 So on this channel, we've been going over strategies for growing your fan base using TikTok. But since I'm a nerd about marketing strategy, in the previous episodes of this series, we've gone into more advanced strategy of how to grow on TikTok. But since I'm always reading your comments and what you post in my Facebook group, I know that you want some clarity on some basic functions of how you grow on TikTok. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to grow on TikTok and help you understand the rules of the road. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to go from zero to 10,000 fans, and this is Muse Formation. So I want to be clear about the objective of promoting your music on TikTok. Because every week I talk to you all in the comments of these videos or consulting calls I do, I feel like you're all increasingly losing the pot instead of gaining it on what you should be doing here on TikTok. I know you hear stories of these stars made on TikTok, but you probably don't make music that would do that. But what you do is make music that a lot of people would like, and what we're trying to do is take advantage of one of the biggest opportunities in music promotion to have some fun, express yourself, and then have it draw the attention of people who would potentially like your music, since that's what's so explosive about TikTok's algorithm. Unlike some of the YouTube grifters on here that talk about music marketing, I'm not going to gas you up with unrealistic expectations. What I'm going to outline here is how you get in front of the eyes of the people most likely to enjoy your music, who will then lift up your numbers and help build your fanbase. Now I do want to clarify, if anyone tells you something definitely works or doesn't on TikTok right now, they are a fool, as this app is still coming to its own and people will redefine the rules in big ways in the coming years. But this is what's working in most case scenarios right now. But enough of my disclaimers so I can evade being punished by internet know-it-alls in the comments, let's go. Okay, let's first start to understand the main thing that sets TikTok apart from other social media apps and defines this era of social media. When Twitter came out one of the things people liked about it is the internet was filled with long blogs and articles explaining things that really didn't need 2,000 words since you just wanted to hear what in the hell happened. Most of us just wanted the TLDR meaning too long didn't read and that led us to the tumblr trend of ending a long story with a TLDR that wrapped up this long 9 paragraph story with just 2-3 sentences. What I'm getting to here is that TikTok has essentially done what Twitter has done to the article and made it in performative video form. TikTok is really just shortening the attention span of everything. Give me some information or a fun visual and present it to me as fast as you can and once it's done let me swipe on it. I say all this to say when I look at your TikToks it seems you don't get this is the very core of what people are looking for here on the app. So here is what your potential fans on TikTok are looking for. The name of the game is how do you say this in as little time as possible to where it's effective and entertaining for the viewer. That is to say unless a pause in your speech is needed for effect cut it. Unless you're creating anticipation cut it. If a sentence is unneeded to convey your meaning and at all superfluous cut it. And most of all since I see so many of you neglect this cut every single pause before you start speaking and chop off the end of your video's silence and that's especially important since your video spreads less if the user scroll past it before it's over. The literal goal is to have the video start over again. So after I tell people that they immediately ask me why there's a 3-minute option on TikTok if that's the case. Listen up here chief. After a quick look around stats on the internet the majority of what spreads on TikTok are posts where the 15 second button is pressed and they are done under that time. And while 60 second videos still do spread all the time the ones that are longer than 60 seconds that spread are an exception to an exception of the rule. And now is probably a good reason to break down why TikTok has one goal and that's goal is to keep you scrolling through the app and if you get bored you're more likely to leave the app. So they punish videos with lulls that do bad superfluous long storytelling and show them to less people and reward the videos that keep people there in our fast-paced and don't have superfluous pauses. You may have noticed there's this trend that's going on the app where the video seems to cut off too soon like literally the last bit of the last word doesn't even finish. Or like you don't have enough time to read the text before it turns over and repeats. This is actually because if the video starts to loop again and you watched it all the way through again it's more highly rated and I know that's kind of annoying for us as users but that's how it works. So never mind if someone watches again to try to take in what you were saying it's even more highly rated by the TikTok algorithm and you should use that to your advantage. Let's remember your objective is for people to watch the video if not more than once since that tells the algorithm the audience was intrigued by what they saw and for people to send it out to friends and share it with them. But truly the decision tree for how long of TikTok video should be is always easy and it's down to however short it could be while being effective for people to enjoy it. Make the duration as short as it can work. Cut the fat and frankly whether you're speaking in it or doing a dance or moving you can even mess with the speed in the app or if you edit it in DaVinci Resolve for free like I do you could speed up clips there. I find that can speed up most clips between 1 to 10% and they are more effective and do better when I do that but a lot of you are wondering what to post so I have some simple questions you could ask yourself about what to post on TikTok each day when you're trying to figure out what to post. What's the most interesting thought you had today? Tell people about it and see if they bond with you or have thoughts of their own. What's great about posts like this is if you're hashtagging them for your micro genre is they will find the people most likely to enjoy your music and not necessarily people outside of your circle. The hashtags literally tell it to put it to the audience that enjoys those hashtags. In Azzar if you have similar interests to the people who listen to that type of music they will see your band name and see commonality and hopefully