Social Media Basics | Wendy Day Speaks With Tony Guidry

Hey, this is Wendy Day. I have a guest with me. This is Tony. Hi, Tony.

How you doing?

I'm good, Tony. Ah, this is so stupid. Tony's my husband, for those of you who don't know. This is @iamthekonnect on all social media. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about social media.

Yep, we're gonna talk about starting and getting started with social media, like from scratch, from nothing.

Oh good, so this is great for the people that have like a small following and wanna build it bigger.

Right.

Oh good, okay, this is good, this is good. In fact, let me start if you don't mind.

I don't mind at all.

Okay. Tony actually builds the social media for most of my clients, so I feel a little stupid saying this, but When I'm building social media for my clients, um, I advise them to go in and look at the followers of artists that have similar music to them. So if an artist has sort of more commercial, um, hip-hop, I'll tell them to go in and, um, go into J. Cole's followers and start following some of J. Cole's followers. And do you know how many you're allowed to follow within a given amount of time?

Um, Twitter just started a throttling system where they just tightened it up. With Twitter, it's, um, a couple of hundred a day. I think it's 200 a day. With Instagram, it's 50 per hour.

Okay. And that changes like from time to time. So you really kind of got to stay on top of that so that you don't get, you know, you don't get— what is— do they still have Twitter jail? They definitely still have Twitter jail.

I've avoided Twitter jail.

Yeah. All the time.

Yeah, Facebook, I mean Instagram will kick you out.

Oh, do they really?

Yeah, they kick you out. They'll kick you out and make you change your password.

Oh man, okay, so they think you're being hacked when you add too many people.

Or using a spammy technique.

Right, like a bot or something. Yeah, don't do that, don't do that. But then when I advise the artist to go in and follow, you know, okay, you said 200 is the limit, follow 200 people, when they go back the next day or a day later, anybody that hasn't followed them back, they should get rid of and then follow 200 more people. And that way you can build your following with people that you already know have some affinity for rap music.

True, true.

What else can they do?

Well, let me, let me take it back a notch and say that when you get started You want to create your, your accounts on all of the platforms that you're going to be active on. Okay. So we know that with social media, Facebook is the largest social media site. We know Instagram is one of the largest media sites.

And it's owned by Facebook.

It is owned by Facebook. Snapchat is the fastest growing social media site.

And skews younger. Yes. Like if you have younger audience, younger audience that That's the way to go, right?

Snapchat? Definitely, definitely. Teens love Snapchat. And then Twitter. Facebook and Twitter skew older, but each of them has their own benefit. On Facebook and Twitter, you can get people to— people just have to click one button when you're on the link. They can just click the link and it'll take them straight to your content or your video or whatnot. In Instagram, You can't include a link. The links aren't active in the description or in the content, the caption of your video or picture. So since the link isn't— there's no active links, no hyperlinks, the person has to look at your content or look at your post, click on your name, find a link in the bio, click on the link in the bio, then respond to Open Safari yes or no on their phone.

That's a lot of steps.

Yeah, and so this is what hinders Instagram from being super effective in, in marketing or promoting a product because it's the funnest to use and it's the easiest to use, and it's pictures, so it's easy to catch people's attention, or easier to catch people's attention. But then they have to take so many steps to engage with what you have going on that you don't see the same rate of success. Right, if 100 people see your Instagram post, if 1,000 people see your Instagram post, then maybe 1 or 2 of them might get to your online content, to your video or your song at Spotify or Pandora or SoundCloud. 1 or 2 out of 1,000, and that's a good number. Whereas with Twitter, if 1,000 people see your tweet, then you're looking at 10 to 15 people are gonna be clicking on you. Posts or clicking on your content. So, but the, the, in the very beginning, in the very beginning, you want to make sure that your names and in the accounts that you make are representative of who you are as an artist. Like, um, MC I'm the Best don't want to have me a demo. Yeah, he don't want to have Instagram that's "I'm the best bitch" and then a Twitter that's "Yes, I'm the best" and then his Facebook "Of course I'm the best" and a Snapchat "I'm the best super snapper." He wants to have or she would want to have the same name consistently and uniformly across all platforms. It makes it simpler for the people to track you across platforms because the more places they track you The more times they see you, as long as you're active, and the better chance you have of getting them to engage with you. So the first thing you want to do is have your name uniform. You want to have all of your descriptions correct for your accounts. You want to have them a simple but direct description of exactly who you are and what you do. Don't skip over that. And then you want to make sure that you are active. Always be active on every post. And if you can, if you can, don't auto-post everything from Instagram to Twitter or Instagram to Facebook.

Like, I do that.

Yeah. Well, the crazy thing about that is Facebook caters to longer statuses and photo statuses and memes.

Right.

Twitter, of course, is short, short bursts, short blurbs. Instagram is straight photos. Snapchat is straight photos and videos. So the captions aren't the most important thing in Snapchat and Instagram, but on Facebook, people are looking sometimes for longer captions, um, and interesting things of that nature. So you want to change it up. Because if I follow you on Facebook and everything you post on Facebook comes straight from your Instagram only, then I don't have to follow you on Instagram. But if you mix it up, right, then they have to follow you on both platforms, everything, right?

