NICK RUFFALO - The Best Content Strategy For Artists In 2025

When you're putting a message out into the world, the goal of that content is for it to be consumed by another person. So if you're making everything within that video, that post, all about you, as if you're almost ignoring the person who's viewing it, they're not going to resonate. They're not going to feel like this was made for me. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the headliner mindset podcast. I have a really exciting episode for you guys today because I know a lot of you are trying to figure out what the hell do I do on social media? What is the right strategy that I should take? How do I even make content? What types of content should I be making? How often should I be posting? And obviously it's a really big part of building an audience. If you want to build a fan base, we've got to be on social media and we've got to be using it consistently. It's probably how you have found out about this podcast in the first place. So in this episode, I got to sit down with the owner of a marketing agency that specializes specifically in helping artists create content, build their brand and build their audience. They're called Unleashed Creative and this is their owner and founder Nick Raffalo. Nick, welcome to the headliner mindset podcast, bro. I am so stoked to have you here and really excited to dive in with you. Same here, thanks for having me. I would love to really start by just hearing a bit about your story and kind of how you got to where you are now running this marketing agency. I know that you were an artist yourself and so you actually walked to that path. And so tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today. Yeah, so it all started when I was in high school. We were in I want to say social studies class. My buddy was watching ultra live stream of the chain smokers 2016. Go to set of all time. And I was like, oh, that is sick. Like I want to do that so bad. So I downloaded logic. Didn't really do much with it. And then as I got into college, I became our frat DJ through that process. You know, it was like, okay, now I want to learn how to make music. COVID came around my sophomore year at college. It was a perfect time for me to dedicate pretty much every hour of every day to learning production. Early 2021 jump dot TikTok started putting out originals and remixes. Had some viral moments in late 2021. So I graduated college a semester early was doing some DJing and opening sets down in Miami and in New York and had this kind of epiphany moment towards the end of the summer of 2022 where. I just felt like for me, I didn't want to be in the club in nightlife scene long term, you know, for lack of a better term. I had done so much partying in college that I was like, okay, you know, production, working with pop artists diversifying the genre. That's where I see my path, you know, leading down. So I took a step back from being an artist rebrand all my social media to producer for other artists moved out to LA in June of 2023. Pretty much first day I moved out here just started running, you know, one, two, sometimes three sessions a day, a bunch of different artists and a bunch of different genres. Through that process, just being in all these sessions with all of these different artists and seeing the same complaint of social media content. I hate social media. I don't know what to post. Just constantly come up over and over and over again, I just started giving the artists I was working with, you know, ideas here and there in the middle of sessions and then things started to work for them. So I was like, okay, let me just post about this on my page. So very slowly I started posting maybe like once every couple weeks stuff in the social media marketing lane. Just here's what I told this artist, here's what happened. And that stuff just started to do really, really well, really fast. So early 2024, I kind of saw the handwriting on the wall took a step back from production and really went all in on building this company, brought on our team all throughout 2024. And now we're locked in and we're rocking and rolling. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's so cool because, you know, right before we started recording, we're just talking about how so many of my clients and so many of the listeners and just every artist out there, I think is just trying to figure out like how the fuck do I grow my audience? Right, I love making music, right? This is where my heart says where my passion is that I love making music and then there's oftentimes a huge block when it's like, okay, well now I need to promote it and build a brand and build an audience and for a lot of people, it just seems like this really kind of complicated world that a lot of people are struggling to figure out. So I'd love to really just dig in with you and offer everybody some some basic, you know, guidelines and some steps and like what are you seeing actually is working. Obviously the landscape changes all the time, you know, what worked a year ago doesn't necessarily work today technology and trends are always evolving. So let's start let's start here. What would you say are some of the biggest mistakes? Where are people getting it wrong? What do you see there? Easily number one is making it about me, not about them in the content in the branding and the messaging when you're putting a message out into the world, you know, regardless of being an artist or not just anybody who's creating content, the goal of that content is for to be consumed by another person. So if you're making everything within that video, that post all about you as almost you're as almost as if you're almost ignoring the person who's viewing it, they're not going to resonate. They're not going to feel like this was made for me and it's the same kind of, you know, mindset when you are making music. Yes, it's for you, but you're also saying, okay, other people are going to listen to this. Whether you're doing it consciously or subconsciously, you are pulling inspiration from songs that you