Transcription
Today, we're going to talk about how to find exactly what you need to be posting to get more people to hear and see your art. If you want to grow a like-minded community around your artist project, you're first going to need to make them aware of you and then get them to truly connect to you and your art. The more you grow a community of truly connected people, the more a life of creative and financial freedom, adventure, and real connection comes into view. And for many artists, the way to achieve this dream comes with a dedication and commitment to making compelling content. For the artists of today trying to build community, content is the way.
Over the last 15 years, I've been a creative director and brand strategist for some of the biggest artists in music as well as luxury fashion brands. I've worked with major record labels and have been a part of large-scale global campaigns and launches for brands all over the world. And no matter what room I'm in or who I'm collaborating with, the number one question everyone's always asking is, "What should we post? And how does that tie into the campaign and the brand?" It happens all the time with artists and brand owners and even at my own family gettogethers. People will pull up their social media channels and ask me, "Does this suck? Is this wrong? This is bad." Right? I never know how to answer because it's like someone showing you a scene from a movie that you don't know or don't have any context around and then asking if the scene is wrong or if the scene sucks. If I don't know what the movie's about, it's hard to answer. I'll think in my head, I would need to spend at least 10 to 12 hours with you going through different things to know if this is wrong or if it's bad. Because that question of is this wrong or is this bad, the answer is multi-layered. There's so many levels to brand and story that need to be defined in order to know if something's good or not.
But that's what I'm going to attack today. I'm going to explain each layer of brand and how those layers tie into each other. If you understand those layers, you can answer the bigger questions. Because in my experience, that is the question most artists want answered. What do I make for content? What do I post? So, for today's video, I felt the most valuable thing I could do would be to walk you through how to take your story as a creative person or people and convert that into exactly what you should post to bring more awareness to you and your art. How I'm going to break down today's video is we're going to look at each section of branding. So, from a high level of story all the way down to what do I actually post? And at the end of the video, I'll get into exactly what you should post and how to build out a content calendar to make sure that you're not caught in the "I haven't posted in a while. I should probably post something" type moment. If you're taking this seriously and trying to operate in the professional world of being an artist, you should never find yourself in that position. The great companies and great artists around the world are never in a situation where they don't know what they're posting about that week. No matter where you find yourself in your journey, you should be operating with the same level of planning because planning is the real key. If you don't already use some kind of content calendar to map out what you're going to be posting for content, you should be. If you don't have one, we have a basic one we use with Colt. And if you comment "cult calendar" and give a short idea of something we should cover in future videos, then we'll send you the link to the calendar. Just like our other tools, no signups, no newsletters, no sales, I just want you to have all these tools if you need them. And at the end of the video, I'll go through how to properly map and organize your content calendar. But for now, let's get into it. How to actually know what to create content-wise to convey your story to the audience and make people aware of your art.
When we think about how to come up with one single post and how that ties to the story, we need to first zoom out all the way to know what the story as a whole is.
Section one, the story. I have a bunch of videos on the neighborhood art supply channel that help you better flesh out your story. This one about finding your overall brand, which I call the movie, and your brand personality archetype. And then this one about how to find your story and your brand plot. There's this one, which is a good case study about how to find your art direction and your overall visual style. And then this one about how to put it all together. If you haven't seen those yet, I'd suggest watching and doing those exercises to really flesh out who you are and your story. Because before you can know what you need to shoot for this scene in the movie, you need to know what the movie is, who the characters are, what are their stories, what's the position, and how does it look, what's the visual language. Once you have a grasp on what the movie is, you can then start to plan how to shoot it. It's not even a question that with our agency, the Cole Creatives, the clients and artists who have unlocked the power of where story meets content with align marketing are the ones that are growing at an exponential rate. The clients where their story, content, or marketing has issues or problems are the ones that are struggling to grow their audience. And typically, that's why we're working together is to solve those issues. This isn't a proven percentage, but in my mind, brand, which I call the movie, is 70-80% of a project's success. For a music project, it's not entirely about the music. It is a part of it. Every great movie has a great soundtrack, but it's about the story as a whole and the feeling it conveys.
So, now that we have an understanding that you're going to need to know the overarching story before you make anything content-wise, let's zoom in further because the next part starts to define what you'll actually post.
