 When you watch the musicians you love on social media, it can sometimes be easy to slip into the trap of thinking that there's 10 people making their posts for them. Because it often seems like way too much for one person to be this smart, brilliant, and funny all the damn time. Okay, maybe Brilliant's pushing it with some of these artists. And while it can be true that for some of the artists, it can be a few people working on their social media presence, that isn't usually what makes it so great. Instead, it's some simple philosophies and exercises that make what they post so much better than the stuff you do. So with this video, I'm gonna show you how you should be developing content, whether it's social media or music videos, so you can compete with your favorite artists. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to go from zero to 10,000 fans on YouTube, and this is Museformation. So with this channel, what I do is pass on the knowledge I've learned by being in big indie and major label marketing meetings. And over the last year, I've been building up to this video with my guide to social media and how to tell stories about your music. But I think I've now done enough world building where I could finally go in and show the main techniques to use to really blow up your favorite artists on social media. But I'll first say, if this feels a bit over your head, I can't recommend enough that you hit the description below or click on the playlist now that's on the screen and get acquainted with what we discuss on this channel. Okay, so one of the things musicians are always asking me is what is the most effective thing you can post or make for content? And this is a great question because honestly, you want everything you do to be more effective. In fact, if you've been at this game for a while, you probably have noticed that some things work better than others and you wanna be doing those things that work well. So let's first talk about the philosophy you should be considering when you develop any content. And to do that, I'm gonna play you this quote from my favorite nerd in podcasting, Scott Galloway. He's probably the smartest public intellectual in technology, entrepreneurship, and marketing. He teaches at NYU and does a ton of investments for his own company and his podcast, The Prof G Show and Pivot are two of the best lessons I do every week. But there's a particularly interesting quote he did recently that really hit me hard. If you think about all strategy comes down to one question. Oh, really? What can we do that is really hard? What can we do that is so hard everyone else has a tough time doing it? When I've been in meetings with artists who have top management and labels and teams who are brainstorming what we should do to market an artist. This is exactly what the people who really make waves and do things that are memorable, ask the room. This is the jumping off point for the most effective content we can make. In these meetings, we set aside time to try to get inspired on this exact thought by asking the room this question and spitballing ideas. We then try to get inspired by watching other people's content and try to think what they can see in other people and how the artist we're working with can authentically do it better than them. Rather than doing an imitation of what other artists are doing and probably falling short, we try to find a good idea and then ask how we can take it even further. But let me make this clear by example. When I think of this philosophy, I think of when Cardi B came along as Nicki Minaj's shtick started to get a bit old. And Cardi basically just did everything Nicki did but more extreme and better. The raps were more hard. The singing less cheesy. The attitude and personality 10 times more real and the fashion way more out there and hard. She took every single thing good about Nicki just a bit further. But the biggest problem I see with ours who aren't developed enough is they don't even know what to build off to find what they can do that's more extreme. I've talked to you before about building content off your SWOT analysis. And if you don't know what I'm talking about with this SWOT analysis, you gotta click the video that's on the screen now or in the description below. Because if you feel lost on what you should be doing to make developing social media and great content better, it's probably cause you haven't done enough work on this. But really, when we talk about the heart of the strategy that works and why ours really blow up on social media compared to you who just keeps wondering why nothing seems to work. A lot of it is the artists it works for have taken in their SWOT analysis and found what is authentic for them and then they figure out what they can do to accentuate their strengths and go further than everyone else out there. They do something extreme that their competition won't do and that is what gets people's attention. If you've been keeping up with this channel, you've probably heard me talk about this concept I call the mirror. And if you don't remember me talking about this, it's the minimum expected effort required. Yes, and one more time for the mouth breathers. Minimum as in least amount. Expected as in how much you think you need to put in. Effort as in the thing most musicians don't put in at all. Required as in how much you think you will need to do. Again, minimum expected effort required. Here's a real world example of the mirror. If you're making a music video, you may say, we're gonna put one day into filming and maybe five hours of editing tops, bro. Since you think that's what you need to make a passable video, instead of paying attention to what I just said before about using a strategy of trying to do what your competition will not do, you instead adhere to the mirror and get a barely remarkable result that doesn't get people excited about what you do or do you any favors when you put it out into the world. You can really see way bigger results by just working harder and outdoing people in the effort department. And yes, there's exceptions. Just deciding to do 10 layers of harmony misses the point because with music, you're trying to make songs as emotionally resonant as possible, not just beat someone at a number game. That's not how it works. And if that doesn't make sense to you, I have a whole playlist of videos on how you make music people love and I even wrote a whole book on it, cha-ching. We have to remember you have to know what game you're playing and music isn't a numbers game. But hell, social media can be just about putting an effort and making a spectacle from a damn good idea. And now that just takes time to get to by asking the right questions. Making content is a different game than songwriting. I mean, look at Mr. Beast. He's arguably the biggest YouTuber and really he is often just throwing more thought and effort at his videos and figuring out what will be the most effective thing to make people wowed. And now I will try to never mention Mr. Beast again since there's few things as cringe as a man my age explaining YouTubers to people. Okay, here's some examples of going beyond the competition and exceeding the mirror. Okay, go is the easiest one in the world. No other group of awkward white guys was going to learn to do these dance routines to get attention. The whole sad boy rap genre loves to do these really sick videos all made with drones and high def cameras and Echo 2K's video for peroxide took it where the competition wouldn't go. A goddamn wind farm in the sea. And yes, I'm