know you love and that other people love. So when it comes from a content perspective, you always have to keep that viewer in mind and flip that message to how does this relate to them? Because when it's all about me, my new song is out now or the worst is run the numbers up on this one. Why to serve you the artist? I don't even know you. So why am I taking my time to run up your numbers when you've done nothing for me as the viewer as the consumer? Tell me about why this is a fit in my life. If I'm going through XYZ problems and this song comes from a place that's going to also talk about XYZ problems and provide a solution that as the viewer, I'm going to be more compelled to listen. But if you're just telling me it's out, run it up, pre-save it. Why do I care? Yeah, yeah. Something I like to point out is like there's 100,000 songs being uploaded to Spotify every single day. When I found out that statistic, my fucking head exploded. I was like, that's insane, right? Not to mention, I've already got countless artists and songs and bands and things that I enjoy listening to. Why am I going to listen to you? Most likely there's already something out there that I love listening to. Just saying, hey, yeah, this is out, listen to it. I'm probably not going to become a fan just because of that. So making it not just about you and my song that I have out and listen to it and run up the numbers, great first step. What else do you see people getting it wrong? Just not being themselves. When we onboard a new artist onto our roster, we have multiple questionnaires and still my favorite question across all of them. If you woke up tomorrow with 100 million followers and a guaranteed one million people are going to see every single thing that you post, what kind of content would you make? And the answers that we get, even from the biggest artist we work with is always, you know, they're putting something in that answer that's not what they're posting right now. So it's like, okay, so you're waiting for, you're waiting for this like vanity metric to hit a certain place to where now you feel like you can post this type of content. You can say these types of things. You can show this side of yourself. But if you're going to wait and say, okay, when I know that like success, quote unquote in the vanity metrics of views, which really doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. If I'm just going to wait for a specific view number to be who I actually want to be online, people see right through that. So like holding back certain things until you know or feel like, oh, this is when I can be this or this is when I can say that. You're never going to come across as who you know you want to come across as in your content and in your branding online. Yeah, I get that. I've seen that a lot where a lot of people have this sort of dream and desire to make an impact. And there's this like, well, once I'm at this certain level, like then I can really make an impact. And I like to point them back to like, no, you start just becoming an impactful person now, right. And if there's five people that you can impact, like then that's how you start and that five grows into 10 and that 10 grows into 100. But that starts with just, yeah, being authentic, right, being that person that you want to be now saying those things that you want to say now, not at some later stage, right. It doesn't necessarily work that way. So I want to actually totally skipped over where I really wanted to start this conversation was talking about the agency and what you guys do, unleashed creative. I'd love to hear like, what is it specifically that you guys do over there? And what's your what's your process for how you work with people. Yeah, so we are a content branding digital marketing, a and R, a little bit of everything at this point. And our process, you know, is very fluid, depending on who we're working with. I mean, at the core of what we do, we're meeting weekly and we're talking through, okay, over the next seven days, what is going on? Because we don't want to live in this bubble of like, oh, I've got a, you know, a tour that launches in August. Oh, I've got an album that drops in June like we're in February. So over the next seven days what's going on? Let's hone in on that and let's build out for the next seven days. This is what's gonna go out on social media. This is gonna be your post Monday, Tuesday, etc. Then either we're filming and editing that content for the artist or if they're not here in LA They got their team, you know, or themselves to film and edit will approve everything make sure it looks good Goes out meet again the next week continue to tweak our strategies in the content lane and then in the background You know, we're also continuing to build their visual identity their branding and we'll create, you know, an established creative direction deck over 90 days To ensure that okay like this from an online perspective who you are Who you represent who you will be and continue to be for you know the foreseeable future and then we put those two together and We're where in this yeah, yeah, so The question I want to ask is which I think everybody is kind of asking themselves is How do I know what to post right? I'm looking at my calendar and I'm like, I don't what the fuck do I post over the next seven days What do I post over the next 30 days? So how do you go about helping somebody figure out like what they Quote unquote should be posting We take it in phases so you know again We have artists with millions and millions of followers and they're still obviously coming to us for a reason and as they don't feel like You know what they're doing on social media who they are in their content is what they want to be That's why they're working with us. So no matter how big the artist is we're always gonna go through a test phase of like We need to just test a lot of formats. We need to test a lot of things because no to Artists no to people on social media are gonna have the exact same formula There is no formula to this posting times do not matter hashtags do