Section two, the period or era. Artists will have different periods and different eras throughout their career. Often, I'll have artists concerned when we're building a brand identity that they're going to have to live inside of that identity forever. This is absolutely not the case. The overarching story should remain intact. But when you look at an artist like Kanye during his many eras, so there's College Dropout era, there's 808s era, Donda era, Pablo era, the same artist with the same story, but he has different periods and eras with different looks and campaigns. And then like Picasso himself had his Blue Period, which was based on where he found himself emotionally at the time. Paintings from this period are almost entirely in shades of blue or blue-green, often with elongated, ghostly type figures in the works. The subjects included blind men, beggars, mothers with children, and outcasts. It was Picasso's way of confronting sorrow, both personal and universal during this time. Or another example of an era is the Beatles had their psychedelic period in the mid-60s. Albums like Revolver and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band define their psychedelic phase, marked by experimental production and surreal visuals and lyricism. The band not only sounded different but looked different and presented new forms of awareness and marketing based on their new inspirations. Or if you look at one of my personal favorites, Virgil Abloh and his conceptual Figures of Speech era. In this era, he was less of a fashion designer, but more of a cultural thinker and thought leader, challenging what a creative director could be within a culture. Thought-provoking moments with the quotes and various art offerings. During this time, it was less about remixing streetwear and more about making statements.
So, the reason I give these examples, if you can see how an era or a period influences the look of what's happening in the story, but it also influences what kind of content sandbox the artist should be playing in. Without clearly defining the kinds of things you're going to make and the things that you're interested in expressing, it becomes harder to plan any kind of content. So, ask yourself these questions: Where am I now? Is there cohesion to what I'm doing? What do I want to express? Can I create a sandbox for this period to house all the things I'm making? And as a note, this doesn't mean that if you put up walls to the sandbox that you can't step outside of it. It's just trying to help give positive constraints to the creative process.
So now you have your era or period defined. Let's zoom in further and look at how this plays out against an individual campaign.
Section three, the story blocks and campaigns. What is a campaign? A campaign is when you have something new to promote or share. A new show, a new tour, a new EP, and all the things you're going to do around it to try to bring more awareness. Campaigns should tell smaller, targeted, full stories that tie into the greater movie. So, you want to answer these questions: What am I trying to bring awareness to? What could be the campaign concept around that? What are the campaign themes? And how does this tie into the greater brand?
So, let's look at Tyler the Creator's campaign for "Call Me If You Get Lost." He launched this era with a deeply intentional aesthetic rooted in luxury escapism and nostalgic street mixtape energy. It began with mysterious physical billboards featuring a phone number. Fans who called heard a cryptic voice message that tied into the album's themes. He dropped a cinematic teaser called "Side Street" and gradually revealed more elements: lavish visuals, passport-style graphics, and low-fi travel core imagery. Each reveal felt like a boarding pass into a curated experience, not just a promo drop. Visually, he built a world inspired by Wes Anderson films, old travel posters, and luxury European vacation culture, all styled as Tyler Baudelaire, a character that embodied artful arrogance and poetic self-awareness. The album rollout extended to custom luggage, printed travel documents, and tour visuals that made audiences feel like they were tagging along on a lavish, off-kilter getaway. Even his merch was themed like passport stamps and luxury branding. What made this campaign work was its world-building and commitment to aesthetic storytelling. Tyler didn't just promote an album. He created a persona, a visual language, and an immersive mood board that fans could step into. It was aspirational, but weird enough to be remembered.
Now, you may be thinking, "Sure, that works for Tyler. He has a crazy budget. He's an amazing creative director, but how will this work for me?" Well, first, he didn't always have that budget, and he's been creative from the jump. And two, it doesn't mean that you can't steal the concept of having a pre-planned and intentional campaign to better bring awareness to your art. There are absolutely ways to run highly successful campaigns with small budgets. For example, look at the marketing campaign for the horror movie "Smile." They placed people with creepy smiles at key locations and moments all over the US. The images and stories got picked up by a bunch of different major media outlets, and those outlets did a good part of the lifting of letting people know about the movie. And that creativity around how can we make people more aware of this movie. That's what marketing is all about. So, when thinking about marketing your art, be sure you know your high-level story. Then define the world the campaign lives in and create ideas that can be used to support that campaign. And that's what we're going to talk about next. How to find the exact ideas and concepts to go with your campaign.
Section four, content buckets. Okay, so now you have a campaign concept going, but what should the content pieces be that go with that campaign? At Colt, part of our creative process after defining a campaign sandbox is to define a variety of content buckets that fit with that campaign. For example, what if we had an explorer brand archetype with a quest plot that was releasing a new album? The concept of the album is that all the songs were created in different locations around the world and there were multiple collaborators from many different countries. For this, the content buckets might look something like this: the act of travel, adventure stories, unique places visited, world cultures, world foods, and performances in unique locations. Sometimes, if you're an explorer brand, the audience is almost following you like they might a travel show. "Where will they go next?" they may think. So, in crafting content, it would be great to create things having to do with exploration and take the audience along your many adventures.
