer. I specialize in helping artists like yourself get their songs heard through platforms like Spotify, like Instagram, like YouTube and a bunch of others. Now what I want to do today guys is to break down some common misconceptions about what it means to get organic reach and what exactly that means. This video was pretty much inspired by a comment that got left underneath one of my Instagram videos. The video was about pay advertising and why artists should be using it. The comment said something along the lines of, I tried running pay ads, but it didn't work out for me. I think that I'll prefer to stick to getting my music out there organically. And this made me stop and think. It's not the first time that I've heard an artist say something like this. I know it won't be the last, but I honestly feel like sometimes artists don't know exactly what it means to get organic reach and how pay advertisers can help you to increase your organic reach. But before we get into all of that, come and follow me on Instagram. I'll make sure to put my ad name on the screen. Come talk to me, come engage with me, come give me some video ideas, all of that good stuff. Now with that being said, let's get right into it. So first things first, let's break down and analyze the differences between organic traffic and paid traffic. So what exactly is organic traffic? Long story short is pretty much the people who just so happened to stumble upon your music, right? Like they just so happened to find you in some way that puts them onto your content, onto your music. Now, organic traffic can be generated through a bunch of different ways. It can be word of mouth. It can be through doing shows. It can be from press that you've done. It could be from your friend sharing your music video on that Instagram story and five of their friends finding and confiding you, whatever. That's pretty much organic traffic, right? Like it's traffic that has been generated without any type of money or ad budget being spent towards acquiring the people that have been acquired from whatever it is that you're doing. Now, what exactly is paid advertising? I think that pretty much speaks for itself. We've all heard of Facebook ads. We've all heard of Google ads. We've all heard of whatever ads. Everything pretty much has an ad platform these days. So paid traffic is pretty much the people that have been generated that have found you or found interested in your content through the ads that you have been running. So what is paid traffic? I think that's pretty much self-explanatory. We've all heard of Google ads. We've all heard of Facebook ads. Everything has an ad platform these days. I'm sure you've at some way shape or form at least tested out of ad or have seen an ad. But I also count influencer marketing as paid advertising. Why? Definitely after the fire festival thing. They are definitely included in the same category as paid advertising and most of them take money to promote you to market you. So I counted as paid advertising. I don't know if everyone else does, but I do. So yeah, pretty self-explanatory. Paid traffic is traffic that you pay for. It's people that have come as a result of these ads that you're running of the influences that you've paid of the promotions and marketing things that you have going on around you. Now what scared me a little bit about the comment that the woman left underneath my Instagram post and what scares me a little bit every time I hear artists say that, oh, I just want to focus on organic traffic. I want my traffic to be organic. I don't want to pay for any placements or any ads or anything to run. What I hear is that you just want to put your music out and hope and pray that somebody finds it and it spreads out from there. And it happens. It does happen. I'll be a liar if I said it doesn't. But it doesn't happen all the time. And I feel like if there's a way that you can accelerate that growth, there's a way that you can increase your organic reach or increase the chances that your music spreads organically, then I don't understand why an artist wouldn't want to do something like that. I don't understand why they wouldn't, at least want to test it out, learn it, play around with it a little bit, perfect it and then use that to get them to where they want to be. Now, how exactly does pay advertising accelerate organic traffic, right? Because it can do so. When you use correctly, that is exactly what pay advertising is for. That is exactly what certain pay placements are for is it is to accelerate your organic reach. Let me give you a scenario. Let's say that you run a Facebook ad which I knew was music video. You're targeting a certain demographic, let's say a region of people out in LA. So you hit this small group of people out in LA, it hits this one guy. This one guy sees the ad and he really loves the music video. Because of that ad and because of that video, he then goes and tells five of his friends about it, three of them love it, and then they play your music all day, every day. Now, the first part of that is pay advertising. That first person was reached by a Facebook ad. That is an example of paid traffic. But what came after that is organic. The fact that he went and told his friends about it and got them to get into the movement and start spreading it out is organic traffic. And that is exactly what you're doing when you're spending certain money to run these ads, when you're learning these things, when you're spending money to place yourself into certain places that make sense for you. You are in fact increasing the chance that your music will spread organically. Meaning that in the long run, you'll have people pushing you out for no money whatsoever. And that is pretty much what you're investing in when you're investing into pay advertising and these placements. So there it is, guys. There we have it. That is my two cents on the myth of organic versus paid traffic. That's what I think. I hope that all of you guys aren't solely relying on the hope of organic traffic to carry you out. But if you are, I'd love to hear about it in the comment sections below. Let me know what you think, why you're against pay advertising, if you are against it, or why you're for it if you are for it and have tried it out. Now as always, guys, if you feel like you're learning 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.