Also, Round 3 of Awaken Your Fan Base is currently open for a limited time—interested? Check it out here.
Today is all about the second “law” of music marketing on social media, and that’s potency.
If you haven’t listened to the episode or read about the first law, I recommend you do.
It doesn’t matter which order you listen in, but these “laws” work with one another to generate great results, so it’s worth checking out!
As I explained in the first law, these “laws” aren’t really laws.
It sounds important to say laws, but really these are just things that are likely to help you in a big way if you work on them.
I’ve always had a hard time explaining this side of marketing without it coming out wrong, so let’s see if we can clean it up today and keep it nice and punchy.
What does potency mean when it comes to marketing on social media?
Let’s try it this way:
If you’re making a chocolate cake and you want people to love it, you want it to be rich and delicious and decadent…
…you want to make sure you’re putting in enough of the right ingredients to make it taste that good, right?
If you want it to be really chocolate—y, you don’t want to just put a little bit of chocolate in, because it won’t taste good enough.
It’ll be too plain; not exciting for your taste buds.
To get that rich, delicious, decadent cake that people will love, you need to fill this cake with chocolate.
It needs to be potent, not weak and plain like a cake that’s trying to be a chocolate cake… but isn’t really.
I hope you’re still with me.
It’s the same with the stuff you’re putting out on social media.
If you want to get a real reaction out of people, whatever world you’re building with your content needs to be potent.
It needs to be strong and rich and believable.
If you have a great idea for how to present yourself and / or your music but it’s not super potent, people will feel that.
I see this with musicians a lot, and one reason for that is they don’t yet have a strong brand strategy—they don’t have a clear artist identity.
Getting this sorted will help you understand how to show up and how you’re different.
But even still sometimes they can struggle with it, even with a solid strategy.
Because a strategy put into action only generates great results when the world you build is potent.
It doesn’t work nearly as well if the execution doesn’t line up with the quality of the plan.
So to give you a concrete example of what I mean here…
Example:
Let’s say you make sad, gloomy music for people going through hard times.
Your music helps them feel what they need to feel—it’s comforting them in dark times.
So you might want to position yourself as someone who’s in their shoes, someone who wants to just isolate themselves and be sad.
And now your goal is to create a potent world around this in your content so the right people are just pulled towards it.
What do you think is more likely to work well for you here?
Scenario 1, where you sit in some random plain room in your house and record a grainy, badly lit video with terrible audio of you singing and playing the song?
Or scenario 2, where you’re sitting by yourself on some lonely rock at the beach on a gloomy day singing and playing the song, while wind ruffles your hair and the sky looks like it’s holding back tears.
The image is maybe even colour graded to exaggerate the gloominess, and the audio is pristine so people can take in the song properly…
Number two, right? Because the the world is more potent.
It’s much easier to be pulled into that because it’s more of a rich, stimulating experience that emphasises the feeling you’re going for.
It doesn’t always have to go this far to work, but it’s an example of the difference between something that’s potent and something that isn’t.
I see musicians struggle with this a lot.
They might even know what world they want to create, but the execution falls flat.
And this is super understandable.
It’s hard to pull off if you don’t have experience with this stuff.
A lot of the time, the execution falls flat because some of what’s required to create a high level of potency in the context of social media is more skills that aren’t directly music—related.
And that sucks for a lot of them.
Unless they can just pay other people to do this stuff (which a lot can’t) musicians really are expected to do a whole lot beyond the music.
So even though we’re talking about why things might not be working and what to work on to improve, I want you to know that I know this isn’t easy.
It can be a huge challenge and you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself if you’re not yet able to pull this off—this will take practise and working through a lot of frustration.
I struggle with this too in my own content when it comes to communicating certain messages.
One of the reasons I’m currently doing animations a lot is because they help to increase the potency of the messages.
It’s a way to get people to actually stop and listen, and it gives them visual cues that match up with the message so it hits them harder.
And now’s a good time to mention that…
Potency doesn’t apply only to music performance content.
This potency could apply to talking head videos or reaction videos or skits or anything, just maybe in different ways.
It also doesn’t have to be so intense all the time.
The gloomy beach video is a great example, but you don’t always have to go to some beautiful location and film some elaborate thing to create a potent experience.
Sometimes you can achieve it with a nice performance with a simple but nicely recorded video.
You can create a potent experience in lots of different ways:
Visuals.
You can use settings or scenes, colours, effects, perspectives, creative film techniques, and how you look to increase the potency of your messaging.