not matter None of trending audio does not matter none of this matters. I promise you the only thing that matters is Finding your formats and keeping your brain consistent and being you. So okay, what are your formats? Is it b-roll wall attacks because for some people they could just literally walk down the street in an aesthetic look Put a wall attacks over it with their song behind it and that's the thing for some people that does work for many others It does not so we need to test a bunch of different formats over month one to figure out okay from a format perspective regardless of song These are your buckets to pull from now. We're into you know our second phase Which is okay? What does your content funnel look like? What is your top of funnel? What is your middle of funnel? What is your bottom of funnel top of funnel is discovery content How are how are new people going to discover you? It's not gonna be through your music and the example I always gave is whether it was intentional or not Taylor Swift is Currently living this funnel in real time because the shared interest that she's connecting herself to is the NFL So if you've never heard of Taylor Swift in your life But you're a fan of the NFL and you watch the Super Bowl and you see her on screen. You've now discovered Taylor Swift Now if you want to go deeper and you say who is this let me Google Taylor Swift and Interviews pop up now you're connecting with her now you feel connected to her now. You're like, oh, okay So she makes music here's parts of her personality. I like her vibe. I like her Let me check out the music now you go to her music video You watch that and you're like, I love this. I'm a fan and you've now been converted Top of funnel discovery middle of funnel connection bottom of funnel conversion in all content needs to serve a purpose within one of those buckets So now we're into phase two when we're figuring out what are your formats for these different sections of your funnel? What's the ideal frequency for you in terms of segmenting top middle and bottom across a weak schedule and then we implement? Yeah, that's huge. I think even for myself it's great because I've been really lazy on social media I'm like, okay, I know I can grow my account and my brand way bigger But I think that piece that you just said about the intention Behind each piece of content is this a discovery piece is this going out to people that have never heard of me and I'm trying to just You know have that top of funnel first introduction. What am I saying? Right, I'm going to speak differently to that audience than I would to people that are already following me, right? So that's just so huge right there that top of funnel and tell me what what you said those those three are This is the top of funnel kind of discovery then there's the connection and then middle funnel, right? Yeah, so like that middle place. I'm like I'm just putting stuff out to get you to know me to connect with me See what kind of like do we do we vibe on the same frequency? Do we have the same interests and then there's that conversion where I'm really converting you over to being a fan of the music and the art like that right there That's huge. I don't think a lot of people are doing that So I hope that everybody's taking notes right now right like really think about what is the actual intention Behind what you're doing because yeah, I think a lot of people are in this phase of just like oh, I have a new song Let me just Jump really jump straight to marketing and this is where we get to have a branding conversation But it's like okay, I have a new song. Let me put it out there new song out check it out listen to it You know or here's me in the studio just playing my song or whatever it may be and We're not really thinking about like what what's the experience of the person on the other side going to be right? We're just thinking about ourselves. I have a song I have a thing that I want people to hear so let me just push it out there shove it down their throats Maybe I'm even running an ad to like push it in front of their face But like if that person has never heard of you like what's what's gonna be the thing that actually hooks them in and gets them to be interested in you in the first place right? There's a lot of psychology around this that I think people are missing out on myself included I'm I'm gonna take this and run with it and like really sit down and think about what are my three types of content I could be creating in those funnels or in those buckets 100% top of funnels never gonna be about your music. That's the big misconception like yeah What would what would an example what would an example of a good like top of funnel piece of content be? Okay, so let's say let's say an artist has a song called I hate my ex Okay, so if we want to segment this I hate my ex concept Okay, so you wrote this song because you quite literally hate your ex and they were the worst, you know worst boyfriend girlfriend whatever Ever so it would compel you enough in your life to write this vicious song about them Okay, well your top of funnel content. We're not gonna put the song in the video at all We're not gonna talk about it. You're literally just go sit in your car put the phone on the dashboard Start the video off saying anybody else have that one X2 blank go into listing off everything terrible that that X did Now you're creating conversation around the concept of the song without even mentioning the song So now you're attracting everybody who's bought in be like oh my god me too my ex is the worst my ex did that I hate my ex too So you're literally getting people who are bought into the conceptual concept of the song into your world Before they've even heard the song because it's a lot easier to sell a concept than a product Especially when it's an emotionally rooted, you know experience. Okay, now they're in now they've discovered you and they've created You've got a conversation going on around this topic All right, let's connect them to the music So now let's do a video where you quite literally just put the