 If you're a member of my DIY Musician Forum, hintent, you've probably seen me talk about that I think the entire world puts too much attention in social media promotion for artists who have less than 10,000 fans. The fact is all the YouTube Music Promotion channel con artists make a big deal out of social media because they know they are faking their knowledge and have never built up a fan base and all they can do is dissect the strategy of a big artist on social media. Well, guess what? What works for massive artists is not what works for artists with under 10,000 followers. And this is why when you follow their instructions and do all the things they tell you to do, you see minimal results at best. So this video, I'm going to tell you the truth about how to develop a social media plan that works to build up artists who aren't megastars and how you can think of how to handle yourself on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok on a macro level. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Muse Formation. So one of the reasons all these YouTube Music Promotion channel clowns make nothing but videos on how to promote yourself on social media. It's easy for them to dissect what an artist is doing and then tell you to do that. But it's also your fault that they only make videos on this. Yes, you. These videos are the most popular way to get views on YouTube because you will all reward them by clicking on them like you did this one because social media feels good to you. And you'd rather work on social media than much of the hard work that really makes a difference. Plus, I'm guilty of it too. It could feel great, all the validation you get from social media, but you know what doesn't feel great? When you realize it isn't getting anyone to listen to your songs and everything they are telling you doesn't work. But give me 60 seconds to explain why social media doesn't work at the low level of fandom these con artists tell you it does. Social media works because of reach and having an army of fans that put you into algorithms and your fans spread your message since at a certain point of scale it gets very easy to keep your music spreading to new people. Let's say this stunning piece of art I made on the screen right now is your social media following when you have 100 fans and this other circle is when you have 10,000 fans. The people in each circle are your fans who follow you and everyone outside the circle is who hears your latest songs from fans sharing you. As we can see most of your followers don't share your latest track no matter what size you are and just as bad usually only one person who hears it shares it afterwards and infects another person. But for the chat of an artist who has 10,000 fans tons of people share it and make you new fans. When you have great songs and content and are doing this well it can be massive but at the lower end of the scale even when you're killing it it doesn't do much good. This is why you always have to fight for every shared connection you make with a new fan at the below 10,000 fans mark. With that said there's ways to get this to work if you just understand the game. So let's talk about what does work. Let's first talk about your goals. The whole goal of the playlist this video is a part of is to get you to 10,000 fans so let's call that our goal right now. So let's talk about what's downstream from that though which is two objectives that get us to that goal. So the first thing is awareness. Obviously since we're talking about promoting your music our goal is to bring awareness to your music and by awareness I mean knowing what a song sounds like not just that you make music and look cute in different outfits since I know a lot of you are guilty of that. Social media is littered with artists that people know who they are but have never heard a note they make in music. What we want to do here is make posts and we want to use those posts to make people know you're doing cool things and that they should know as much about you as possible so they don't feel left out. Secondly we're trying to build bonds. I think the biggest mistakes artists I talked to make about social media is they don't remember that fans support the artist they feel the closest bonds with. Oftentimes what's written in the caption is more important than a good-looking picture on Instagram. A tweet where you share insight and truth can expose you to more fans than an announcement. Think about how you start conversations and show your unique self while also being informative about what you have going on. There's a balance between over sharing and not telling your fans about your music enough and just being a boring press release factory does not work. I believe the artists that find a balance between these two polls get the most mileage out of social media and if you don't believe me these bonds help don't make me pull up that MTV study that shows fans support the artist they feel the closest bonds with. Look what you made me do. But let's remember what no one likes whatsoever on social media being talked at instead of with. It is insane to see how much better a reaction you get at the below 10,000 fan level when you talk in a conversational tone with people on social media. Put out a new song, ask your fans how it made them feel. This opens up so many conversations and conversations create bonds. Your social media presence needs to be building an understanding of you as that understanding invites curiosity and then helps us with the first goal of them listening to your music and building a relationship with it. Since the bonds you build on social media not only make your fans support you more they help spread you. But let's also talk about reminding since we mentioned out there. What does reminding mean for social media? Sometimes I forget I love a song and then YouTube reminds me to listen to that song again and then my relationship grows with them. Sometimes I forget how much I enjoyed a record and then a social media update that gets retweeted will remind me I really enjoyed that record. So now that we know what our goals are we have to figure out what type of content you're going to make that brings those two goals together. So I want you to think about that SWAT analysis we did a few videos ago and if you haven't done one you should go back and do it and then I want to think about what your personality is going to be. So there's a few particular personality types that work well on social media and the best news is that you can do all of them or just one of them. It's entirely up to you and there's successful hours to do any combination of them. The first is insightful. The insightful social media person talks about the lessons of life, mental health and what they have gone through in life. Oftentimes it's in the context of their songs and the emotions that went into them or the life events around them so their audience can see how it came out in musical form. Then there's the political social media person. There's the person who posts about politics and activism around their music. They don't necessarily