 Hey everybody what's going on 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, boom man. Now those of you who are new to the channel, I'm 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 talk with you guys about today is why you, yes you, should be incorporating long form content into your content marketing strategies. Now long form content is pretty much anything that's about 10 minutes or longer. I like to think because of how short people's attention spans are today that even seven minutes plus can be considered long form content. But outside of that I just want to give you guys some examples of what that would look like, why it would benefit you to think of something to add into your game plan and just what types of growth and what types of relationships you can expect to build with your fans through this long form content. But before we get into all of that, come and follow me on Instagram, I made 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. Now as marketers I know we're always on artists about their content and their content plans right like you need more content, you need stuff to post on your Instagram, your YouTube, your Twitter, you need stuff to pretty much keep people's eyes on you. And one thing I often don't see get taken advantage enough from rising artists is long form content. Now in the form of video that's usually content that's like I said earlier about 10 minutes or longer. I consider seven minutes or longer to be long form content just because people's attention spans are short but we'll get into why I consider that as long form a little bit later. Now let's get into the why right, the why of the long form content. Why am I making you the artist who already has a million things to do, figure out 10 minute plus videos to put onto that YouTube channel, Facebook, whatever. And the three why's or the three reasons I want you to focus on are the opportunity for fan engagement and relationship building, ad revenue and getting these platforms to reward you. So let's start with the opportunity for fan engagement and relationship building. Now one of the things that you guys will run into as you're growing out is trying to figure out how to convey a message to your fans so that you can build your brand effectively, right? Because that is what brand building is, it is getting your message across to your target audience over and over and over to the point that they start to know and believe it and just like they know your brand as soon as they look at you. And one of the best ways to do this is through content that gives you time to express this message. You can't often get your point across in a three minute song. You can't always get your point across in a minute video clip on Instagram, but when you give yourself time to talk these things out or time to kind of relay these messages a little bit more fluently, that gives you a better chance of building with your audience on top of something where they have a lot more information to build with you off of it. For example, there's a producer right now who I planned on a video about by the name of Kenny Beats. He has a show on his YouTube channel called The Cave. On The Cave, he brings on different rappers and has them wrap up a beat that he makes in like 10 minutes. Now, outside of just the cloud that he gets from these artists, what's really cool about Kenny Beats' show is that it gives him a chance to show off his personality. I've been a fan of Kenny Beats for at least two years. Like, I remember his early work with Key and all that stuff, and I never knew he was funny until I started watching the show. As I got to watching this show, it allowed me to connect with him on a different level as a fan, to where now I feel like I know him a little bit more as a person as opposed to just another producer. And that is where the beauty of long form content lies. It gives you a chance to build with your audience on a different level. How you do that is gonna be a little bit up to your creativity and your resources. But just the fact that you are given an opportunity to do it helps in such a tremendous way. And we are in a point where people will watch this long form content as long as it's interesting enough. Like, you would be surprised at the things that people watch on YouTube and on Facebook and on Instagram just because it's there and just because it caught their attention, and that becomes a gateway point for you to start building them and selling them on other things that you're doing. Now, the second point that I want you to focus on is that these platforms, these social media platforms will reward you for your long form content if it's actually keeping people around. And for the sake of this example, we're going to focus on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Now, on Instagram alone, I think the number is about 56% of Instagram users come to Instagram for long form content and it's actually up from previous years about like 26%, something like that. You will have to look the numbers up, don't quote me directly on it. Now, what's interesting about Facebook and Instagram specifically is IGTV, right? Instagram has gotten to a point where IGTV is their new brain child, it's their new baby, and they want it to do well, so you know what they're doing? They are actively rewarding people on Instagram who use IGTV with more reach, more engagement, and faster growth speeds pretty much for the people who are using it right, which means you are at a point where if you are figuring out your long form content strategy, you are playing around with IGTV, you will get in on the groundwork of it early and take advantage of them trying to push people out who are using it way before everyone else who's going to jump on it once it's already lit. Because I look at it this way, people joke on IGTV, but come on, Facebook's not gonna let their idea die down. They're going to keep it alive for as long as they possibly can. Like I said, by rewarding people who are actively using it, who are trying to make something of it because that's what they want