In this solo presentation, Wendy Day of Rap Coalition explains how she leverages short‑form video platforms—primarily TikTok, but also Triller and Dubsmash—to promote rap artists whose core audience is 13‑26 years old. She outlines the demographic fit of TikTok, the technical workaround for uploading 30‑second song snippets via DistroKid (looping a 90‑second clip to control the first 30 seconds), and the structure of influencer campaigns that pay young U.S. creators to post authentic dance, lip‑sync, or lyric‑related videos. Day describes giveaway contests that use Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook to amplify reach, and how live Instagram streams can recycle TikTok content back to other platforms. She notes the niche value of Triller and the predominantly African‑American audience of Dubsmash. Paid promotional options are limited; third‑party companies can run ads on TikTok and Triller, but Wendy has not yet tested them. She references Brandman Sean’s free tutorial on TikTok promotion economics and algorithm quirks. A concrete case study follows: Little Donald’s two‑year‑old track “Do Better” went viral on TikTok, generating tens of thousands of user videos, boosting Shazam hits, and driving spikes in Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Twitter metrics. Wendy emphasizes the importance of tracking cross‑platform data to gauge campaign effectiveness and hints at launching a targeted TikTok push for the artist.
Chapters
Hi guys, Wendy Day here from Rap Coalition, and you may have noticed that I posted for you a free video from Brandman Sean about, um, TikTok. And I found it so interesting that I thought that I would do a video just to share with you guys how, um, I've been using TikTok with my clients. One of the great things about TikTok is that it is an audience of young people, and that's our market for most of the artists that I work with. So the bulk of the people that we're trying to reach, our target market in rap, is 13 to 26, at least for the type of rap that, that I'm working with currently. And that is TikTok's market. Like, TikTok is, you know, 8-year-olds to 26-year-olds, the bulk of the audience. So it's just a natural place for us to market and promote. And we do influencer campaigns, so we will upload a song, a 30-minute clip, and either you need to choose your own 30-minute clip Or you can upload your song and let TikTok choose which 30 seconds they're going to focus on. And the thing about uploading, um, we use DistroKid to upload to TikTok, and you can't just upload a 30-second clip, um, because DistroKid doesn't allow that. So what we do is we loop it 3 times so that it's a minute and a half, but the first 30 seconds are what uploads to TikTok. That's kind of how we bypass, um, that issue. That way you can choose exactly what portion of your song you want on there, and you don't have to just upload one, um, one piece of your song. You can upload, uh, you know, a bunch of different clips of your song. But I like the idea of controlling it so that we can make sure that we get the chorus in there, um, usually twice. So We do influencer campaigns, which means we pay, um, kids in the US that have a large following to do some sort of, uh, post to the clip. The post can be a dance, it might be something that relates to school, it might be something that relates to the lyrics, it might just be like a lip sync version of them singing along. But we don't dictate what they do. We let them choose what they feel fits the song because we want it to be authentic. And we don't push somebody to, um, participate unless they really want to. Like, we don't want people doing it just for the money. We want them to really look at this as a creative opportunity, and then, oh, by the way, they're making money. Um, and we find that when they post their videos, it causes other fans to make videos and repost them, and they do that for free. So the goal is to get as many, um, viewers and as many posts as you can on your snippet of the video. Um, we also do giveaways, so we might host a contest for TikTok And we use, um, Instagram and Snap and Facebook to advertise the contest. So like, we might give away a pair of, um, headphones or, um, cash. Usually cash is a good one, right? Because everybody wants to get some money. And the great thing about TikTok is because it skews a little bit young, you can give away you know, $250, and it seems like a lot of money because they're younger participants. They're, you know, middle school and high school and college kids for the most part, so the money goes a long way. Also, you can go live on Instagram to give away the prize so that you're getting a bang for the buck on your social media as well. And of course, any of the, um, TikTok videos that are pretty cool, you can then post them on your social media as well. So it's just a really great way to transfer viewers from TikTok to