need to have songs about politics but this often creates bonds around them as fans respect that they stand for something. Anyone who tells you that you lose fans if you're being political is an absolute moron. You gain just as many from people who support that you take a stand. Tons of groups who suck or are highly political get attention for their outspoken words and people want to support. Even the ultimate panderer in music Taylor Swift has gone political. And let's remember most of your fans don't even understand your politics anyway or care when you talk about them as long as it's not a riposte. Musician content. Are you a music or production nerd? Discuss that. Your musician fans want to know what you're doing. Talk about your process and interests of music because after all musicians nerds love to hear this and then see how you did this musically and it's a great way to get people to hear your music. Related to that is what I like to call my hobby. Star Wars gaming or you're a brony or whatever. Tons of musicians have had social media do them tons of favors by posting about their hobby and bonding with fans over this shared hobby. The next is a curator. If you're someone who appreciates culture greatly and is always aware of the best new music or underground movie or artist you can easily build bonds around these conversations. I personally do a lot of this where I talk about what I appreciated songs since I love dissecting songs and I'm also the person who watches every TV show and movie before everyone else sees them. I report to the world what I thought before everyone else. This could also be ranking records for your favorite bands on social media or starting conversations with followers on what they see in art music film or whatever. Next we have the funny person. If you are funny this can go a long way since we all know humor is the second biggest currency on the internet as good jokes and pranks get spread and get people following you faster than anything aside from our next thing memes. Memes are the greatest currency on social media. I mean we now have musicians like Mac Demarco and Post Malone who hire people just to make memes around them to market their music. If you can work your music into memes in a way that isn't cringe it can do you huge favors. So now let's talk about the different posts you make. The first thing we should discuss is those personality posts and those should be around 50% of what you do if not more. Then I want to talk about what we call storytelling which I also will say is the promotion of your music which should be 25 to 30% of it and then the last percentage is engagement which we will discuss in a second. Now I do want to talk about what some of these con artists on YouTube tell you which is you need to alternate between these three. As long as you keep there being a variety of these posts and you keep it in those percentages that's what's going to matter. No one's paying that much attention to your patterns to notice a formula. What they are paying attention to is if the content is quality as long as it's somewhere roughly within this graph all will be fine. The key is posting good quality posts than the actual quantity which will matter way less as long as people are enjoying what they're seeing. So let's talk a little bit more about these posts and we'll start with stories. Stories weigh more than everything and there's a reason Instagram named them this. If you tell stories you build bonds. Think of the times you've had in your life and what you're going through and write them down or tell them into a camera. Any way to get it across that shows vulnerability and allows connection that helps fans build those bonds. So I want you to think of every time you are promoting something that it's a story. New song tell the story about it. New tour talk about the bonds and the fun you had on the last one and why this is going to be a unique experience where you build stories with your fans at those shows. Just saying you're playing a show isn't enticing. Telling why it will be special is. The next piece of this puzzle is engagement. Engagement is everything from answering comments to reposting fans feelings about your music. Not only does engagement build your relationship with fans it also encourages them to promote you as they start to see you as someone they want to grow with and they know that promoting you can help build that relationship so liking and reposting what fans say about you is an engagement that helps them see you see them and keep them doing the work of promotion for you. Now we do have to talk about the biggest flaw in an engagement which is that in your feeds this needs to be the smallest part of what you do and not all clustered at once. If you become one of those people who shares how much fans love you all day and every day it becomes annoying and not interesting as you're not building bonds with people you're just bragging. Now on the day of a single or album release it's fine to go a little wild as it shows people are really enjoying what you did and that they should know about what you're saying or particularly maybe they want to build bonds with the people who are in your posts and they'll see that they could build that bond if they've listened that song. But really this should be the smallest part of your public posts. Instead of doing this work in comments and replies to your fans instead of having to put it publicly for everyone build those interactions in those comments and let's remember part of engagement is those bonds you make with fans so always reply with something open-ended that can keep a conversation going. In fact if you could be invulnerable or insightful in these conversations they go even further. Remember your fans are going to remember this more than you since it's a way more special interaction for them so be thoughtful. I always tell every artist I work with to reply to a conversation thinking about how it will be memorable for the fan. Another part of engagement is asking questions so much of social media is now polls. They don't need to be as serious as what songs to play on tour and it can often be silly like what should you wear or if you should buy a furries for trunk pad at a truck stop my answer is hell no. You should also employ throwbacks remind your fans of the times and also teach new fans your history. Throwbacks are always great to put on a calendar and remember to post from time to time and listen we have to remember early on especially before you've built up those 10,000 fans and even beyond that that the gate that the name of the game here is one fan at a time you could literally go back and watch videos of Justin Bieber lady Gaga and now groups like city morgue who you never suspect of doing this making one-on-one connections with fans all day long because at the beginning of the game that's what it's about so don't underestimate that you are working very slowly at first to keep building yourself up before you have an army of fans who are helping to promote you so win each battle one at a time so those are the broad strokes of