gonna be that fanboy yet again and talk about my favorite video of recent years and say that Guppy and Fraxium, aka Food Houses video for Thosmoser when further than the competition was willing to go when they made the most extremely online video the world has ever seen. Okay, onto our second technique. Some of you may have had success already and have done things that have worked but have had a rough time replicating that success and are wondering how on earth do artists you love repeat that success over and over again. Well, the first thing is they actually spend time getting inspired and really thinking about ideas. This means oftentimes brainstorming for an hour or more as you scroll through other artists' feeds and you write down ideas. But the key to doing this is to have a blue sky period and listen up, because this really is the secret of your favorite artists movies and TV shows. I learned this technique from the writing room of the show The Office and they used this technique to come up with the really insane ideas you see all throughout the show. This blue sky period is where you call out ideas and no one is allowed to call them dumb. Instead, you're only allowed to either move past that idea or build upon it to make it as imaginative and beyond what the competition would do as possible. Meaning you can take the idea further but there's no negative commentary allowed at all during this period. Since we want creativity rewarded, not discouraged. I mean, here's a fact. As a record producer, I know most of the dumbest ideas lead to good ones, since they often inspire something that can be built on or for someone to go the exact opposite way as the bad idea. The fact is, the discussion in a positive building way really helps you get to better ideas. But particularly, encouraging the most ridiculous ideas and to go too far and then pull back is how the best ideas happen and what people do that you're probably not doing. And hey, sometimes you don't even pull back the idea since the extreme idea is what will often go beyond the competition. But after you feel you have an excess of insane ideas, you then rein them in and vet and critique them to make sure they're as good as possible after the blue sky period ends. And truly, TV shows will often start their season with a blue sky period for a whole damn month before really getting into the writing of the season since they know this is the crucial framing for what comes next. And if you want to learn more about this brainstorming technique, I have a video linked now are in the cards. And now for our third tool. There's a structure to building off your social media posts that have worked that is extremely helpful for getting good ideas in the future. I like to call it the snowman technique, but I've seen other people call it much stupor things, which is really saying something since the snowman technique is pretty fucking stupid if I do say so myself. So for this example, I'm gonna use this band, Wakely, who I've made some great music with, which I'll link in the description. And I'm gonna use them as an example because they recently had this big viral TikTok reels video that made the rounds to millions of people where they dreamt up a fake way mychemical romance approached the vocal for their breakout record. And so let's say they wanted to replicate this video's success. At the top of the snowman for its head, as you can see, we have the mychemical romance video they made that worked well for them. In the body, we have doing this for similar groups like Seyo, Sin and Fall Out Boy, and just doing basically the same approach and trope of the video where they show the before and after of a singing technique. But the arms are the ideas that are divergent from this video, but still a little similar and build off of it. This can be ideas like doing more skits of what it must be like when certain bands are in the studio and acting out scenes from a session. An arm could be doing more content around mychemical romance, let's say about their makeup. Then a leg could be what their band meetings must be like or another leg could be like what it was like when they wrote all their lyrics. All of these are related to the original idea. And as another one gets successful, you make a new snowman and slowly start diverging from them and making new snowman with each success. And then you slowly have tons of ideas that feel seamless and authentic to your audience. Look at that. Every time you have a successful video, just make a new snowman to follow up on it and you will evolve and grow your audience. But there is one last key to this, which is the fourth and last point of this video. I have more than a few friends with more than a million followers on social media. I know clearly I am very cool and I get to hang out with people who are obsessed with being on their phones while hanging out instead of enjoying each other's company. No really, it's a glamorous life. But the thing my oh so cool friends with millions of followers will tell you that not enough people seem to say out loud is that it's okay to make mediocre posts and not have every single post be a hit. They will always tell you to not be so precious about what you post. Think about it this way. When someone you follow makes a mediocre post, do you wanna follow them when they post a dud? Hell no, or else I'd personally follow no one. As long as you deliver the goods every dozen or so posts, you're gonna keep your followers happy and your channel growing. If you bet one gem that gets a lot of shares out of every seven posts, you're absolutely killing it. The fact is you could throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. But granted, that sure makes bad cleanup work. But as a grown man who still eats from a George Foreman grill, I'm not about that life. But I am about the life of doing smart things. And the smart thing is to follow up your success as fast as possible with a few ideas. So trying some of those arm and body ideas is how you make that happen. Acting fast while asking yourself what can outdo the competition using free form borders brainstorming and reiterating upon past success is the key to how people who win at social media actually do it. So the three things to take away from this video are, one, the trick of doing amazing at social media is going further than your competition will go while staying authentic to yourself and asking yourself how you can outdo the competition while you do free form brainstorming. Two, try to come up with the most imaginative and excessive ideas before reigning them in to something rational. Three, organically reiterate upon your successes on social media over and over again, and they will be seamless and feel right to your audience. And four, don't be afraid to make duds and experiment. You won't be punished and you're more often than not rewarded for content you put out instead of keeping it to yourself which you're never rewarded for even when it's not your best idea. If you enjoyed this video, this is exactly what we discussed on this channel. So please like and subscribe so you don't miss more of it and make sure to click that notification bell so that you know when I put up a video. If you have questions on this, hit me in the comments as I'll be making a follow-up video all the more about this going into further details on this subject. And if I've already made that, it's linked on the screen right now. Otherwise, watch one of these playlists on how to get your music notice or how to blow up on Spotify in 2021. Thanks for watching.