Build A Bigger Online Presence :: 20/20 Vision

Hi guys, Wendy Day here from Rap Coalition. You've probably figured out by now that I'm giving you little snippets of information about how to build your career in the music business, um, so that you can put out your music yourself and either profit from your own efforts or build your buzz large enough to attract a record label. And, um, Today I want to talk about building up your online presence, and this is something that I'm not 100% good at doing. I always hire people to do this, so I'm going to teach you what I know, but I want you to go and read as many books on this, do as much research on this. I mean, you should do that anyway, right? Like, always do the research to find the answers yourself. But, um, it's really important that you have really strong followings at all of the social media platforms, not just Instagram. Like, in the music industry, we tend to focus on Instagram and nothing else, but you need to build Twitter. You need to— that's what I just called it, Twitter. Um, you need to build your Twitter account. You need to build Facebook. You need to build your Snap account, TikTok, YouTube, SoundCloud. I consider all of that, even though YouTube YouTube and SoundCloud are platforms, I still consider them, um, social sites because people can leave you comments and you can interact with people. And that's really the subject of what I want to talk about today, is engagement and interaction, because that is what's going to propel you forward. Um, it should go without saying that you don't want fake views. Um, I'm gonna say it anyway because for some reason in hip-hop we tend to go And probably to soothe our own egos, right? We tend to go and buy fake followers and fake views. Don't do that. There's no upside to that. There is no one out here that is fooled by your fakest shit numbers, so don't do it. Interact with people, engage. When people are posting on your Instagram feed and your Twitter feed and your Facebook feed, go in and talk to them. You know, one of the ways that I learned, and this is a little bit old school, But one of the ways that I learned was to go into accounts of artists that have a similar sound to what you have. So like, if you're rapping about smoking weed, you know, go into Wiz Khalifa, go into the other rappers' accounts that have, um, similar subject matter and a similar sound to you, and start talking to people that are posting on their accounts and engage people and have conversations. You know, even if you're agreeing with somebody, or you have a different point of view— and be respectful, don't, you know, don't troll somebody— but if you go in and you start a conversation with somebody, there's a really good chance that they're going to go and check out your bio and see who you are and check out your music and see if they like you. And if they like an artist that has a similar sound to you, then it just kind of goes to say that they may like your music too. And this is kind of a numbers game. So, um, for example, I always tell my clients, if 1 out of 100 people will become your fan, or 100— 1 out of 1,000 people would become your fan, then if you want 1,000 fans, you've got to reach 100 times that, or 1,000 times that, right? So it's really a numbers game. You're going to have to reach a lot of people in order to bring people into your franchise and into your, um, your fan base, right? And you want real people because you want people to buy tickets to your shows, and you want people to purchase your merchandise, and you want them to stream your music, because these are all ways that you get paid. These are ways that you monetize your career. So, um, Tony did something really cool for me. He put together a list of posting frequencies for my clients, and I'm gonna share it with you right now. Um, and only you can determine what the best times to post are because you're going to see it in your own stats when you go into the dashboard. And your times of posting on Facebook might be different than your times of posting on Instagram. And guys, this is your job. So just making music and just performing is not what it takes to be a rapper. Marketing and promoting yourself is. And the great thing about social media is it's the most inexpensive way to promote. And when I say promote, I don't mean go in and spam people, like people with your music. You know, a lot of people go in and they'll @, you know, famous folks like @Future, @YoungThug, @Diddy. And I never understood why people do that because they're not your market. Like, it doesn't matter if Future's following you. I'm sorry, but Future is never going to be your friend. So market to people that are fans of the type of music that you're making and people that will spend money and come to your shows. So coming back to the posting frequencies, um, and again, it's going to change for everybody. This is what, what I used when I was building my accounts, and this is what I use with the newer clients that, um, I consult. So Monday through Thursdays, you should be posting on Facebook 2 to 3 times a day. Fridays through Sundays, you should up it to 3 to 5 times a day. Um, and that's throughout the day, that's not in a row. And of those posts, 70% should be lifestyle posts and 30% should be promotional posts. And I use that philosophy on all platforms. It's always a 70/30 ratio where it's 70% where you're talking about your life and what you're doing, and 30% when you're— where you're like, okay, check out my new video, or check out my new song, or, um, you know, if a topic comes into the news and— and you made a song about it, like if somebody gets killed by a cop and you made a song about police brutality, you know, and it's topical, that's the time to post something like that, you know, and talk about what your music represents to you. On Instagram, you should post 3 to 5 times a day. Instagram Stories 3 times a day so that you keep it in the top feed. On Instagram Live, you want to do once a day and you want it to be at the same time every day. So if your best following happens at 7 o'clock at night, you should be doing it routinely at 7 o'clock at night. For Snap, you want to do one post every 8 hours that you're awake. You want to put geofilters for every physical event that you have or movement that you have, geographic, um, filters. You can buy very inexpensively, um, frames that people can access so that if you're doing a show, and let's just say you're doing a show at, you know, Peachtree downtown, 14th and Peachtree in Atlanta, you can buy a geofilter for a 2 or 3 block radius so that when somebody's filming you on Snapchat, they have the choice of putting your filter around your image or, or any image. And it's just another way to, to promote yourself, and it's really affordable. It's a couple of bucks. YouTube, you should be posting once every other week, and you need a curator to hit keywords and to put cards and end screens, right? For your releases, you want to create a playlist for every release, you know, name it by your album title so that it increases your SEO and that people have more imaging that's hitting them about your music. For Twitter, you want to do 8 to 12 posts daily. Twitter is like a microblog, right? So with Twitter, you want to talk about, you know, don't just use it to complain like I do. You know, I'll sit there in traffic and be like, I hate this traffic in Atlanta, it drives me crazy. Use Twitter to engage people. Find out what your fans are interested in. You know, I do this on Instagram and Twitter. Ask questions. Make sure you use hashtags that are relevant so that people can find your content easily. You know, talk about shit that people are going to care about. Let them into your life a little bit. Talk about your life and who you are and what you believe and what your thoughts are, especially as it, it's a reaction to you know, everyday news. Like, talk about how you feel about the Iran conflict that's going on right now. You know, how do you feel about— I use police brutality as an example. You know, how do you feel about police brutality? Like, talk about things that you care about and keep it as authentic as possible, because people have bullshit meters. And when they look at something, they may not immediately know that it's bullshit, but it makes them go, I don't know if this is true. And you You don't ever want somebody looking at you like that. You want them to look at you like, okay, this dude is really on point. I may not agree with what he or she is saying, but I understand their point of view. And I think that that's really important. Just like you may not agree with what I'm saying in my videos. You might think that posting 2 to 3 times a day on Facebook is way too fucking much, and that's great. So do what you think is right. Do what's best for you. I'm only telling you what I've done and what my clients do. And their numbers are increasing, so it's working. If it wasn't working, we would alter that. So again, building your online presence is really key. Social media is so important, and of course the platforms that are a little bit more social, like SoundCloud, AudioMac, YouTube, they're all really important. Engage with people, interact with people. This is your job. This is exactly what you chose to do for a living. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. This will be on my YouTube channel tomorrow, so you can binge you can go there and watch everything. The link is in my bio. And make sure you hit the, um, the subscribe button above. And thanks for tuning in. Okay guys, take care. Bye.