social media, from social media back to TikTok. We also do Triller campaigns in the same fashion. Um, Triller is a really great, uh, vehicle for rappers to use because of the amount of people that watch it and the amount of people willing to make videos on Triller. There's also DubSmash. DubSmash has a smaller audience, but it's like 96% African American, if that's your— if that's your market. And for most of the artists that I work with, that is the market. So those are just some of the things that we do, um, on TikTok and Triller. You can also purchase, um, a promotional campaign on Triller through Triller. You can promote— you can purchase a promotional campaign for TikTok, but it's run by third-party companies. You can't go to TikTok and purchase a promotional campaign, at least not yet. I know that ads are coming on TikTok. There are a few people, um, in the U.S. that actually offer that, a few promotional companies that offer the ability to advertise on TikTok. We haven't tried that yet, so I can't week on the success rate of that. Definitely go though and check out Brandman Sean's, um, free video that he did on TikTok because it's really interesting. I posted it here on my IGTV, um, this morning, and you can also find it at @brandmanshawn. He set up a website for TikTok promotions so that you can learn more about it. And, um, I was checking it out today. It also has, um, an email campaign that he's sending out, and it's really interesting because I learned today— man, I love learning shit, you know? I really love being in your position where I get to watch somebody's video and come away with something that I can use. But he was talking about how with TikTok you shouldn't go in and just follow a lot of videos because it will limit the amount of people that will see whatever you're posting on TikTok. And I didn't know that the algorithm worked that way, so that was really, that was really great to learn. So he's sending out, um, an email blast to anybody that's following his campaign and has signed up for the newsletter, um, to watch his campaign. And, um, I just, I just love the free information. I think it's amazing. It's kind of like what I'm doing here, only he pulled out like a whiteboard and went into detail about how um, how low the cost is when you're, when you're, um, when your music is on TikTok, it's impacting Apple Music and Spotify and your YouTube channel. And he goes in and points out exactly what the cost is per view. So he broke it down financially and made it like super duper interesting. Um, as you guys know, I work with Little Donald and um, at Christmas I uploaded, uh, Do Better, which is a song that's 2 years old, to TikTok. And Donald called me 2 weeks ago and he said, yo, um, I'm trending on TikTok. I'm like, what do you mean? He said, Do Better is actually trending on TikTok. In the first night that we looked at it, there were like 17,000 videos made, and then by the next night it had increased another 22,000. And then as I went in and started to watched some of these videos, I realized that not only were the folks on TikTok, um, making videos to the portion of the song that Donald and I uploaded, but there were other snippets of the song that fans had uploaded. And one of them is at like 72,000 videos. That's not views, that's videos that have been uploaded using just that one snippet of the song. And it's funny because it's a different snippet than, than we had chosen to upload, and it's not even labeled as Do Better by Little Donald. It's just, you know, it looks like a random audio, um, sample. Of course, the Content ID is picking it up, which is a beautiful thing, but— and it's increasing the Shazams, which is a beautiful thing. But as we're watching this thing trend at TikTok, we're really seeing how it's impacting, um, Spotify and Apple Music, and it's also impacting his Twitter, which was a little surprising to me because I didn't understand the relationship between, um, between Twitter and TikTok. But there definitely is one because I see the numbers increasing, um, exponentially on his, on his Twitter account. So make sure you follow your, um, data and your research when you're posting on TikTok, take a look at how it's affecting everything from your YouTube to your Spotify to your Apple Music, and, um, in this case, even Twitter. And, um, we're gonna probably, um, this is on it, this is happening organically, but we're probably going to do some sort of a TikTok campaign. We're not sure what yet, just to help drive this. And, um, drive it to the next level and see how far we can take it. So that's all for today. That's, um, this is going to be posted on my YouTube channel at youtube.com/thisiswendyday, and I'll make sure I put a link to Brandman Sean's, um, YouTube, uh, video of what he's doing with TikTok promotions because it's pretty damn interesting. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Bye!
