 Hey everybody, what's going on, it's ya man, Kory, welcome to The Digital Dash where I be giving you guys tips on how to market your songs and get those numbers, booming now. If you don't know who I am, like you're new to the channel, I am 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 to you guys about today are some key takeaways that you can take from studying Shake West's come up. If you've been under a rock for the past year, year and a half, then Shake West is his young rapper out of Harlem. He's currently signed to Kanye West's good music, Travis Scott, Captain Jack, Allyn, and the Scope Records. He started enjoying some major success within last year after his song, Mo'Bama, really took off and blew up. And after really sitting down, studying his come up, studying how he moved before he got to where he is, I do think there are some things that you guys can apply to your own careers to kind of help yourself get started, help yourself get settled, and start to build out of buzz. Now, before we get into all of that, come and follow me on Instagram. I make sure to put my nickname below on the screen. Come talk to me, come engage with me, come give me some video ideas. I always need some video ideas, guys. Now, with that being said, let's get right into it. All right, so takeaway number one is to work your song. And when I say work your song, I'm not talking about for a week or two weeks or even a month. But I mean to really work and push your song over an extended period of time. Now, a common thing that I personally see with a lot of artists is you guys will drop a song, you'll put out a couple Instagram posts, maybe a music video, and then two weeks later you're moving on because the song didn't quite take or catch off the way that you had hoped it would. Now, I think that Shaq West can actually explain this a little bit better than I can. One thing I know is with songs, and it's a lot of things I feel like kids understand, like they'll have a fire track, but they'll be like, why doesn't it blow up? Some blow-ups just happen on accident, and some blow-ups you gotta really push. I've always been pushing my bomba. You gotta really just push your music and just go behind it. If you know you got this crazy track, push that one joint. So if we look at Shaq West specifically, right, he dropped Mo'Belma in June of 2017. It didn't hit the Billboard charts until September of last year, September of 2018. That means that his label have been working that same song for well over a year, like 15 months to be exact. And the thing is he's not the only case that we've heard about, he's not the only artist that we know of that took months of working the song for them to blow up. If you think about it, there was Fetty Wapping Trap Queen. There was Ella May and Boot Up. So I think that one of the key takeaways from this is that if you have a good song, then it does deserve the proper time and attention of a long, well-thought-out marketing plan. So the next time you're sitting down planning your release, or even your post-release for a song, make sure that you're planning for six months, or maybe even a year, or maybe even longer. All right, so key takeaway number two is to focus on singles over projects. Now, if you really think about it, Shaq West just dropped his first album, Mud Boy, last October, October 2018. For that, he only had a handful of songs out and like a couple of features. But his main focus was on Mobemma and Lil Shaq West dot Shaq West. Those were his main two focuses. Now, what I got from that is that he wasn't necessarily trying to bombard his fans with a whole project. He wasn't trying to convince people who had never heard of him to go check out 12 songs. He just wanted you to listen to these two songs, decide if you liked him from that, and then invite you into his fan base and take you on a journey with him from there. And key takeaway number three, the last takeaway is to tell your story, give your fans something to connect to. Now, I think that one of the most interesting parts of the Mud Boy rollout was how he connected his personal stories to the title. He told the story about how his mom and his brother tricked him into going to Africa. And I'll just let you guys watch the clip. My mom sent me to Africa because she didn't want me modeling and I wasn't going to school. I was like running in the street. So I'm with friends, yeah, to send it off. She was like, you're not just going to be taking these cute little photos and hanging out with the weed smokers. We sending you back. I wasn't even like, even like smoking crazy back then. Like I was just on something like just wild. Like I don't even want to be at home. So once the marketing for Mud Boy kicked into hot gear, he told that story in every single interview, constantly reminding his fan base about how that connected to the Mud Boy title and giving them a reason to further connect with and support that project. Now, this is something that you guys can do for your own stories and your own content as well. And you don't necessarily need a big platform to do it on. Now I'm sure it will help. But you guys have Instagram, you have YouTube, you have Twitter. Just figure out a creative way to tell your story to your fan base to get it out to them so they will want to connect with you on a personal level. Thus connecting with the art more, making them want to support you even harder than they may already do. So there we have it guys. Those are my key takeaways from studying Shack West and his come up. I love to hear what you guys think. Let me know in the comment section below. Also, let me know if there's anything that you noticed watching Shack West that maybe helped you out. I'm sure that we could all benefit from it as well. 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 Corey and I'll see y'all next time.