 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 sons and get those numbers booming. And today, what I want to talk with you guys about is something pretty simple. It came from a question that I got in my DMs front of my followers and it was pretty much, you know, to boil it down, does spamming work? This person had a couple of ideas that they wanted to do that I thought failed more so in the category of spam. So we had a conversation about it and we got to a point where he asked the question is does spamming work sometimes? Is it or can it be a good marketing tactic to spam comment sections, spam inboxes and things like that? And I used to think that it was something that was kind of like obvious, like no, you shouldn't be doing that. But the more I see artists doing it, the more I see underneath comment sections, the more I get it. I realize it's something that does need to be touched on and it's something that needs to be talked about. Does spamming really work? But before we get into all of that, come 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. And with that being said, let's get right into it. So before we get into the morals of spamming, does it work? Does it not work? The semantics of spamming. Before we even talk about all of that stuff, let's first clearly define what exactly spamming is because I've realized that some artists do it because they don't know that they're doing it. They don't have a clear definition of what spamming is. And the best way I've come to look at it is spamming is pretty much sending someone unsolicited content, information or messages to the point that it becomes harassment. Now what justifies harassment is different from person to person. Some people don't mind a comment from you saying, go check out my music. Most people don't like it, but some people don't mind it. And the time stems back pretty much to emails to the birth of emails to the point where we got spam messages, right? We will get these messages sent to our inbox that we did not want because they talked about something we did not care about. It was information that we did not care to receive because we had not giving that person the permission to give us that information or whatever we gave them permission for, we weren't expecting to get that right. And that's what it pretty much boils down to. There are two types of marketing that I refer to as interruption marketing and permission marketing. And interruption marketing is what we tend to think of in traditional marketing things. It's your ads, it's commercials. It are things that interrupt the natural flow of whatever you're going through. So a Facebook ad popping up on the timeline is interruption marketing. An influencer posting a promotion they did is interruption marketing. Their follower base wasn't used to seeing that type of content or isn't used to having that type of content placed in front of them. Whereas permission marketing is pretty much asking people's permission first to market to them. So this is getting someone to opt in for your email list. For social media, it's getting someone to follow you right. By someone following you there pretty much saying, Hey, I give you permission to show me your content. Do your worst, do what you will. And spamming breaks that permission in a way that one is usually with people we haven't built a relationship with, right? So we're coming to these random people asking them to perform an action. But we have not yet even introduced ourselves to them or something like that. This is the first time they've come to know us or they haven't naturally found their way to you based on their own interest in their own doing. So spamming them pretty much makes it feel like you're taking away their choice to decide whether or not they want to do the thing that you're asking them to do. And just to back up a little bit, let's define a couple of things that can be viewed as spam from people on the outside. And don't get it wrong. Sometimes you can get away with these things. Sometimes great things does happen out of doing these, but most of the time the people who are on the receiving end of it view it as spam. Like take it from someone who's receiving some of these things from a consumer standpoint. And what some of those spammy techniques look like are DMing random people unsolicited links, just randomly DMing someone your song, leaving comments on the post that are pretty much begging someone to come and check your music out. Those, hey, could you please come leave a review on my music or I'm a XYZ type of rapper from ABC. Can you come check me out? Another form of spamming is excessive promotional posts. And this one is one of the ones that is a little bit touch of a subject because it really does boil down to the artist content strategy. But when you see someone posting, let's say their cover art four times in a day, it gets to a point where you're like, Hey man, that is enough. I have seen this. This is too much. And the way that artists can kind of get around that is pretty much just diversifying the content they have to promote wherever they're promoting. Because using the same of one promotional material, especially in a short period of time to the point where it feels excessive, we'll start to feel spammy to the people on the outside of it. Another popular spammy thing that I see artists do is dimming industry people with no real follow up game plan to what's going to happen. I don't like to think of myself as a industry person, but even I get weird links sometimes from people I've never talked to that just randomly DM me a YouTube link that randomly DM me a SoundCloud link with no context to the link whatsoever. It's like, I don't know you. I don't know what's going on. You are spamming me. You are violating my personal space. And I know if I think that way, if little old Horry thinks that way, how do you think the A&R at such and such feels? How do you think the editor at this publication feels about it? It starts to feel like spam. And another really popular spammy technique that has really only come about because of social media is the creation of the spammy Autobots. And these are the bots that we see all on Instagram. That as soon as you post a hashtag, they comment, hey, great work. Such and such really wants to come work with you. Or, hey, this is fire, dude. You should send your link to XYZ. And I know we see it. I know if you use hashtags, you've definitely seen this happen. And as funny as it sounds, as much as you would think that people wouldn't do that, I see them so much that I think that someone is clearly selling these people on this being the greatest idea ever because it is crazy. I really want to talk to some of these people and see what these conversion rates are because I've literally never clicked on one of those comments and follow up to see what's going on. And as people start to hop into the automation space, they try to program these bots that you can't really program thoughtful comments with because you can't program unique comments to every single situation. We haven't advanced that far. So when people get into the space of setting up these automatic comment box, it comes off as spam, which leads me into the next thing that I want to get into is what are the solutions to spamming? What can you do outside of just DMing random people your links? Outside of leaving random, unthoughtful comments underneath posts that don't have anything to do with but are more self-serving and promotional. What can you do outside of shooting random industry people your music that will actually start to gain you some traction and not put you in the category in people's minds as a spammer? Because once you are in people's minds as a spammer, sometimes it's hard to undo that damage and get them to look at you differently. So what can you do? And it pretty much boils down to something really simple. That is make your content, make good content, have an actual solid content strategy for things that you're releasing, things that you're planning to come out, put that content in front of a bunch of people in other promotional ways, influencers, shoutouts, ads, hashtag research, whatever you name it, pull in those people that are interested in your content and then push them to something that gives them permission or that gives you their permission to start marketing to them and start pushing your stuff to them. Like I said, it could be email subscribers or in the most simple sense, getting them to come follow you on whatever platform it is. So that's pretty much the solution to spamming or the alternative to spamming is making good content, putting it in front of people in a way that don't mind finding that content and then gain permission from the people that are interested to do further marketing through emails, followings, SMS marketing, whatever you choose to do. And I'm realizing, I guess I never really answered the question of, does spamming work? And look at it this way before you go. Sometimes you will catch people with debate. I feel victim to clicking on those random comments. I know people that have, sometimes you do, but 99% of the time, what you're going to end up doing is boxing yourself into a category that hurts you in the long run. It's a box that you don't want to be in. And there is the box in the title and the tag of being a spammy artist because that ruins your relationship with that person right out the gate. And sometimes you shoot yourself in the foot and don't give yourself the further chance to develop their relationship and turn a person into a real fan just because you wanted to be a little bit harassy and do some spamming. So that being said, I guess no, it doesn't work. Stop spamming people. Stop spamming people. Ha ha ha ha. 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.