phone down on the ground step back Lip sync your song into the camera text on screen when my ex did blank so I wrote this okay now We've connected that same exact thing from the discovery of like This is the thing or ex did that made you hate them and why you wrote the song But now we're actually are gonna connect it to the song and the conversion content was just do high quality You know many music video performance pieces for really just show Kibis is a legitimate artist like they are doing it at a high level They're clearly putting budget into this It's not all just iPhone in their car. So now you've kind of also Within the conversion content and planted on the viewer that like you are a legitimate artist You're not in your bedroom trying to be a tick tocker which is so dumb But some people still think that so let's play out of that and now you know we've created this cohesive ecosystem Hmm got it got it so there's a term that I've heard used before which is either playing the man or playing the brand and We have there's artists that have more of the personal brand where it is like hey, it's it's me It's like for me my brand is like Nick Trollink, right? And so I'm gonna be real I'm gonna be wrong and to talk about my my actual stuff But there are those brands that are also more about sort of creating a universe in a world You know where it's like not necessarily about the person As much as it is about the the brand like like an excision or a seven lions or something where they've sort of created these worlds in these universes How do you see for someone that's like kind of taking that path which I do think is kind of a harder path to take because it's a you can't That's not that you can't but it's like it's it feels like it's a little bit less about pulling up the phone and talking directly To the fans, you know, how do you advise somebody that's trying to take that path in this strategy? How would that work for them? Very hard, you know the biggest biggest thing I'll always say is you're not allowed to Pull an artist from pre-2021 One almost pre-2022 you can't pull them as an example for anything Mm-hmm like if they had if they blew up, you know and became you know household name would have you pre-2022 you're not allowed to use the missing example Like yeah, the game was a lot of you didn't have to do any of this yes because that was ten years ago Yeah, almost 15 years ago good point. They were playing they were playing a with a completely different set of rules right and again Two years from now three years from now the landscape is gonna look totally fucking different and we're gonna be having a different conversation Right so yeah, what's happening right now? I think this this is a really good point a lot of a lot of artists are comparing themselves to their favorite artists I mean like oh, I want to be like that and I've had multiple artists that have come on the podcast that are like yeah Do when we came up like we didn't have to deal with this shit like we weren't always like obsessed with posting on social media every day. We were just making bangers and putting them on soundcloud and getting fucking tours off of it. And that was all it took, you know, it was totally different games. So that's a really good, I think, kinda gut punch reality check is to really be present with like what's working right now. And yeah, not comparing yourself to like what worked five years ago or 10 years ago for somebody. - Yeah, no, it's just a totally different time. It's the same kind of mindset of like, you know, with Netflix and all like the streaming services, people, companies and shows that thrived on like cable. Now they're not allowed to say, oh, well, Seinfeld, you know, had this run at NBC. That was the '90s. So now we're talking like the way that people are creating television has changed because of the medium. So in the same fashion that like the way you're building your brand as an artist has to change because of the medium. It's not whatever is the coolest album are on SoundCloud anymore. It's about you. And the biggest, you know, if we're talking EDM dance lane, like really the only artist who's breaking through to a borderline Calvin Harris chain smokers, like that period of 2014 and 2016 where EDM was the mainstream, the only real person to wear like, if you don't really care about dance music, but you're just like on social media, you would know is probably John Summit. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the one. And he's a personal brand where it's like, it's straight up, it's him, right? It's him doing his thing and his antics and his message and his voice and all of that is very, very connected to his fans. There's no big degree of separation there. Now I do think that it definitely still is possible to have a big brand in that sense in terms of it not being like a personal brand. It's just one, I think it's either gotta be mystery. Like I think of one of my favorite bands is this band called Sleep Token. If you're familiar with like the, they're in the metal world, but they've completely taken over. They've blown up specifically in the last like two years. Yup, they're, they get cherry picked all the time in my comment section. Yeah, it's a, it's a, but it's a masked thing, you know, and there's like the allure in the mystery and there's a story behind it. But I think in general, really what it, it just requires a really high level creative assets. So it's like, it's a lot easier and cheaper for me to flip on the phone and I can, I can spit to my fans all day and I can build an audience that way based off of my personality and my energy and I don't require a high budget. But if you wanna create a, you know, a fucking universe, right? That's gonna be a bit separated from you. That's gonna require graphic design. That's gonna require video animation. It's just gonna require more of a heavy lift. I think if you have the budget, you can do it. But if you're just trying to do it yourself, like, good luck. I don't know, that's gonna be pretty hard. Yeah, no, 100%. It's also like again, think about the