Last week on Instagram I asked musicians what they were struggling with when it comes to music marketing.
One of the answers was “how to come up with genius marketing ideas that actually perform well”.
There are a lot of ways we could go with this, but given the context, the way I interpreted this was “how do I make great music content that actually performs well?”
And even still there are a lot of ways we could go with this. All kinds of things can work.
But over the last 5—ish years of:
- Testing a bunch of stuff out
- Working with musicians
- Studying high performing videos
- And looking for patterns…
I’ve found there are things you can work on to drastically increase your chances of videos performing well.
We’re going to call them “The 7 Laws Of Music Marketing on Social Media” for dramatic effect and because I hope you’ll take them seriously.
Today we’ll talk about the first law.
These aren’t immutable laws—they’re just things that will be very likely to help you in your pursuit of building an audience on social media as a musician.
And these laws aren’t anything to do with what’s trending.
These are principles of good music content that can be applied to different things.
So I’m not going to tell you to create any one specific type of content, because there is no magic content type that works purely because it is that content type.
There are some types that make it easier to obey these laws… but it’s about the laws themselves, not the specific format.
What I’m hoping you’ll be able to take from this series of letters is a new understanding of what makes any kind of music content great.
I want you to feel like you have more control over what you put out there, instead of having to blindly follow what everyone else does.
Very quickly, some great news: The Awaken Your Fan Base On Social Media course has just officially opened up for the third round!
This course takes you through all the stuff you need to know about:
- Defining your artist identity
- Content for musicians
- Social media growth
- Releasing music
- Productivity
- Starting and growing your email list
- And a bunch of other stuff will also be added to it in future.
The doors are only open for a limited time, and it’s currently available at the early bird price, which will also only be available for a limited time.
It will also never be available at this price again because it just keeps growing and growing. So highly recommend you jump on it as soon as possible if you’re interested.
The link for that is here if you are, and of course feel free to contact me with any questions about it if you have them.
Let’s get back into it.
Before we dive into this first law, let’s get this out of the way:
All your stuff should be either entertaining, inspiring, helpful, or emotionally compelling.
Or more than one of these—ideally all of them.
This is the baseline.
If you’re creating videos / posts that don’t check at least one of these boxes, you’re already in trouble.
People simply won’t have a strong enough reason to interact with your stuff because there’s nothing there for them.
So you need to be able to look at your stuff and make an honest assessment: Is it actually entertaining, inspiring, helpful, or emotionally compelling in some way?
And if the answer is… “you know what… not really”…
…then that’s your starting point, because without this solid foundation you don’t stand a chance in 2024 on social media.
What’s entertaining, inspiring, helpful, or emotionally compelling is of course subjective to the individual, but you should be able to make a rough judgement about your own stuff.
If you’re watching your videos and you’re super bored, other people will most likely be bored.
If you can’t easily explain how your videos hit at least one of these boxes, they probably don’t.
You can also look at other stuff that’s doing well (and roughly in the realm of what you’re going for) and just do a side by side comparison.
Not to make yourself feel bad!
Just to get some information about what you might be missing, so you can at least get your content to a place where you can confidently say “yep, this is entertaining, or inspiring, etc.”.
For this letter, let’s assume you’ve done this, and you’ve already been actively trying to make good stuff but it’s just not working.
Now we can explore the first law to help you level up, get things to start clicking, and start getting you some results.
Let’s dive in.
Law #1: The Law Of Alignment.
When you’re making creative content, all the different parts of it that make up the experience for the viewer must be in alignment.
Everything must gel or click so all the parts form a convincing and immersive experience.
When I say all the parts, I’m talking about things like:
- The music, of course
- The energy and/or performance of the artist
- The aesthetic, scene, and the visuals
- The text if there is any, both the words and sometimes even the font or typography
- The overall messaging and identity of the artist.
- Anything notable that goes into the video.
This is one of the biggest and most overlooked things I see musicians struggling with when they’re trying to make high performing stuff.
They have a good idea but when they turn it into a video it’s not convincing because the above elements are out of alignment.
It’s like you can see what they’re going for but it doesn’t have that impact.
It feels a bit flat and like it’s still ‘just a video’ instead of an experience that pulls you into a new world.
