How to Promote Your Music on TikTok Without Doing Silly Dances

So you may have noticed I’ve largely avoided talking TikTok on this channel as I think there’s a crucial part of being a talking head to only talk about what you’re a real expert on. And because I am a bit long in the tooth and TikTok was the place the youths were congregating I felt like maybe I should pick my battle on a field where I could win the battle. But things have changed, I’ve studied up over the past year and a half and the app is hitting a new point in its growth where its not just the youth dancing around and TikTok is now for everybody which means you should probably be there… I mean after all they have surpassed YouTube in watch time per month as well as boasting a billion users worldwide.

So in this video I am going to catch you up on where we are at with TikTok and tell you how to promote your music there without doing stupid dances. I’m Jesse.

The Evolution of Social Networks

One of the things I feel like people always forget is whatever a social network starts off as is rarely what it is just a year or two later. Let’s remember Facebook started off as a place where college kids connected with classmates then became the most important place to market your music but is now the worst place to do that as its turned into a hellscape of your relatives sharing the stupidest memes on politics and lizard people running society and ignoring that there’s only one lizard and that’s the psycho lizard who is CEO of the platform. Stay woke y’all.

Let’s remember just a decade ago all you heard was Instagram is for narcissists taking photos of themselves, then it became it was for kids then I remember some truly deranged takes that its the only happy place on the internet and now its just the place we converge to get updated on everyone and everything we’re interested in.

I tell you all this to say that if you’re saying you’re too old or not hip enough for TikTok you have missed we’ve hit a new phase of the app and all are welcome and beginning to congregate so please drop the shyness and get in.

Why TikTok is Essential for Musicians

Now I know some of your hesitance is that you really don’t want to do silly dances and degrade your stoic polished facade since after all you’re a serious artist but allow me to put you at ease with some good news. Do you have to do these stupid dances? NO. Do you have to do back flips? No. Do you have to twerk? …

But if you’re still not sold let me tell you the most important reason you should be on TikTok. All I hear from you all is you want to get on that Instagram explore page so tons of people learn who you are and get exposed to your music but let me tell you what’s ten times more powerful than the Instagram explore page: TikTok’s actual feed that everyone watches all day.

When I hear about how everyone wants to get on that explore page I laugh since so many users don’t even look at it but the main feature of TikTok is it’s like an explore page that learns exactly what you like… most of what you’re served are people who you don’t follow instead the app is truly genius at learning what you like and don’t like and giving you new people who are making content similar to what you already have enjoyed.

I like many other people who use it am continually astounded at how good it got at finding what I like and don’t care about. But to spell this out for you if you are thinking about joining one of the things I am most enthused about for musicians is that it’s enabling tons of music discovery in both the feed and when your song becomes a TikTok trend and people then run over to stream it on Spotify. There’s so much opportunity to find your audience and I think we’re finally at that point where if you don’t get started today you’re going to look back in absolute regret that you didn’t rethink what you know about the platform.

How to Get Started on TikTok

If you’re convinced to try it now let me talk to you about how its changed and what you should be doing. Now that there’s a billion people there the diversity of what people enjoy and want has far exceeded just good looking people doing silly dances. Truly we’re now in this era of the platform that I find to be the one that is the most promising when the rules share changing and you can explore and exist freely.

You don’t need to watch the trends unless you want to instead you can do what you would want to see what you would like to see if someone else did and the amazing thing is the algorithm can help you find it.

Now I know for a lot of you you can be scared of embarrassing yourself by doing something far off the reservation that will be cringe. If that’s your fear I have a simple suggestion for you. Use the search function, look up some hashtags of your music genre or interests and follow them. If you look at the screen now you can see how to bounce between seeing what’s most popular or just seeing some of the most relevant ones in a time period. Watch what other people are doing and get a feeling for TikTok. And even if those interests are things like baroque English literature or obscure 90s video games there’s still people making TikToks about them here.

Finding Your Niche

But one of the reasons so many people were turned off of TikTok for so long is it seemed like this super dancing-based way of telling stories and for the rhythm-less or less performative amongst us didn’t feel like this was our place. But that has changed now that the platform has expanded so much.

Now I know I talk about storytelling all the time but truly TikTok is a storytelling platform like literally the video I saw get shared the most this week was just a girl talking about how some dude scammed her by taking her to Taco Bell on a date. But here’s the headspace I want you to get in. You can be yourself on this platform and just observe the format people use to communicate and tell stories, jokes or inform people about their music.