viewer, like, why would I care about your, you know, highly edited graphic design, just like visualizer on my feed? I have multiple, multiple, many, many, many fake accounts on Instagram where I'd put that account into a certain persona of like, okay, this is Noah Mint, he's 33, what kind of content is he consuming? This is Ashley, she's 24, what kind of content? And I curate, you know, the 4U pages on those accounts based around like that demographic. And you start to think in this mindset of like, what would stand out like a sore thumb on this feed? And it's like 99% of the music content you see that isn't performing well would stick out like a sore thumb. And it's like, I'm not gonna be doing it. I'm not gonna be doing it. You have to be feeling something on the other end of it. You can also read scripts all day. You can do TikTok dances all day or whatever. But it's like, it's when you actually see somebody sharing something from the fucking heart. That energy is transmuted through the phone and it lands in your heart. You know, I think that that's an important piece of it. Because I can get on and I can, you know, even with myself, I notice like if I could show up and maybe post something that's more of just like mental energy. Like, hey, here's a good thought and here's a good perspective. But if I show up and I like say some real shit from the heart and it's like, it's actually coming from here and I care about it, that's gonna land so much more. You know, there's like an energy that gets transmuted through what we're creating. What's the energy that you're actually putting into the content itself? I think plays a big role. Yeah, 100%. Now, a big part of this and I talk about this a lot is I think the big missing piece for a lot of people when it comes to marketing is they're jumping straight from I'm making music. I made just, we'll call it the product. If we want to just think about it strictly from a business perspective, you know, from that sort of assembly line if I've created a product and now I'm going to go market it, bring it to the marketplace. But a lot of people are skipping this really important step, which is like building your brand and figuring out your brand. A lot of people are like, cool, I made the music. Now, let me go put it out and again, just put it in front of people. But that's why it's not fucking landing. Because a lot of people haven't actually figured out what their brand is. So it sounds like that's a big part of your guys' process as well. It's really helping people figure out what's their brand. Who are they? What are they trying to say? What are some of the questions that you walk people through and get them to answer to really get clear on what their brand is before you start putting everything out? Well, the first thing I always like to do is figure out the person. So who is like that one singular person? And this obviously works much better with our artist's tour. And we can ask them to really sit and think about, who's that person from the meet and greets that they stand out immediately? And there's always someone. And it's like, okay, let's describe them. Sarah, she's 34, she's from here, she likes this. And now we're starting to like build this person of like, this is who your biggest fan is. So what are they going through? And what are the demographics of your fan base? Are they 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44? Because what people are going through at different stages of their life? They're going to resonate with content and brands and messages at a much different level. Like if you're 18 to 24, a breakup is happening much more frequently than 35 to 44. Life 35 to 44, you're probably married. So like, you can get divorced. You can still be dating, but you're not going to be breaking up with people at the frequency that you are where you're 18 to 24. So it's like, okay, most of your music is about breakups and we know most of your target audience is 18 to 24. Then we've got to start to guide the brand to speak to that. Because we can't start talking about like, this is for your grandkids and it's like, your target audience are the grandkids. Like, yeah, you can't be, you can't be good at marketing if you don't know who your market is. Exactly. So we've got to figure out the who first. Then we've got to figure out the why. So like, why do you make music? Why did you start making music? And why is the message of your music important? So we've got the who, we've got the why. Now we need to have. How are we going to communicate that message of your why to the who these people or the singular person, this group? And then from there, we started boiling down to, okay, what are your brand pillars? What are these four things that represent you? You know, outside of the music, and we've got, you know, a million questions. We asked people around that like, you know, what is the impact that you want to leave outside of music? What are personality traits that you had at 12 years old that you still have today? What are things that your friends and family would say, first of all, to describe you versus romantic relationships, versus how you think strangers on the internet would describe you in one word. And just asking, you know, as many questions as we need to, from like a, we call it like brand therapy standpoint, to walk away, you know, from that first call, knowing like, this is how we've kind of interpreted who you are. This is what you've told us. This is how you've kind of started to change your thinking, and then we'll lay the brand foundation, and they continue to build it, you know, a message you wise, but also visually from there over the next three months. Stay in line with that first conversation of like, this is the core foundation from a messaging perspective. This is who we're talking to. Now everything has to, you know, stay on points, stay on message, stay on brand, but also like past the gate of this, you know, group of people or that singular person to where like, it should resonate with that. Hmm. Yeah. And so once you have all of that figured out, it's