And this sounds kind of dramatic, but this stuff can really help—especially if you’re not already getting a good response from your posts.
There’s something extra persuasive and convincing about videos that are able to do this.
I regularly come across these videos on my socials and I can pretty accurately predict how well the artist is doing on the platform just by watching the video.
I don’t always get it right, but like 8 or 9 times out of 10 I do.
There’s a certainty in the videos that puts the artist in another league.
The whole thing feels right.
It actually feels like something more than a video on a social media platform because all the different parts of the video work together to create something that transcends that.
It’s important to understand that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts here.
Each element of the experience on its own doesn’t seem like much of a big deal, but when everything is brought together it’s like magic.
And I will say the artist themselves has a ton to do with this.
They are always the biggest reason why things work a certain way. More on this soon.
What I’ll see with a lot of musicians when it comes to this kind of alignment is they get halfway there.
Maybe they find a beautiful spot to record a video in and they think “ooh people are gonna love this” but then their performance feels a little awkward or unnatural, and it doesn’t quite hit the mark.
It pulls people out of the experience because they haven’t practised being natural in front of a camera or something.
Or maybe they have a great idea for a video, they put it together, but the elements are off.
Maybe they’re going for a certain aesthetic, but they use this big cheesy font for the lyrics that totally ruins it.
Or maybe the scene doesn’t properly match the music or something.
And even though that doesn’t always matter if the artist is great, maybe it informs other creative decisions for the video too, and the whole thing ends up feeling off.
If you’ve ever tried to mix a song, you’ll know that a bunch of subtle changes in the wrong direction can absolutely ruin the track.
It’s like a less extreme version of that.
Or maybe everything they’re doing technically makes sense but something is off in a way that impacts how people feel about it.
Maybe it’s just lacking energy, or lacking a certain edge.
Or maybe they’re trying to make a reaction video that’s supposed to be really natural… but it feels too staged or planned.
I do this stuff sometimes too.
I’ll make a video and it just won’t have the impact it could because I haven’t been able to deliver the message in a convincing way or it doesn’t make as much sense as it could, and so it just comes off as ‘meh’ or overly corny or something.
And what usually happens when these artists only get halfway there, is they usually either get a bit of a bump in engagement, or a slightly better response, but not as much as they’d like…
…or they haven’t made enough of an impact to see any noticeable change in result—so it feels like a waste of time.
Totally understandable to feel like this too.
And what makes it more frustrating is that social media is unreliable; it doesn’t always produce results that reflect the quality of what you’re doing.
Regardless, if you want your stuff to perform well, one of the things you need to be able to do is get your videos to a place where they create a convincing experience for the viewer.
The different elements need to be aligned, to make sense with one another, so the person watching feels like they’re getting more than just some video.
This does not mean everything has to be super high production value or overcomplicated or perfectly beautiful or anything like that.
It just needs to make sense and be convincing enough to get a decent response.
Ok Alex, hold on. Surely this is overkill.
There’s no way this stuff can matter as much you say.
What about those artists that just show up with a guitar and they record videos on their phone with mediocre audio quality but get millions of views?
Or rappers or singers who do a similar thing?
Or artists who definitely aren’t putting this much thought into their content but it’s still working?
How do you explain this?
Fair questions.
What you’re doing here is trying to get people to experience your music in a way that helps them see the full value of it in the context of social media.
Now obviously your music is valuable on its own without any kind of “content” or video or whatever.
Music itself is extremely valuable.
But different kinds of music suit different scenes, settings, moods, times, and people—different music creates different worlds…
…and on social media we need to make sure the experience of whatever world your music creates is potent.
So not every song or artist is going to get the same response by doing exactly the same thing on social media, even if it’s great stuff.
For some music, the most powerful way to get people to connect with it is simply to just show up nice and raw with a guitar and sing it.
In some cases, this is the way to get everything to feel as authentic and convincing and aligned as possible.
Maybe the artist’s voice is just beautiful and it pierces your soul, and when you scroll onto this raw and intimate video it hits you like a ton of bricks because it feels like they’re serenading you.
In this case, everything just makes sense. The rawness helps to create that world even more.
For other stuff though, that doesn’t work nearly as well.
