Social Media for Artists in 2023

social media is one of the main ways

that artists and entertainers gain an

audience these days for the rest of the

2020s you can expect your experience on

social media to be fundamentally

different from the last entire decade of

social media growth so the changes that

I'm going to outline in this video

directly impact all artists and

entertainers and if you watch until the

end of this video you should have a

massive Edge on any artist who doesn't

know what I'm going to tell you about

let's get into it

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how content recommendation engines work

today is vastly different from how they

worked through the 2010s so I'd like to

take you back to April 21st 2010. it was

on this day that two Engineers from

Facebook gave a presentation at the

yearly f8 conference where they walked

attendees through what is arguably the

most open look that we've ever had as to

how a social media algorithm worked when

they detailed Facebook's Edge rank

algorithm to sum it up they basically

told everybody that content on Facebook

that you see when you open your news

feed was shown based on a number of

metrics every post or piece of content

in Facebook was considered an object any

interaction with that object was

considered an edge so if someone

commented on a video that created a new

Edge and when you opened Facebook and

your news feed appeared before you you

were shown content based on a number of

factors having to do with these edges

the first being the Affinity score

between you and the original poster or

the person who created the last Edge if

Facebook determines that your interest

closely align with the original poster

that pushes it up in the news feed

overlaid on top of that was a time Decay

Vector ensuring that the newest content

would be pushed to the top of your news

feed that which was more relevant to you

at that time every comment like and

share is an edge so the more comments

likes and shares the more edges the more

Affinity scores the higher up in your

news feed it would rank what we learned

on that day and what was the common

knowledge for social media marketers for

years after it was that recency of

content was important that engagement

was incredibly important and that these

two factors played a role with each

other such that if you had a post that

was years old but randomly started

getting tons of Engagement it might show

up in your news feed but if you have a

very new post that doesn't get any

engagement for the first two hours it

might just fall to the Wayside and never

be shown again any social media that had

a feed which was generated by a Content

recommendation engine was assumed to

have a similar formula to Facebook's

Edge rank for the longest time social

media marketers preached about posting

consistently so that you always had a

fresh time vector and then trying to get

engagement on that post as quickly as

possible so that it kept bumping up to

the top of the feet but on YouTube this

type of content recommendation engine

was never assumed to be the operative

Factor behind what you saw in your

YouTube search results and in your

YouTube recommendations bar when you're

watching a video on YouTube the dominant

metric that pushed videos into search

results and recommendations has been

watch time but if they showed it to

people in search results or in

recommendations another Factor was at

play which was click-through rate so

your thumbnail of your video and the

title of your video had to be enticing

enough to get a high click-through rate

when you combine High click-through rate

with watch time it's very beneficial for

YouTube they not only get people to

start watching the video but they

continue watching the video so YouTube

can serve more ads which means YouTube's

going to show it to more people so on

and so forth and now we get to why I'm

telling you this why I'm telling you

about these two separate formats for

Content recommendation so let's look at

some cold hard books the main source of

audience for artists in the 2020s is

social media of which Tick Tock is the

fastest growing and as a result of tick

tock success every social media app is

now copying Tick Tock They're copying

how Tick Tock serves what content and

how it presents that content to you so

we went from a feed on Instagram the

dominant way that you were served

content to a full screen vertical video

format where you're swiping through

videos on YouTube We Got YouTube shorts

another full screen vertical video

format intended for mobile where you're

swiping through videos if you can

understand the reasoning behind why

these apps are copying Tick Tock then

you can exploit it to your advantage for

the next decade now there are tons of

cringy washout music Biz never worse who

are aggressively wagging their fingers

at you about how algorithms work you

need to know how social media algorithms

work I don't want to be one of these

people nobody outside of the engineers

of these social media platforms

understand how the algorithms work so we

can only speculate here is my opinion

what I believe is behind tick tock's

wild success Tick Tock has effectively

combined the two dominant content

recommendation engines that I told you

about at the beginning of this video

they've taken the watch time importance

from YouTube and combined it with the

engagement from Facebook and Instagram

on top of that they have created a

Content experience that takes up your

entire phone screen and instead of

swiping down a feed you're swiping

through individual bits of content so

each piece has your full attention the

entire time that you're watching so

number one I believe Tick Tock trains

its content recommendation based on

watch time I've spent time as a passive

user of tick tock I've begun to

understand how it's serving me content

and I think the most important feedback

that Tick Tock gets from users is how

long they stay on a video not all users

are going to comment like or follow it's

not a dominant behavior on the platform

but watch time tells no lies if I stick

on a video for longer than another one

you can be almost certain that it is

because I enjoy that video more and it

speaks more to my interests whether Tick

Tock is learning about what you like as

a user or is trying to determine how

effective a piece of content is it's

using watch time to do that but how does

it know what a video is about so that it

can learn more about you as a user that

brings me to point number two I don't