really just creating those three types of content then, that top of funnel, connection content, conversion content. Can we go a little bit deeper? I'd love to hear some examples. I think a lot of times people are just kind of a little stuck on like, you know, what types of content should I be making? Let's go a little bit deeper into that and give everyone some, and I'm going to give you a little bit deeper. some ideas. I'd love to hear like what's what do you see working as you're working with clients and people on your roster like what kind of shit are you seeing that actually is working right now for people in terms of specific formats of content. It always comes down to the demographic like where are they based how older they what is your gender split because the way all of those different factors play into what content works is going to be wildly different like we've got artists with very big Southeast Asia and Asia fan bases and they just love high quality performance videos. People in the US do not those readers ads. Yeah. Like if you're just you know many music video high quality performance every single post to the US add add add add but to the Southeast Asia market like what we've seen as they love that they love it. So it's like okay. What is your demographics. Let's like decide at least what our initial test phase formats are going to look like based off the demographic. It's always going to come down to talking to camera though. Yeah. Not that every video is going to be you talking to camera but when that doors open for you to talk to camera the amount of content that can be made is so much more vast than like everything's got to be silent. Every message has to be communicated through text on screen like yeah. Yeah. And this is where this is where it comes back to figuring out who the fuck you are and what you're all about right like yes you're brand but it's even deeper than that it's like really you knowing who you are as a person as an artist like what is your message. I think this is hard for a lot of electronic music artists which are most of the artists that are listening to this podcast because a lot of them are just making bleeps and bloops and you're putting shit out and it's like okay cool here's my you know my like you know instrumental electronic music and it's different when you're a rapper and you're actually writing lyrics about shit it's different when you're a pop artist and you're actually writing lyrics about songs if you're not songwriting then you know there's sometimes as a disconnect about what are you actually fucking saying right besides just putting out a bunch of bleeps and bloops right and so that's just an important thing like what do you care about what are you trying to say what is your message because I think this is where a lot of people struggle in with their marketing is they just they don't necessarily stand for anything or they haven't taken the time to really figure out what it is that they stand for what do you believe in what do you care about because once you got that clear yeah like you said I'll make content all day I can pop open the phone and talk to my audience but for anyone that's struggling to come up with content ideas it's probably because you haven't actually figured out who you are what you stand for and what you believe in exactly yeah like one of our artists who is an electronic artist kind of the initial brand message that we came up with together early stage was if you love if you love music for the feeling not the genre this is your new home and then that spoke really well to his audience because as somebody who wants to you know put out music in a lot of different lanes of the dance genre as a whole you're now honing in and standing for like I am not just going to make the same superstar feature bass drop over and over and over again so if you are a fan of the ass music but more just for the feeling not like you're I only listen to rhythm and I'm like you're not you're not one of those people come on down and like just finding your ways of communicating what you stand for is everything yeah there's something that you said earlier and you kind of touched on it again talking about like the testing the content right like you said when that first month of working with people a lot of it is testing like let's figure out what works let's figure out what format works let's figure out you know what's actually going to land and resonate and I think that that's a huge important point to make is it takes a lot of experimentation and I see a lot of artists that are like focusing so hard on trying to do it right and it's like you also got to just do it wrong a bunch to then figure out what is right right I remember seeing Gary Vee talk about this before where he's like oh it's like a lot of you are just so focused on making like one or two pieces of content and making them the best pieces of content possible and and it's like maybe those work maybe they don't he's like I'd rather see you make 20 pieces of content and fucking 16 of them don't work before of them do and now you know what's actually starting to work so I think for especially a lot of younger artists that are and not only not only younger we all need to be experimenting but yeah I think especially in the beginning it's like fuck around and find out go make a bunch of different things a bunch of different formats like actually see what works because you don't know unless you really put that quantity out right yep exactly exactly and you know for me and my content like I've tried it all too there's a minute where just reels of tweets that were like four seconds long with trending audio were like a format I was seeing quite a bit so I tried it you know and I always always say you cannot give up on anything until five five posts I was trying that it wasn't working for me it just didn't it just wasn't a fit and then you know carousels I'm like okay let me start doing some carousels first four carousels I posted did nothing like only a couple hundred likes and I'm like oh my god like I'm dumb with carousels like these