What if you have this super produced, high energy pop song that’s supposed to make you want to dance?
Do you think a low energy video of you like sitting in your dank bedroom and lip syncing is gonna do it?
No, right?
Or at least it’s less likely to do as well, because it doesn’t align with the music as much.
Even though the song might be fantastic, in this case it might not do all that well because the video isn’t giving the song a space to be its best self in this context.
Go and check out Jon Dretto on Instagram or TikTok and tell me the music in his videos would perform as well as it is if he wasn’t intentionally creating a very potent world with his videos.
There’s no way.
There’s nothing wrong with the music itself, but he would absolutely not be raking in millions of views if he wasn’t being super intentional about creating the vibe he is.
And I will say there are times when doing something that’s “off” is actually a great move.
Maybe you do some sort of happy / sad juxtaposition with the video and the music.
That can be awesome and you see movies and shows doing this all the time—they’ll use a happy, innocent song for a messed up moment.
But that’s intentional.
It’s not off in an amateur way.
That’s learning the rules and then breaking them effectively.
In many cases, you will get a better result from your videos if they are taking the core of the song and elevating it, or expanding it with the video.
And while we’re still on this, another reason why some artists can seemingly put less thought into all this stuff and get amazing results is because they’ve been honing their craft and artist identity and performance skills like crazy, and so a lot of this stuff naturally falls into place.
It naturally comes out.
The better and more advanced you get as an artist:
- The more your songs will hit in general
- The easier it’ll be to intuitively understand how to create videos that align with the music
- The more natural and convincing you are when you show up, and so the more natural and convincing the experience will be for people
- And the less you need to go so hard on trying to create this experience for people on social media… it just works, because you’re so developed. You are creating these experiences naturally.
Basically, as you get better as an artist, all of these things naturally start to click more into place and improve, if you’re going down this path, of course.
There are artists who never touch social media and they have no idea what to do with it.
But for the artists who do use it really intentionally, the better they are, the better time they’re gonna have.
These artists don’t have to put so much conscious thought into how to make sure their music and their videos match up, because they themselves are so good at naturally bringing that energy, their essence, into both.
They’ll still plan great stuff for their videos, but they’ll get it more right more often than an artist who hasn’t got as much experience.
You could put an advanced artist (who’s used to being on camera) in pretty much any situation to perform their music, and it would still feel like everything makes sense.
Everything would still feel aligned, no matter the scene or setting.
When you’re that good, you don’t have to try so hard to place yourself in a world that ‘makes sense’—you’re so powerful and aligned that the world shifts itself to make you make sense.
You are radically changing the energy of the space just by being in it, instead of having to be so intentional about creating a certain energy with the space.
So I want to quickly sum up what I’m trying to say here, and then we’ll move on:
If you want your videos to perform well, people need to feel like the entire experience is fully convincing:
- The music
- The mood
- The setting
- The visuals
- Maybe even the text
- The idea
- Everything needs to line up to create something that feels like it goes beyond just a video on social media.
It takes them into a new world that feels fully legit, just like great acting and world building in a movie or tv show does.
But also, as you go deeper into the artist journey—you level up your craft, you develop more of an understanding of your artist identity, you become better at performing, all that—creating a convincing and desirable experience is much easier.
You are a force of nature, and you have a much greater impact on everything you touch.
Basically, you want to be constantly developing your understanding of everything to do with being an artist and building an online presence.
And the further in you go, the more and more things will click, and the more your efforts and results will compound.
Ok, how?
So with that in mind, how do you actually work on this stuff?
How can you get clearer on how to make sure all the things in your content are aligned?
How do you go from someone feeling like “I get what you’re going for but it’s not really working” to “fuck, this just feels so right”?
Let’s look at some of the individual elements of content and see if we can give you some direction.
This is not a substitute for becoming the greatest artist you can possibly be, but I have seen a lot of musicians who could get a much better result on social media if they paid attention to some of this.
Music.
Obviously an incredibly important part of your videos is your music.
Getting people interested in the music is the whole point of doing this stuff.
So I can’t say a whole lot on this, because your music is your music and I would never suggest you try to change it to better suit an audience or anything.