how to see social media but let's talk about how to make great content the first thing you need to do is get in the habit of retention and why me by retention is remember to document what you do and remember what your good ideas are the fact is one when amazing things happen it sometimes is worth it to recreate it for the camera and get the shot and two whatever you do anything eventful think of how you can turn it into content this could be just going to a water park onto just being at a venue and finding the silliest place to take a picture think of how you make everything you do more exceptional and show your personality and put the effort into it but let's get into this one of the things everyone wonders is how you make exceptional content i can tell you an easy formula i know this video has been going on for a while but what i'm about to tell you is the prize for sticking around since it truly is some of the best advice i know that i've never seen anyone say the people who have success on social media are exceptionally good at writing down their best most unique or funny thoughts they then workshop them two of the people i talked to the most have millions of followers on social media and what the two of them do all day is send each other what they are thinking of posting and the other helps workshop it to get it better by telling them what they would do putting in the effort to make sure you have the best delivery device for your content is crucial as well you need to post it at the times your audience is online so many musicians make the mistake of being bored at four in the morning and posting great content you can easily observe many of the biggest accounts always post at the same time it's when they see the most reward some of this can be found from analytics as most social media has software to tell you when your fans are online but much of it needs to be found out through experimentation as well some content needs to stay on a list some things aren't best posted till a current event happens that's worthy of it other types of stuff you should be posting immediately the key is to get tons of categories in your notes up and have content ready to fire when things happen which now brings me to you should always have your content planned for a week ahead we've talked before in a previous video about that your content calendar should be there for all your releases and if you don't know what i'm talking about it the video is linked below but all the stories you're going to tell should be planned out every week it should basically be following a script yes there should be a improvisation when fun things happen you should do them but i make sure the rsi work with have it planned out every story they're going to tell around their music a week in advance so that we could have workshopped it as much as possible and then during that week they're just following a script if we have a funny post plan for wednesday and then something new comes up like a they got a good photo at chucky cheese or something we push that post back another week just do the work in advance and always be ahead and have content banks since this is one of the most important things you can do to keep the quality of your content as high as possible now let's talk about a bunch of general tips for social media if you link to Spotify or YouTube link to a playlist every time so they don't start playing someone else's music for your potential fan you want to build bonds deeper with these fans that you've linked to the service if you're going to share your music i love song dot link it's free and fans can choose where to stream next no more fucking teasers if you get someone's attention be sure to take advantage of it i know it's exciting when you're doing something fun and your favorite rsts but if you have less than 10 000 fans no one cares what's next but what's more important is reminding people to keep building bonds in a relationship with your music by going to the content they could already get addicted to if a fan has a good time liking your song but hasn't hit them yet when you set out teasers it wastes an opportunity since the listener can't hear the song but if you post that video after your song is out you're reminding a fan to continue a relationship it has a story they are building with that song they liked but wasn't their favorite song yet no one makes a calendar reminder eight days from now to listen to your single when you're a nobody so please stop doing this when you have under 10 000 fans analytics are really overrated but those services that tell you when your fans are online can really help better engagement if you're as graphic design challenged as me try setting up for canva for a few months and get the hang of what looks good for posts you can take their templates after a while and dump them into a graphic design program and work for there once you get the hang of it the next tip is while i think you should individually post to each social media platform the best automation service to trigger them all is iftt while you should post to each social network individually if you feel there's just too much time sucked from that instagram is the best service to trigger them all but unfortunately you can't do planning with instagram outside of using a notes app i really like smart url for a promotion tool it's one of the best things for social media to read analytics it's worth exploring if you're going to go hard on social media the next tip is to cross promote you should screen shot your best tweets occasionally and put them on your ig story and vice versa cross bring those two socials helps you be able to remind people more regularly that they should follow you on more social media platforms and the coming episodes will get more specific about each social media channel and specific tips for all of them including instagram facebook twitter youtube and if i could find one of those zoltar machines to make me 15 again i may even do one on tiktok i hope you subscribe to this channel and get alert to our next videos as we're going to be going over tons more strategy just like this thanks for watching am i missing anything is there any other way you would have done this i need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since i want to answer them so leave them in the comments since i answer every comment in every post i hope you like this video and if you did please like subscribe and get notified and i'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future i have a facebook group linked below that is only helpful information no playlist or con artists only artists having helpful discussions allowed if you want to learn more about me work on a record with me or check out any of my books podcasts or anything else i do go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon on all the socials one last thing there's two playlists here one is on how to grow your fan base from zero to ten thousand fans and the other is on how you promote your music with spotify or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as i have tons of tips for musicians