explore your music or even better send it to a friend which helps it rank in the algorithm. The next thing you could ask yourself is what's an interesting thing in music you can tell TikTok about? An easy way to find an audience that will potentially like your music is share your thoughts on the artists that are similar to you and explain things you see in the music that you think most people don't see. Tell us what's exceptional in your life. Give us the highlight reel of your musical life and show us your lifestyle and hopefully others will bond with it and enjoy it. And lastly a thing I tell you all the time. Tell stories around your music. Of course we also want to promote your music so all the storytelling we talk about on this channel should be converted to TikToks and if you don't know about that storytelling you should really go in the description and learn all about what I talk about with that. This storytelling can be the best moment from your playthrough or explaining a lyric in your songs meeting onto just showing what you've been up to lately. Just find ways to tell stories and how they connect to your music so people know to go deeper on it. But you may be wondering how to tell them. TikTok has tropes and these are the formats you tell a story in. And if you're watching TikTok regularly you can figure out how to present your videos within the tropes of TikTok which will help them perform better. Some musicians I've coached find it best to make a list of their ideas like all the stories they're going to tell or the content they can potentially make. Then watch TikTok for a while and see the tropes of storytelling on TikTok that people are using and figure out the best one to put it into. So they may have an idea to talk about the concept of sapuku that they sing about in their latest song and how that plays into their music. What they will do is they'll wait until they see another user do a TikTok trope where it would work and then make the video that discusses the concept. But I know I've been Mr. Brightside about TikTok for this whole series so it's time to discuss the rub. There's this conflict inherent in TikTok that we should understand. If you're a smart person who's been paying attention to what I've been saying here you may have noticed that rub. TikTok's goal is to keep you on the platform and your goal is to get people to leave it and stream your song on Spotify. That's quite a conflict of interest if you ask me but here's the thing as long as a lot of your posts are less go stream my video on YouTube or stream our new song on Spotify and you are gluing fans with good content and using the hashtags to stay in front of their eyes they're going to get curious after these TikTok addicts spend time seeing you all the time and getting to know you and jump over and listen on their own accord and this isn't me just saying some wish casting we see it in data and analytics all the time if you make sure you're posting TikToks that give people a glimpse of your personality it will build bonds that inspire curiosity you put your songs in the background for those videos and you will covertly make them familiar to the fans who will most likely enjoy your music and they will feel like they've already heard them before and be much more likely to enjoy your song before since we all know when we're a little familiar with the song it makes it way more possible that we're going to be into it when we listen to it in full and we all also know that oftentimes we need to hear a song a few times before we like it and that work is getting done for so many artists on TikTok I know this conflict of interest is real but the reciprocal growth of those who are doing well on TikTok and getting Spotify streams is totally real and easily documented y'all and while we're talking about TikTok I think it's important to also talk about one of the things people love about it which is it really does have a level of investigation that is so much deeper than Instagram which so many musicians love about the platform is that users actually look at the profile and click around and build relationships and because of that you need to use the app that builds those relationships better than anything I've ever seen so I want to stop and tell you about the sponsor of this video Koji and you may be thinking Jesse what the hell you never do this that's right because my promise to you is I would never discuss a product that I don't use every day and love so I'm really excited to have them sponsoring this video since it's an app I use in my own profiles and have advised other artists to use it in my work Koji is a link in bio app store for creators it's a free to use and free to customize link in bio platform and it's truly the best link in bio for musicians I know you've seen these before when you click the fancy profiles of your favorite artist and they have a list of links well you can have that too for free but here's the thing you've probably seen other products like this like link tree but koji is the only one that has this app store where you can do amazing things that gives your fans an amazing experience and ways to interact with them and build relationships and I know this is big for a lot of you you can even make money through it I want to say these are not iOS apps nothing to download these are link in bio apps that live on the link in your bio on all of your socials 24 7 so let me show you a few of their apps I find to be amazing for music marketing their music links app allows you to do one of those free link fire type things that lists everywhere a fan can listen to your song you're able to promote any track album or playlist by linking to every platform it's available on whether that's Spotify SoundCloud Apple music title Amazon music Bandcamp Deezer YouTube music or the iTunes store and I know a lot of you are like you always tell us to just really focus on Spotify so I tell our us all the time to use the Spotify embed app where you can add any album playlist artist and song from Spotify directly inside your link in bio and man that looks good and clean and it's such a better impression on a new fan than anything else I've seen even ones that charge tons of money one of my other favorites is the love jar since I think so many musicians don't take advantage of how many people would probably tip you even if your fan base is in the hundreds those who really feel you want to support you I mean most of the people are streaming your music for free so why not let them drop you a note about how much you and your music means to them and show you some financial love as well in future videos we'll get into some of the other apps I love that koji does that can both build your relationships with them and help you make money to