But I do recommend, if you haven’t done this already, that you do a bit of a deep dive into what makes your music so you, and so special.
And I realise this kind of thing can be a bit weird.
It feels you’re analysing something that’s not always supposed to be analysed in this way.
But what I’m encouraging here is just getting to know yourself better.
A few questions that can help you with this are:
- Is there anything that ties all of my music together? Any specific characteristics or approaches or anything like that?
- What have people said about my music? Have people referenced any specific part of it?
- Can you sum up in a nice, clear, punchy sentence what your music is? Like can you describe it succinctly in a way that makes it sound great and special?
- What kind of situations or settings is your music perfect for?
This can be a little confronting sometimes, because it might be hard to answer and you might start worrying that your music isn’t all that great or special.
I don’t want you to get bogged down in negativity or comparison or anything here.
But if you want to improve your marketing, it’s important to know what makes you great.
And even if that means you realise you actually can’t find as much amazing stuff as you’d hoped…that’s information, right?
It’s ok to still need to develop your skills. Being a truly great artist is no easy thing.
But if you’ve been able to define why your stuff is great, that can help give you direction with your promotion.
If you realise your music is the perfect song to comfort people going through a breakup… you can build that kind of world in your videos.
So I highly recommend you do some kind of exercise like this if you haven’t already, to get a good understanding of how your music might work in the context of social media.
I know it’s frustrating to hear this kind of thing, because you might be feeling like “isn’t it just enough to have good fucking music?”
I hear you.
But try to think of using social media as a way to extend your artistic expression and show people other ways of experiencing your art.
Performance / energy.
Ok, what about the energy and / or performance of the artist?
This is incredibly important.
Remember how I was saying I can tell just by looking at a video whether or not the artist is doing well on social media?
Sometimes I can even tell without evening listening to the music.
And that’s because of the artist’s body language and energy.
Body language and energy is a huge part of how we communicate, and that 100% translates through video on social media.
So if your music is professional, but your body language or energy in your videos doesn’t match it, that’s gonna feel out of alignment.
Something will feel off, and people may not get the most accurate picture of just how great of an artist you are.
The performance matters when the context in which they’re experiencing your art is also visual.
If you’ve never been in front of a camera before, or you don’t have much experience actually performing, and you expect to start getting crazy results just because you make good music… think again.
This has got to be one of the most underrated and also overlooked parts of creating great music content:
The energy and performance of the artist must match the quality of the music.
For the course I wanted to create some simple real world examples of performance clips to show artists how simple it can be.
So I grabbed a guitar (which I don’t play) and my fiance and I went out and recorded a bunch of stuff in a few locations.
When we looked at the footage afterwards, we were laughing hysterically because some of the videos of me pretending to play were so awkward and unnatural.
There was one we tried where I was laying on the ground outside, strumming along, but it looked like I’d broken my neck and fallen to the ground—that’s how awkward I was.
And there was another one where I was standing up against a tree ‘performing’ but it just looked so unnatural because I don’t have much experience at all being on camera in this particular way.
I looked so stiff and uncomfortable, and even with a great song underneath the video it wouldn’t have worked.
In pretty much any case where it’s not intentional or it actually contributes to the experience, if you feel completely awkward or unnatural in your videos, people will feel that something is off.
The more comfortable you get filming yourself, the better it’s going to translate.
And this even applies to producers or beatmakers who are showcasing their music.
Even if you’re just sitting there like nodding your head—it still needs to feel right.
Do not underestimate how powerful this can be.
There are probably artists and personalities you love and follow because their energy is so great. It matters.
And I know it might be frustrating or super uncomfortable to have to develop this extra skill, but it will help you to no end.
Getting comfortable being on camera is one of the most beneficial things you can do for yourself.
It opens up a whole new world of possibility, and will lead to not just better performing content, but the confidence to do even more stuff beyond that.
If you’re comfortable making fantastic music but you’re not comfortable showcasing or performing that in the context of social media… something will be off and the performance of your videos will likely suffer.
Ok, so how do you get better at this?
I’m definitely not in the position to be giving you like expert advice in this particular area, but I have pretty dramatically improved my comfortability on camera over the last few years, and so I can take a pretty good guess at what’s going to help:
Practise. Just get the experience.