And that’s the thing here that I think a lot of people were thrown for is they see themselves promoting their music by putting up a clip of a music video or them playing a song, but truly the days where that wasn’t what spread on TikTok are behind us as music artists now post exactly that and get discovered by new fans.

I know a lot of you just want to get the word out about your music you can do TikToks like “Hey guys here our new music video in it I show some sick footage of me melting steel beams like they did on 9/11 but this time I use my riffs.”. You can make videos about your opinions on music, current events, culture, tell people 5 records you love anything goes there are no rules and all sorts of things are working right now to get music discovered so you should be doing that no matter what type of music you make since there’s an audience here.

Examples and Further Learning

And now’s a good time to tell you if you are like Jesse where are examples of this? There’s not enough time in this video to get there but the next one in the series does just so leave a comment then subscribe and get notified when I post videos so you don’t miss the next one where I am going to give you tons of examples on what you could be posting on TikTok and much much more.

Another way TikTok has changed is there there’s videos of people explaining quantum physics that have millions of views, truly if you know something you think is rare knowledge TikTok is about sharing that and that can build relationships with people that get them to listen to your music but I know a lot of you just want to promote music and that is fine, you can make so much creative content around existing footage you have from photo shoots music videos and talk so much about your songs.

SO many people are showing little bits of their songs and showing how they did it. They’re talking the meaning of two lines of lyrics for a minute. They are just showing themselves or other people enjoying their music and inception in a fan to listen through that and if you want to learn more about that I made a video that I think was my viewers favorite video I have ever made on how using psychological-emotional appeals can get people to stream your music and if you want to watch that it’s on the screen now or in the descriptions.

Creative Tools and Community Building

One of the strangest things about TikTok is before people dive in they often make it way more vacuous than it is. I mean I am not going to deny that the most concussed idiots flock to this platform but if you let the algorithm learn what you like, soon enough the clout goblin zombies disappear and you find your people. But creating on TikTok is actually incredibly interesting, there’s so many video manipulation tools that can do trippy, funny, or illustrative things. Once you explore the creation tools it’s hard to not get curious what you can do with them and the fun that can be had.

One of the other things I want to impress upon you is TikTok is way more creative than any other social network. Truly the tools they have given you to play with if you’re a creative person there’s so much fun to be had. I have been messing around and making TikToks for a month Which By the way you can follow me on there or any social network @jessecannon but truly the tools are amazing and anyone who enjoys creating can get addicted to the interesting things you can do with it and I actually think that’s one of the main reasons the platform has grown so fast is the possibilities to do cool things are just so vast.

One of the most important parts of the platform is that cause it serves you to people similar to you and interested in the same things as you, it really helps you find your community. It can be where an influential person in your genre hears of you, it can be where someone who wants to collab with you hears you I seriously hear about that constantly. It can connect you with the artists you play shows with or do cool things with its truly amazing for finding community and if all the other reasons I told you here weren’t appealing this is probably one of the most slept on perks of the platform since nothing is better at introducing you to the people who are similar to you.

Engaging with Your Fans

But truly one of the other things you should consider about TikTok is if you are making music that has any sort of momentum meaning even a few thousand plays you should be searching your songs and encouraging any fans who use them in TikToks since this a great way to build bonds and encourage more sharing. It’s simple to search your songs by either typing in your artist name, or artist and song name and then doing a search on sounds for any TikToks with them in it but remember sometime people don’t tag the sounds so searching your artist name or song name can find unattributed uses. But learning the fans who are passionate about you and encouraging the spreading is how so many TikTok trends grow and we all know if you go viral on TikTok it can be tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify and YouTube. There’s way more you can do with that but we’ll get into that in part 2.

Ok if you’re left wanting to know more I have great news for you for the next few weeks I am going to keep going in on how you blow up on TikTok and trust me this is just the start and if you have things you want me to address definitely drop that in the comments so please like subscribe and get notified so you don’t miss any of that. If I have made more videos on it and you’re watching this after those videos are out you can click on the playlist right now or in the description as well on the screen is a playlist on how to go from zero to ten thousand fans as well as how to blow up on Spotify click one and learn more. Thanks for watching.

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