Photo by Capital XTRA

Music connects the world.

Whether or not you are an artist, there is power in leveraging music to grow your influence. These mutually beneficial partnerships can help you reach new audiences through people’s shared love of music.

This weekend I’ll be diving into this topic at the A3C Festival & Conference in Atlanta, an event that engages and inspires the artists, entrepreneurs, and creatives that shape hip-hop culture.

Here are three takeaways from my session about tapping into music to boost your content:

Maximize the 3 P’s — Produce. Publish. Profit

These three P’s are the framework to monetizing your influence on social media.

Produce your best content in the form of your choice – whether it’s video, image, text or audio.

Publish that content on the right platform to reach your target audience. It may be on a podcast, YouTube video, Instagram or a variety of channels, but it’s important to strategically think through where you are, why you’re there, and who you’re trying to influence.

Profit by backing up your dope creative content with data to quantify your influence to brands. After consistently producing and publishing content, track your analytics to determine if you’ve received more engagement, followers, subscribers or sales. Use your metrics to show your value and why you should be considered for paid opportunities.

Ella Mai reached mainstream success by applying the three P’s to her brand. She produced music cover videos on Instagram consistently, and one was re- published by The Shade Room. Her content got the attention of DJ Mustard who sent a direct message inviting her to a studio session and signed her to his record label. She profited from consistently sharing her gifts and leveraging her influence.

The three P’s are key!

Crowdsource your influence

Challenges create viral content because they encourage crowd participation. At the heart of social media is community, and people want to share content of themselves being a part of it.

The #InMyFeelingsChallenge was the brainchild of internet comedian, Shiggy. Founder of ‘The Shiggy Show’, Shiggy became popular thanks to his hilarious dance videos, impressions and rants.

He built his platform and crowdsourced his influence by getting others involved in the challenge. His community expanded to the world as thousands of people joined in, including O’dell Beckham and Instagram King Will Smith. Everyone couldn’t stop singing or hearing Drake’s catchy song thanks to Shiggy.

The #InMyFeelingsChallenge was a great intersection of music and comedy. Every challenge doesn’t take off, but those that make everyone want to be a part of them is often tied by music (#InMyFeelingChallenge, #MannequinChallenge, #RunningManChallenge).

Have fun with social media and participate in the challenge to be a part of the online buzz. You may also reach new people by using the hashtag.

Leverage untraditional partnerships

Break the normalcy of music by thinking of how to mix different worlds. E-sports and gaming platforms can add non-copyrighted music to the background of their YouTube videos to make their content more unique. Beauty influencers can use non-copyrighted music in their time-lapsed YouTube videos to show their brand personality. 

Music is an underutilized way for influencers to expand their audience and diversify their content. Sign up for our email list for more keys to elevate your brand.