This also includes the quality of the recording—a beautiful clean shot with some nice depth of field can drastically elevate the experience. Not in all cases, but in some.
^This is an important part of it and we’ll talk about this more soon.
Audio (of course).
There’s a reason songs are mixed and mastered and why we prefer that sound to a tinny recording on a phone or something.
It’s more pleasing to the ear and it’s again a more potent audio experience.
Some musicians don’t like that they have to think about audio when it comes to content… but the audio experience is extremely important in 99% of cases.
Storytelling & emotional appeal.
A song about a topic that resonates strongly with people is much more likely to get a response than a song with less emotionally compelling subject matter (if your approach to marketing is this kind of thing: “I wrote this song about blah”.)
Not everyone makes music about stuff that will suit this approach, but a potent story is a powerful angle.
Potency of performance, energy & personality of the artist.
A high energy song demands a high energy personality or performance or presentation.
And if you don’t make high energy stuff, you need to figure out what kind of energy your music gives off and then find a way for your videos to reflect that in a potent way.
And if you are doing different things like talking head videos or taking some other approach, maybe it’s the subject matter or the way you deliver the message, or something else.
It’s about emphasising the things that make you appealing in the context of social media.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean you can just post the music and everything works.
What I really want you to take away from this is the idea that when you’re trying to get yourself out there on social media, if you want people to respond strongly to your stuff…
You will more likely get a better result when the experience is potent, in whatever way that means for you.
You want to be able to look at your marketing material and say “there’s real strength here—I’m really getting the message across.”
If you can’t easily say that, maybe there isn’t much potency in your stuff.
Maybe the world your music creates is not coming through enough in the videos you’re putting out.
This is the majority of musicians, so it’s highly likely if you’re not getting the response you want, this has something to do with it.
I recommend you audit your videos and see if you can see what I mean.
And I’ll give you a good starting point: Look at the visual side of things.
A case for the visuals.
If I had to pick one thing that 99% of musicians could improve in their content on social media, it would be the visual aspect.
I talked about this a bit in the first law episode, but we’re going to talk about it some more now because I really want to drive this home.
On social media—a visual medium—the visual appeal of your content is super important.
Probably more important than you think.
Not all the time and with all types of content, and not for all artists… but in so many cases.
This idea that’s been spread around that no one cares about what your videos look like nowadays is simply wrong.
It’s because of the whole TikTok thing which showed that in some ways, the visual aspect is less important.
For example, a lot of casual talking head content is fine.
I’d say at least half the time, if we’re talking about a casual talking head video vs a cinematic type talking head video, the visuals aren’t going to have as big of an impact as what we used to think (as long as the message is really strong).
It can still help to imprint a certain image of someone in people’s minds, but sometimes the casual thing is actually helping you there.
The visuals might also not matter so much in music content situations where the artist is exceptionally good in a way that easily translates to social media.
Someone like Reagan Beem is a perfect example for this.
His voice is clearly super stand—out and he can easily get the message across with his voice, a guitar, and a phone.
That’s still a super potent experience. Go and watch his stuff and you’ll see what I mean.
The same might also apply for exceptionally proficient musicians who shred on their instrument.
A crazy drummer or guitarist or pianist doesn’t need to worry nearly as much about this because they’re so good it’s almost like a gimmick.
It’s not obviously, but they’re so good it has a whole new kind of appeal.
This is what all musicians wish could be the case for them—and I get it—but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.
Depending on your specific appeal and the music you make, you may need to take a totally different approach.
Another example of when visuals don’t play such an important role is when the artist is already known and loved.
Taylor Swift could do whatever she wants.
Any artist who’s got a decent fan base already can get away with it, because people are already emotionally attached.
They love the artist, they love the songs, and they’re going to be super forgiving of how the content looks (and sounds).
In these cases, this kind of low effort video is probably even a massive advantage for these artists, because fans love to see them in this kind of setting.
But it is a very human thing to enjoy visuals.
A lot of people will say they don’t care about what things look like when it comes to content.
I think this can sometimes be something that reinforces our identity as a good person, someone who’s above that and cares more about the substance—the appearance doesn’t have any impact on us.
And I also think sometimes for musicians it can maybe be a commitment to appreciating the music for the music and not wanting to give in to the visual side because it can make you feel shallow in some way.
And also, some people truly just don’t care.
But when it comes to content, most of the time, people’s actions and reactions say otherwise.