think Tick Tock relies on the text in a

post or the comments that a post gets

over time to understand what the video

is about instead I believe the platform

is using artificial intelligence to not

only transcribe the entire video so it

knows any words that were said in the

video I believe it's also identifying

people in the video objects in the video

camera angles settings to determine what

the video is about this includes text on

the screen this includes text on objects

in the video I believe that Tick Tock

turns all of this data into text-based

tags and then categorizes videos thusly

so it can determine generally what a

video is about if a user likes content

that is presumed to be about that topic

in the past and then they pay a lot of

watch time to this video it's going to

get recommended to more people who like

that topic that's a confirmation and

unambiguous positive signal that hey

this video is probably about this thing

and people who like that thing really

like this video this is probably the

lowest risk way for tick tock to

understand the popularity of videos and

the potential of videos in terms of

signals just because I don't like a post

doesn't mean I didn't like it you would

know if I spent a lot of watch time on

that post that I actually did like it

I'm just not someone who likes or

comments a whole lot so great right tick

tock not only only can determine what

content is about just like YouTube can

but it also places an emphasis on watch

time just like YouTube does but it's a

social media Network so it also relies

on engagement to a certain degree who

cares the reason that you should care is

that right now Tick Tock is in its Wild

West face still I don't know if you were

around for Facebook in the early days

but you could pretty much build a

Facebook page with like a million

followers pretty easily just by posting

organic content eventually Facebook had

to monetize and so all of that free

organic reach that people were getting

on their posts got downranked and

Facebook started charging for ad space

my argument is that a similar era is at

play for tick tock and that has forced

Instagram which is owned by Facebook or

meta to re-enter a golden phase because

of that era that Tick Tock is creating

in order to compete with all of the

other social media platforms people

really want to use tick tock because you

might just get famous on it because it

has so so much Juiced organic reach

that's forced Instagram to dial back

some of the limited reach that it's had

in the past so on Instagram reels you're

getting a lot more reach than you

otherwise would have in the Instagram

feed a few years back and that's

important because on Tick Tock posts do

not need to be incredibly popular to

show up in your feed as you scroll

through videos you'll start to see less

popular content the deeper you go

sometimes you'll get served new content

from small accounts pretty much

immediately so if you're trying to gain

an audience on these new vertical video

focused social media platforms There's

an opportunity to grow insanely fast

right now because of these factors and

so here is where I want to give you the

edge over all the other content creators

artists and entertainers trying to grow

an audience right now so number one now

more than ever before the first three

seconds of a video is the most important

real estate on social media having a

great opening hook whether that be text

on a screen or something that happens in

the video video in those first three

seconds is of immense importance so tip

number one is to spend a majority of

your effort on Crafting the perfect

three second intro a hook that gets

people to watch your videos all the way

through anything you can do to hook

people in to watch the entire video is

going to give your video a far wider

reach than you otherwise would have

gotten comments likes and shares are

falling to the back of the line

consumption watch time is probably more

important now than ever before so that's

tip number one focus on watch time focus

on the first three seconds hook them in

get them to watch to the end if you can

get them to watch again even better tip

number two there is an opportunity to

grow a large following that hasn't

existed for over a decade for all of the

reasons I've gone over in this video by

focusing on creating short form content

that encourages watch time and replays

you can grow a large following

organically so this tip is about not

fading the opportunity I don't want to

create short form content I just want to

jaw off like this video for hours and

hours but there exists a massive

opportunity to get people into your

world if you can just put your ego to

the side and say I'm going to accept

this challenge so tip number two is to

not cool guy this opportunity and then

tip number three this is the device

where content exists today vertical

video is not going anywhere stop

creating content and web experiences for

this aspect ratio you should be thinking

mobile and vertical first and that comes

to your content it also comes to how you

design your website make no mistake this

should be your primary focus if you can

dominate that then the world is your

oyster tip number four spend dedicated

concentrated time using these platforms

as a user I could never have understood

what I want to create on these platforms

how I want to seize this opportunity if

I didn't spend time as a user as much as

I hated it go on Tick Tock go on YouTube

shorts go on on Instagram reels and just

swipe over the days that follow you'll

start to think you'll start to formulate

what you like about it what you learn

from it what people are doing what you

could do that's like what they're doing

but a little bit different all of your

ideas when it comes to dominating these

platforms will come from your use of

these platforms so if you haven't used

them get over yourself and just do it I

did ultimately I found that vertical

video is a new art form with its own set

of Aesthetics I've started to realize

how I want to create for this format but

you'll never get that until you become a

power user until you actually experience

what it's like for the people who use

these platforms and there's really a lot

of cool stuff that you can do a lot of

really cool opportunities that exist in

this landscape today it is so new and

you can carve out your niche in it as

long as you jump in and start

understanding why it's happening if you

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peace out

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