learn more and get your own free koji link in bio page which you can use on your tiktok it's the end twitter page we're literally any other social media platform head to the description and click on the link I give you there or to with koji.com that's koji.com okay back to tiktok though so a lot of people ask me about the quality of their video and audio on tiktok and I'm going to be honest I see videos with bad quality of both all the time and just like we want to keep these videos as tight and lacking of superfluous details the better you can make these videos well the better they're going to perform but in all honesty as long as your room is in an echoey catastrophe or noisy airpods or apple headphones will do just fine as long as you have a relatively new phone the camera is going to be more than enough there's no reason to shoot on a sodium a7 III like me and trust me I only do that because it's easier than setting up my iphone but you're probably wondering how often should you post I tell everyone your goal should be once a day but in all honesty if that sucks the joy out of your life well then there's no need to do it but I think that is optimal for aspiring artists I know the common advice is three times a day but that's for people who are trying to become tiktok stars whereas if you're trying to draw attention to your music that's a lot of noise the only reason I think posting three times a day is helpful is it helps you learn fast and you can look back and explore what's working and now is probably also a good time to point out that if a video is tanking and getting way less views than normal after 24 hours you can definitely delete it and not let it stain your grid even I the all-knowing all-seeing god of marketing strategy and music have had to do it before I know stars they're just like all of us right but also don't be afraid to learn in public the best part of making a not good video is it doesn't spread and no one will see it trust me if you ever watched my early videos on this YouTube channel you know I stand by the philosophy that you should get started making things and improve as you go okay let's talk about hashtags since this is probably one of the most powerful things for marketing your music so it's important about hashtags on tiktok is you're able to say talk about your depression with your song in the background if you hashtag them for your micro genre it will get served to those people and as long as it's something your community responds to it'll do well and spread your music to people this also goes of course for clips from your music video or whatever else you want to do here and you can figure out which hashtags you should use the most by clicking the button and see which tags tags have the highest number now here's a little secret though I've seen some less crowded hashtags do better for us so for example if your genre is pop punk doing both punk pop and pop punk can be more effective since you don't need as big numbers to get through the smaller hashtags audience once you know your regular hashtags I strongly suggest to do what I show you in this video here and copy them and go to your settings to general then keyboard and then save them as a shortcut so you don't have to type them every time also remember to observe the hashtags that all the artists you're watching as targets use they may have found things that work for them that may work for you let's also remember putting the songs of your genre or of tiktok trends also sorts who tiktok will send the videos to you may have noticed if you use tiktok that if you like the video with the song in it they'll keep playing you other videos with that song in it they said these videos to people watch those videos with that song it so knowing the trending videos of the genre and using them in your videos can be just as effective as knowing your hashtags also fun fact you can even turn that song down so it's inaudible but use the trending song to get your video to spread more and another really effective way to link yourself to other people and get more recommendations keep in mind when your targets or your friends in your community make great videos you can do duets with them and show support while hashtagging them and showing your name to the algorithm on the back of their good content this is yet again why tiktok is so great for music marketing okay lastly before we go I'm going to give you a few fast thoughts on other ways to optimize your performance on tiktok so it's growing your fan base as much as possible reply to every comment and be sure to heart all the ones that aren't mean to you as this could be the start of a fan relationship and since unlike instagram tiktok does so much work of sending you to new people who are really likely to be susceptible to liking your music I can't emphasize enough that this is a new potential fan so giving that heart and reply is often the start of a relationship that gets you a new fan way more than instagram ever was don't be shy when promoting your music to do your emotional pitch and tell someone how they could feel if they streamed your song and if you don't know what I mean by an emotional pitch there's a link on how to get more streams with an emotional call to action in the description below or on the screen now also remember tiktoks are also youtube shorts and instagram reels and while you don't want to cannibalize your views on tiktok since it has the most potential for growth I think it's smart to repurpose your best content that does well a day or three later on both youtube and insta but be sure when you put up a tiktok to schedule a tweet linking it for about an hour or two later to give it some juice since tiktok loves to see you bringing people into their platform and ranks your video higher when you bring people in as you get more followers you get privileges like going live which I think at this point may be more smart to do on tiktok than instagram especially if you have about the same amount of followers on each and you get more privileges at different follow numbers so you should stay up on that and tiktok is always changing the goalposts on how many followers that is to get each of these privileges so I'm not going to say specific numbers okay so on this channel this is the type of stuff we discuss so if you're interested in this you should definitely like subscribe and most of all get notified so you don't miss crucial videos I post for helping you level up building a fan base I answer every comment below that doesn't insult me so if you have a question hit the comments on the screen now is a video on how to blow up on tiktok in 2022 or how to grow your fanbase from zero to ten thousand fans or how to blow up on Spotify in 2022 click and keep learning thanks for watching