do nothing for me but let me hold myself to that five number and the fifth carousel I posted got like as a carousel like went to reels got like 450 thousand views I'm like okay yeah carousels are my things I rode that carousel train so hard and then they just like dwindled off and then I fell onto the green screen thing now these green screen videos have like took me from maybe 15k to almost 70k and like a month and a half two months yeah but like it's just testing every format the tweets the carousels the high quality I got the Sony camera the mic now it's just me talking to my phone now it's me talking to my phone with a green screen in the back I'm like never being comfortable and just testing as many different formats it's the same message I'm reusing the same exact concepts from the carousels in my green screen videos yeah but the format and the medium is presented has changed and that's you know altered the success level quote unquote of of a you know specific video yeah yeah I saw someone showed me an account of this guy who was literally just sitting in his car like listening to his song off of his laptop filming himself just sitting in the driver's seat and he basically posted the same exact video like 10 times and I'm seeing more and more people do this where a lot of times it's like okay well do our one idea and we'll just post it once and it's like okay if it works it does and if not whatever but I've been seeing this more where people are posting the same thing it's not literally the same exact video but it was like he just re-recorded pretty much the same thing him sitting there in his car listening to it and it was like if you write like scrillex and whoever like you're gonna fuck with this you know that kind of a video and it was like the first video was like 500 views you know the second video was a thousand views the third video was 1100 views and then the fourth video was like 150,000 views and it just it just eventually worked and I don't know the science behind that but I don't know if it's just being in the right place at the right time but like you said you're literally saying the same message sometimes which is in a bunch of different formats I'm seeing that more and more where it's like taking that one idea and maybe posting a handful of different versions of it to really give it the actual time and space that it deserves to see if it really works because it might not be that it's not a bad idea it might just be the fucking wrong day in the wrong time or I don't know well day and time doesn't matter remember dick yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's medium format yeah yeah tell me about I notice I'm in browsing through your Instagram you had a couple cool posts one of them was this idea of the 15 by 6 method tell me what that is yes yes so I've now changed it to five five by five but similar uh similar mindset so what we do when we have an in-person shoot and we're going to this in-person shoot solely to get conversion content some meaning music videos we'll get some iPhone stuff but we'll get like all of the high quality performance videos if you guys check out fly by midnight on an Instagram we've been doing their content for the last six months and pretty much all conversion content they're an anomaly they're a unicorn like they're the ones with the sathy seizure fan base where you know we just do a lot of high quality videos and it just grows and grows and grows them we'll go okay what are the five songs over the course of the next 30 days that we'll hit the feed at some point you know if it's the most recent release we might allocate like 60% of the shoot to that but the result catalog songs will throw two three videos in the mix with got those five songs mapped out five locations five different you know it can be the same like we just did a shoot and fly by midnight Monday at UCLA but that we consider three different locations because we did the grass field we did in front of a building and then we did on the steps and then we went to the football field and then we went in the parking lot so we have five different looks five different locations bring five different outfits with you change the outfit at each new location so now you're getting even if you do one song in at each location right there, you've got, you know, 25 videos. - Yeah, that's awesome. Content batching. - Exactly. - Yeah, cool. I love that. So you guys will go out and actually produce all of that, film that and stuff with your LA based clients. - Correct, yes. Or a lot of people fly into, we'll structure it, we're not just gonna say, stand there and lip sync. We still just start to do discovery, connection conversion within that shoot, but all, you know, with DSLR, all high quality, 'cause the iPhone stuff, like, you know, we can guide you through that. We'll get some iPhone stuff, but we really wanna hone in, make use of our time with our videographer, Julian. Name is Julian York at IG, if you guys wanna check him out as well, he's the goat, but you gotta go through us to get him, but he's the man. - He's the man. - Another big question I think a lot of people have is, should I post the same stuff on TikTok that I am on Instagram? There are obviously different platforms, they function differently. You could just post the same things, maybe you do sometimes, I don't know, what are your thoughts around Instagram strategy versus TikTok? Those are kind of the two big platforms that people are focusing on. - It all comes down to a time perspective, like how much time do you have to allocate? 'Cause everything should go everywhere. That's a given. Everything that you post on Instagram should go on TikTok. But you can double up on TikTok with things that don't hit Instagram. 