to be the forefront of their product right now. Now, very similarly, YouTube rewards users who have long watch hours on their channel by pushing their content out through their algorithm. So they pretty much go, hey, you, you make really interesting content and you keep people on YouTube. We like you. So we're going to make sure thousands and thousands of people see your content and hopefully they'll spread it out and keep even more people on YouTube. That's how YouTube sees it. So the best way to get longer watch hours on YouTube is to give your audience more content to watch, which it gets pretty hard to do with three minute music videos or four minute lyric videos. So the best way to get around this is create a long form content series that you can actively put out through the channel to increase your watch time, to increase that engagement, to keep people on your channel so that YouTube will reward you. And you can also take that same content, put on your IGTV, work that as well so that Instagram and Facebook will reward you. And I think Facebook has its own video platform but we won't even give into that for today. I just want you guys to start thinking about putting out long form content and thinking about deals on what they will look like for you. And the third reason on why I want you to consider making some type of long form content is something that I think a lot of you are wanting to hear about and that's money, more specifically ad revenue. So pretty much when you make videos or certain links on YouTube and on Facebook, they place ads within your videos. Now, I don't know if everyone knows this but you get paid for those ads being around in your videos. You get paid for when they get watched. I think the rate comes out to be about $3 to $5 per every like thousand views or something. A thousand ad views are shown in your channel. You get paid for that. So the more long form content you have on Facebook, you have on YouTube, I'm sure it's coming to Instagram eventually because it's on Facebook as well. The more opportunity for pay that you bring yourself meaning that your long form content essentially becomes another source of revenue for you. Becomes another way for you to put money into your pocket to do the things that you need to do. All off of just making entertaining 10 to 15 minute videos that keep your fans on the channel. Fans that you were going to try to keep on your channel anyway. At least that's how I look at it. That's how I see this whole thing. Now, of course, like everything else, making long form content does have its disadvantages, but the way I see it is there are things that you'll have to get over anyway. So there's no better time to start practicing than now. One of those disadvantages is that more content means more of your time that is consumed. And if you're an artist who's already doing a lot of things, you're writing your own music, you're making your own videos, you're handling your own marketing. I do understand that this can be taxing so it may be something where you need to seek outside help to help you make long form content. Even the editing alone or getting someone to help you with that side will save you a lot of time and help make it a little bit easier. So I suggest reaching out to a friend or looking for someone on something like Fiverr or something like that, just someone who can help offset some of that load. And secondly is you will be battling people's attention span, meaning that if it is not interesting, if it is not good, people will not watch it and some of your work will go in vain. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't seek to make long form content. You should just seek to get better, get more entertaining, refine your craft, refine your long form content idea and figure out how to get people more interested and more engaged in it so that you can do all the things that I just talked about. And I know I can already hear some of you guys, but Corey, what are some long form content ideas I can do? I literally can't think of anything. And the ones that come out the top of my head and you may be better than me, you may think of something more creative and more unbranded for yourself than me, but I always suggest that people to look towards doing podcasts, which I have a video about that. I made sure to put the link in the description below. You could do skits. You could do interviews. You could do analysis on your contents, like how-to videos for some of you producers and videographers. You could always do deep dives into your own music from your perspective or your friend's perspective. But one of the easiest long form contents that I think the artist can do is a vlog. Anyone can make a vlog. You can follow yourself around with your camera. You can get your friend to follow you around with his cell phone or his phone camera. And one of the points I always get from artists is that they feel like their lives aren't interesting enough. They feel like they can't make vlogs until things are lit. And the one piece of advice I always give to people towards vlogs is that everyone thinks their life is boring. That is exactly why they will watch your life, no matter what it is on the internet, because they wanna escape their own troubles, their own day-to-day, by watching what you have going on. And that all goes back to what Gary Vee calls documenting and people like seeing you document the things that go in your life. People like seeing every process of your life, everything that you're doing, especially your fans. So definitely take advantage of it. Now for those of you who are already practicing your long form content strategies, I'd love to hear about what you're doing, how it was working out for you. So leave that in the comment section below for me. And for those of you who haven't started yet, I'd love to hear about any ideas that you may have. If you're comfortable with sharing them in the comment section, do it. If not, you can always come hit me up on Instagram or something, we'll talk it out. 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.