There is a very strong correlation between visually interesting videos and high performance when it comes to showcasing your music.
Of course, again this depends on the type of video, but the connection is clear.
And not only have I seen countless public comments on posts that literally say something like “the visuals hooked me in but I stayed because the music is great”…
But this works on a subconscious level too.
People will stop on a video that looks interesting or appealing without even necessarily knowing why they stopped scrolling.
Their brain just tells them they want to stop.
And they might enjoy the video and then think “I like this video”, but they didn’t make the connection that they stopped initially because of how it looked.
We process images super fast too, way faster than text.
Often we scroll onto a video and then based on how it looks we make the decision to give it a chance or just move on.
So great visuals can act as great hooks.
But they can also add so much extra depth and emotional weight to your videos.
This is something I think a lot of musicians forget when they’re trying to get themselves out there on social media:
Great visuals can evoke a strong emotional response from people.
They can show someone quickly and effectively what you’re all about—what kind of person you are—and they can provide extra context for understanding your music.
And just in case you forgot, emotion is everything when it comes to marketing.
It is the single biggest driving force when it comes to people responding to what you put out.
People don’t use logic to decide whether or not to react to your music or your content—it’s all feeling.
And visuals can play a massive part in creating a strong feeling.
On top of this, having visually interesting videos generates engagement, like comments.
If the aesthetic or the scene is really nice or interesting, some people will feel compelled to say something.
They won’t necessarily say something directly about the visuals, but they will feel compelled to say something nice about the video.
A lot of the time when it comes to music content, it might be they comment about how beautiful the song is, but they don’t realise how big a role the visuals are playing in making them feel like that.
This is also super common on those massive accounts run by really attractive people who play an instrument.
These comment sections are usually very full.
And although some people will directly comment on the person’s appearance, a lot of the comments are either more general, like “this is awesome” or about some other part of the video unrelated to appearance.
And obviously there’s more to it than just the visual side.
These high performing music accounts often have great stuff that’s worthy of commenting on anyway—it’s not just about how the person or the video looks…
But the visual aspect helps a ton to make people want to comment—you simply can’t deny it.
The reason I’m pushing this so hard is because it will seriously help you if you pay attention to it.
To ignore the visual aspect or to pretend that people don’t care about this side of things will only severely limit your potential.
You may have fantastic music, but many musicians who aren’t doing all that well on social media do too.
I know heaps of them.
You may need to work on the visual aspect to create a more potent experience for people, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
That doesn’t mean your music sucks.
It’s a very human thing to give weight to visuals, especially on visual platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
Even most extremely popular artists on these platforms are thinking about the visual side.
I will say though…
This does not mean you should automatically go out and spend a bunch of money on high production value content.
This in no way guarantees any kind of great result.
Visually interesting or visually appealing does not automatically mean high production value.
You might be able to get a great result from something with lower production value that’s still eye catching in some way.
Or it could be something to do with how you film and move the camera around to create an engaging experience.
Or maybe you can get something cool with edits or effects.
It’s not happening as much nowadays, but not that long ago a lot of musicians were going all in on these really high production value assets and hoping they would perform well.
But they weren’t because there wasn’t enough focus on it being suitable for the platforms.
So just in case you were thinking of going out and doing this, stop and have a think about whether or not it makes sense for you.
High production value stuff doesn’t work by default.
So I’d like to keep this one shorter and focused on the message I’m really trying to drive home:
That it’s really important to create a rich experience, like the ‘chocolate—y’ chocolate cake.
That doesn’t almost mean expensive feeling; it means there’s real strength behind what you’re putting out.
We all feel when there’s a lack of energy and potency.
We don’t feel compelled to react.
That little thing doesn’t go off in our brain where we feel like we just have to respond.
But once you cross that line and the stuff you’re putting out has real power, people will start to notice.
Again, if your music is already powerful, one major way you can level up your presentation of it on social media is working on the visual aspect.
That’s why I’ve pushed the point here more than anything else.
Once you crack the visual side, you unlock a whole lot more potential.
This second “law” works hand in hand with the first one, which again is alignment.
If you haven’t checked out the first law episode yet, I recommend it—it will help to reinforce the idea behind this one as well.
Ok, let’s leave it here.
A super quick reminder that doors to round 3 of my course Awaken Your Fan Base are open now but won’t be for much longer.
So if you’re interested in learning how to grow your fan base on social media in 2024, check it out 🙂
Ok, have a great one and I’ll see you again soon.
Alex