Do it over and over and over again until you feel like it’s basically second nature.
I can almost guarantee if you do it enough—no matter how unnatural it feels right now, or how much you might think you’re just ‘not that kind of person’—that it will feel a lot less weird.
Again, I cannot stress the importance of this enough.
If energy and body language is a huge part of how we communicate, it’s a huge part of what’s gonna make your videos perform well and make them feel more aligned with your beautiful music.
Ok, let’s keep going.
Aesthetic, scene, visuals.
Next is the aesthetic and the visuals.
This is one of those things that you could argue sometimes isn’t super important because some artists can make a splash in any setting…and you’re right.
But in many more cases than not, it’s hyper important.
I’m actually going to do a separate letter that includes this as a big part of it—that’s how important I think it is for the majority of artists.
So we’ll keep this bit relatively short, but the main thing I want you to take away from this is that the visual representation of your song and of you as an artist is one of single most influential factors of high performance on social media.
You know that saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’?
The visual appeal of your videos—on platforms that are primarily visual—is worth tons.
The aesthetic or the scene or setting (or whatever you want to call it) that you have in your videos can help tell the story of your song, or communicate a certain message, or create a certain mood in a huge way.
That includes how you look too.
And humans are visual.
We care about what stuff looks like, even though we pretend we don’t half the time because it’s seen as shallow.
We make a bunch of judgements about something purely based on the visuals, and this absolutely applies on social media… maybe even more so than in other parts of life.
So in most cases, it can really help if your visuals compliment your music and your performance and energy.
That doesn’t mean everything has to look perfect or cinematic or anything like that.
Sometimes it does—but it’s about making the experience convincing, and so the visuals need to be aligned with the other parts of the experience.
If you’re making lush cinematic music that makes people feel like they’re standing in a beautiful open field that feels otherworldly, lush cinematic visuals is a great idea.
But if you’re a bedroom artist and that’s your appeal, maybe the raw bedroom look is actually the best move.
It might even be less effective to have something with higher production value.
You’ve got to know what you’re about so you can create a visual experience that matches up with everything else.
You also want the visual to be eye catching in some way.
One of the things that’s most powerful about the visual side of your videos is that it’s almost always the way to get people to stop scrolling.
- Whether it’s some kind of movement that grabs people—or even lack of movement
- Or whether it’s some text that comes up that people read.
- Or some interesting thing in the video that makes people do a double take…
Visuals matter.
This doesn’t have to be complicated, but I do recommend you put some decent thought into this because of what a difference it can make.
Like I said, we’ll come back to this in another “law”—but for now start thinking about how you can enhance the visual part of your videos.
And again, this doesn’t necessarily mean higher production value.
Maybe it’s more about accuracy and alignment.
Text.
Ok, what about text in your videos? Is this really important, or am I just being ridiculous?
Sometimes it helps a ton to create a great experience. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter too much at all, in certain ways.
First, something important to remember about text is that it’s still visual.
People are still seeing it with their eyes and then making judgments based on what it looks like.
So forgetting the actual words or message and just thinking about the look of the text for a second, in a lot of cases it helps to have a font or type that feels like it belongs with your music, performance, energy, and visuals.
Going back to the lush cinematic thing: If you use a comic sans style font with that to showcase the lyrics, it’s going to completely ruin the experience, right?
But then there are other times where as long as the text doesn’t stick out in a bad way, it doesn’t matter much about the specific font.
I find in a lot of high performing videos, certain fonts that are built into the platforms do just fine, because they’re close enough to “fitting in” with the experience.
And although I have no real evidence to back this up, I feel like sometimes using the inbuilt fonts help some videos to feel more like they belong on the platform, and therefore help them perform better.
I know I’ve been saying you want your videos to transcend just being a video on the platform, but here I’m talking about belonging in a good way.
Generally speaking, using fonts that are totally foreign to the platforms seem to work when they suit the video and it’s convincing enough.
If not, they can feel very off and almost like the video is an ad or something.
So if you can’t pull it off I think it’s probably better to use the inbuilt fonts, because at least people will (hopefully) feel like they’re watching something they’re “supposed” to be watching.