'Cause TikTok, you have more capability, and I think this is more of a mental roadblock that people find themselves in, that anything rooted in like facts or data. But people just feel like because when you pull up your Instagram homepage, you're going to see people that you know personally. You can go two hours rolling on TikTok and not see a soul that you know in real life. And now people have less of a mental barrier of like, oh I can't post that because you know, my ex's friend from college who still follows me, if he sees that I'm shitting on him in this new song, but he's like, oh, but I take talk I can do that 'cause nobody I know might not see it. So people feel a little more free on TikTok to like be a little more real, a little more authentic. So like doubling up on TikTok if there's a time to do it, and posting everything that's gonna be a post on Instagram also on TikTok, is the best cross-pollination strategy. And if you really want to hone it on YouTube shorts, demographically YouTube shorts is a young demographic, young, like 10 to 15, 13 to 17. So they love brain rot. So like if you really want to like tailor a strategy platform by platform, whatever your on-screen lyrics look like, make them the most brain rot possible for YouTube shorts. So if you're gonna do small little white tax lyrics for Instagram, make them the big one word at a time, yellow for YouTube shorts 'cause it's just that generation. That's what they grew up on the Mr. Beast. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, damn, that's wild. That's wild. Okay, so definitely post everything you're posting on Instagram, post it on TikTok, and and more on TikTok. In addition, add even more to that if you have the time and energy to it. - Exactly, like if you're literally cooking chili and you spill the chili everywhere, you can literally take a video and be like, oh my God, I was just making chili and now I spill it everywhere. My life is a mess. - Tick tock. - That's not gonna go on Instagram, but like, it's almost like the stuff that you would maybe post on your Instagram stories. - Exactly. - You can just turn that, you could just post that on the TikTok. Like I look at stories is like, that's people that are already following me, my 500 people that view my stories every day or however many are the ones that, yeah, they're following me a little bit more closer to my journey. Yeah, you could just do the same shit. - Exactly, or even like your finsta. The finsta mindset for TikTok. - Mm-hmm, cool, cool. - Yeah, all right, what else should we cover, dude? Like I feel like we have covered a lot. What else have we not covered yet? - Mm-hmm, I mean, I'm an open book, so ask me anything. - What else besides content creation and strategy do you guys do at the agency? - So, on a, as much as I can say level, we're starting to consult for labels and management companies on their content strategy internally and start to build out their teams, their processes, their systems, so that they don't have to hire us, they can just keep it internal. So that's where we're starting to move a little more B2B, still working with the artist, but also building that side of what we do, 'cause everyone wants to keep it internal. I mean, no one wants to be beholden to an agency that's also working with their competition, you know, for life. - Yeah. - So we're starting, I guess, for lack of a better term, like pioneer that way and of like, kind of going against what would benefit us in the long term of like, yeah, you can just hopefully hire us forever, or we could just come in and build franchise ourselves out to you. - Yeah. Who's an example of a client that you've really seen skyrocket during their time with you? - Chanel Yates for sure. She actually was a EDM vocalist that I had on quite a few of my songs when I was an artist. Then she came to me just as a friend, 'cause we're very good friends saying like, hey, I think I'm gonna go down this country lane. So we worked for a while and just figuring out what that reprim was gonna look like. How could things shift over from basically dance pot vocalists to now country artists based in London too? So we made her being from the UK and being a country artist of very kind of key identifier for her brand, 'cause that's unique in and of itself. Not a lot of country artists are coming out of the UK. - Yeah. - And then we just really honed it on formats and her formats have pretty much stayed the same regardless of song and things have grown, you know, pretty rapidly for her, about 4,000 followers to now over 30,000. And the new song is crushing. So we're super stoked on Harvard. It took a while 'cause we had a completely fine her new identity. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's again, back to that foundation of the brand, like figuring out who you are, what you're all about, getting your story and your message really dialed in. And like, yeah, then you know what to actually create, right? All of that is going to influence and inspire like what the content's all about. So yeah, back to that, I could just see it more and more. Like it's such a missing piece for a lot of people. So if people are interested in working with you, I think that that is the dream perhaps for a lot of artists that are like, man, how rad would it be to have help and support? And you know, I've been talking about this more and more on the podcast, but you know, really stepping into that business owner mindset. If you want to scale your business, there is going to be a point in time where you got to start hiring other people, right? You got to start actually like building out your business. You can only take it so far yourself. So if people were interested in working with you, how would they go about that? Yeah, we got a wonderful website in my Instagram bio with all the info you need to apply. Perfect. Perfect. What's the Instagram? Rough music official. Rough, are you FF music official? I'll put the link in the show notes if you guys want to work with unleashed creative and Nick and the team and have some people create some awesome content for you. Provide some strategy. They obviously know what they're doing. So Nick, thanks so much for taking the time to hop on, bro. I really appreciate you peeling back the curtain and showing us some of these like deeper strategies that I think are so important for us all to be aware of. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]