That's what you want, right?

Exactly.

Interesting. So what's, what's best to post? Like, should they just post their music?

Well, okay. You don't want to make your social media site, your social media accounts, a broadcast site for your music. And I go through this with a lot of guys a lot of times, but you don't want to make it where all you post about is, hey, check out my new album, check out my new single, hey, my mixtape just dropped, hey, look, I'm shooting a video, hey, look, this is my music, hey, look, this is a link to my music. That's not what you want to do. You want to mix it with your lifestyle as a person and who you are, along with what you do, along with your music.

So like give them a glimpse of who you are as a person, right? Like your private life almost.

Well, really what you do is you give them more of your private life than of your music, because once they become a fan, they're listening to the music, they have access 24/7 of everything that you do musically. But they don't have access to who you are as a person and what you do during the day except what you give them. Right. So if you're a fan of Young Dolph, you don't know what Young Dolph eats for breakfast unless he puts it on his Instagram or he puts it on Snapchat. So, but you know he got a new mixtape out, but you don't know what he's doing. You didn't know, you might not know he bought a new chain or he bought a new car or any of these things if you're a fan of his. Fan of his unless he puts it up on his social media, which he's very good at doing. The more successful guys, um, are able to use the social media channels to promote themselves as a person and, and their music. So it's the artist comes first and then the music for social media. Uh, got it.

I like that too because it gives you, it gives you like an inner glimpse. Like, I love when guys are recording an album and they show you like videos from inside the studio, you get like a glimpse of who they're recording with. In fact, I knew Metro Boomin on social media before we ever met him in person, right? Before we ever had him come and produce for anybody, right? And I loved him as a person, and I got to know him through watching him on social media, right? Which was a little awkward when we got him into the studio in person, right? Because I felt like I knew him. I couldn't just talk to him like like the way I wanted to because I felt like we were friends and we weren't. I'd never met him, he didn't know who I was, you know. So, but, but I love that about social media. I love that you can really study people. Um, in fact, in a lot of my videos I've been, I've been telling, um, the folks watching to build relationships with people because with social media you can go in and you can see like what do they care about, you know. Kill 'Em Mike is a great example. I love him as a person and I love him as a rapper, but if you don't know him and you follow him like on Instagram, you really get to know who he is. Like, I know him very well, and who he is that I know is the same as who he is on Instagram. So you can really find somebody's like political bent and what makes them crazy and what they hate and what they love and what they're passionate about and their family and It's really helpful.

Right, and it's helpful for the artist and it's helpful for the artist's music because sometimes a person might not always like every song that you make, but if they agree with you on certain principles or topics, then they'll still give you a listen.

Right. And they'll give you feedback. They'll tell you, you know, I like when you make this kind of music more so than when you make that kind of music.

Well, allow me to say this. We live in a time of trolls.

Yeah, that's a good point. Douchebaggery on the internet.

A big thing to understand and to realize is not to even take to heart the comments that you get, whether they're super positive or super negative. You're gonna have your super fans who are gonna tell you that you're the greatest rapper ever, you're the best thing since Biggie, you're better than Tupac, which I worked with a guy who, uh, the kid from Canada told us he was better than Tupac on his first mixtape. You know, like, he's the— you greater than Tupac, bro. And so you can't let that part get to your head. And then you also can't let the man— you're trash, you're garbage, quit rapping. You know, you can't let that get to your head either. So the more eyes that you do get, um, on the Instagrams or the Snapchats or Facebooks you're going to get more and more people telling you something negative because everybody has their opinion, and online they're free to voice it with no repercussions, right? You know, and so there are people who live their whole life, their whole day, they're in their grandmother's basement somewhere, 40 years old, commenting on some 20-year-old rapper's music saying that it's trash, and they didn't even listen to it. They just ran across the link and was like, oh, this garbage, this is trash. And so with that, with that type of stuff, when you don't know who these people are, then you can't let that affect you, you know what I'm saying? Just understand, yeah, understand that you're using social media as a tool to let people know who you are and introduce them to your music, in that order. Whatever somebody doesn't like, disregard them, because you want to focus on the people who do like what you're doing. Matter. The people who don't like what you're doing don't matter.

Exactly. Yeah, this was cool.

I think so.

This is our first video together. We just started speaking on panels together, so this is pretty exciting.

Yeah, it is.

And I love you. This is awesome. I love you so much. Let's not make it a Hallmark moment. Can we do this again though? Like, can we, can we go into more detail and get even more helpful and give more secrets?

Well, we can talk about a few tactics that, uh, that'll help guys. Oh, okay. Build a following and have more, um, have more interaction. Cool.

So be looking out for that. That'll be coming soon. Thank you, Tony. I appreciate you.

Okay, y'all for tuning in.

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