That’s all I really want to say on the look of the text, because really, to sum it up, it’s just:
Either use fonts that help create the convincing experience or use the inbuilt text because people will more likely subconsciously understand that they’re “supposed” to be watching it.
But then there’s what you actually say with the text.
That matters.
Using text—especially for hooks, but not limited to that—can have a pretty huge impact on getting the message across.
When people see text, they’re drawn to it. They’re going to read it.
So this gives you an opportunity to further add to and strengthen this convincing experience.
This is not something that needs to be overcomplicated at all.
Sometimes all you need to do is put the lyrics up on the screen to go along with your performance.
People will be drawn to that text and it can help keep them locked in.
Sometimes I’ll watch a whole video and I’ll just be looking at the captions the whole time instead of the actual person or whatever else is on screen.
Or maybe you add a simple little hook that’s like “a song about [blah]…” or “POV: when you [blah]…”.
Something that gets the right message across—obviously related to your song.
Not saying you can’t and shouldn’t get more creative than that—but it’s not always necessary if the rest of the experience is awesome.
And sometimes simpler is better. Clear, not clever, they say.
Or if you’re doing other types of videos, you can use text to provide context and / or hook people in right from the very beginning.
There is no right or wrong answer here.
If you’re making a video where you’re playing your new song for your friend or family member or dog, you could probably get away with a bit of text at the start that’s like “showing my dog my new song… watch what he does when he hears the chorus”…
…and then maybe you have little bits of text coming up throughout to keep people engaged.
But it doesn’t need to be anything too crazy.
Text can strengthen the messaging and/or make it easier to communicate it, but in things like performance videos the world is being built mainly with the music, visuals, and the artist’s performance and energy.
So don’t overthink it.
If you’re telling a story or painting a more detailed picture with text and that’s the main way you’re getting the message across, then it’s obviously a lot more important.
Words are powerful. Just writing something out and putting it in over a video with your song playing underneath can do really well, if the words have weight.
There are cases where simply using text and then your music can create a really convincing experience relevant to the platform.
You do definitely have an advantage if you lean into great suitable visuals as well, but text can do a lot of the work in certain cases
Again, don’t overcomplicate.
I’ll leave this here, but bottom line: Text can also be a great way to strengthen the messaging and experience.
If it’s aligned with your music and the other parts of the video experience, it can, in the right circumstances, be the reason something performs exceptionally well.
Artist identity.
Ok the second last thing we’ll quickly mention today is something I’ve mentioned a few times in this letter already, and that’s artist identity.
Most of this stuff we’ve been talking about comes down to having a clear artist identity.
If you have a strong, clear identity and you know how to make that come through on social media, you’ve basically got all your answers.
You still have to come up with great ideas that make sense and everything, but you have a really solid foundation from which to work.
Having a strong artist identity is the way to make sure everything is aligned.
There are so many good reasons to take branding seriously and this is one of them.
When you’re clear on your artist identity, broadly speaking, you and your content will look like you make the music you make.
I know that can sometimes be not true because people intentionally do the opposite—but that’s still a brand move.
Also, broadly speaking, you’ll know exactly the kinds of things you can do to make your content compliment your music.
- You’ll know what kind of world to build
- You’ll know what to say
- You’ll know when things click or when they don’t.
Everything will make sense because you’ve done the work on a strategy that is designed to make everything make sense.
It may still take some time to have your strategy come to life on social media in the way you envision it, but that’s fine—it’s just practise.
Once you’re able to make it click, it’ll feel great.
And that’s probably a good time to wrap this up and mention the final thing in today’s letter, and that’s the reminder that the Awaken Your Fan Base On Social Media course has just officially opened up for the third round.
This takes you through all the stuff you need to know about:
- Defining your artist identity
- Content for musicians
- Social media growth
- Releasing music
- Productivity
- Starting and growing your email list
- And again, a bunch of other stuff will be added to it in future.
Doors are only open for a limited time, and it’s currently available at the early bird price, which will also only be available for a limited time.
It will also never be available at this price again because it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So highly recommend you jump on it as soon as possible if you’re interested.
Ok, let’s call it.
I hope this was interesting and gave you some stuff to think about.
You’ve got this, and talk soon 🙂
Alex