Now, as another example, let's say it was a Rebel brand archetype and the plot was rags to riches. There's a new mixtape coming out that feels DIY punk vibes. The campaign itself has a theme and look of old security footage cameras. The sounds are aggressive and high energy. The overall feeling of the mixtape is trying to incite a revolution. So for something like this, content buckets could be things like: "started from the bottom now we're here" stories, "can't tell me nothing" rebel type moments, mock security or surveillance tapes, "I don't have a label, I have a message," "this isn't a mixtape, it's a revolution," clips of high-energy performance moments. This could be pop-ups in random locations and should feel like underground boxing gyms. For a Rebel brand, it's all about freedom and chasing freedom, being who you want, doing what you want, saying what you want when you want. So conveying ideas surrounding rebellious type concepts could be a good way to express.
So for this section, answer these questions: What are the content buckets that help support the brand story? What are content buckets that are tied to this specific campaign? Are these buckets all tied to the same point of view and the same universe?
So now you have the concept of creating high-level content buckets to organize a campaign. Now we just need to get into what those buckets are filled with.
Section five, an individual post content properties and styles. A few months back, there was a big change made to how the different algorithms on the different platforms run. Now, instead of being based on followers, the performance of individual posts have more to do with the value they provide the audience and then how the audience engages with it. So, it's not that followers don't matter, but the concept of reach when it comes to followers is changing. Someone who has 500 followers on a given platform can get just as many impressions on their content as somebody with 50,000 followers. The content piece just needs to be deemed valuable by the algorithm. If the algo deems something to be valuable, meaning people are liking it, commenting on it, sharing it, watching it till the end, then it will take that post and show it to more people. And if the snowball continues, there's a chance of it going viral. So the more people engage with an individual content piece, the more opportunity it has to reach more people. So on the flip side of that, the same thing would happen if someone with 50,000 followers just posted a photo of what they had for dinner. If what they had for dinner wasn't unique or notable, it wouldn't be shown to that many people. So, the playing field now is more even than it's ever been, and artists should be excited about that. The game you're playing is how can you get someone's attention, give them something valuable, and put your art alongside that. And as a super important note on all this, the game I'm describing here is a game of marketing, not the actual creation of your art. You should be the only person that you're truly making your art for. And the hope is is that there's other like-minded people out there who will like what you've made as much as you. The marketing side is once the art is done, you need to bring awareness to that art.
So when you think about individual posts, you should look at them as potential ongoing properties or styles. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean by this. So as an example, during lockdown, one of our clients, Wookie, started experimenting with different formats and styles to promote the bootleg remixes he was making. He tried a format where he played two versions of himself. One in one outfit sitting at the desk making a remix and then the other wearing a different outfit walking by the studio and hearing the song. The second character would react to what the Wookie producer version was making and often wouldn't like the song at first or wasn't sure about it. But as the song continued and the build and drop played out, the second character fell in love with it and then they started dancing together. The headline on this original video read, "Beats I can't release." And that post went viral. So he tried it again with another bootleg remix and that one also went viral. So now he has an ongoing content property or series that he can continue to do. And to my knowledge, he's presented this idea and property almost 200 times at this point. This one concept or format has completely changed the trajectory of his career. And also as a fun note to this format, a lot of those beats he couldn't release actually did get released because the original owners of the song and samples saw how valuable the remix was to a modern audience. They decided to officially release it.
Another example of a format, one that's more static, is the Steve Aoki jump. In the early days of his career, Steve started taking photos mid-jump in key locations while he was on tour. These photos happened all over the world and became a recurring content property. He started doing them with other DJs, celebrities, and public figures. All the versions were numbered and it became a consistent content property that he could use to tell his story.
So, as a note, this doesn't mean that everything you post has to be a content property, but you should be experimenting and trying to find consistent staples. Most of the larger artists we work with have a healthy mix: content for the current campaign, ongoing content properties for their overarching brand story, and then one-off posts that don't fit either category, but strengthen their brand.
So, hopefully this all makes sense in terms of a content property and what that is. But in the next section, we're going to break it down even further. How to spot individual post formats and how to find the ones that fit your brand? Because that will then lead us to the ultimate question: What do I actually post?
Section six, individual posts and formats. When you're thinking about what to post, the first step is understanding what a format is and how it's structured and presented. It's the same setup that happens from start to finish, something that you can repeat consistently. So, a few examples of different formats: man or woman on the street. So, in this format, random people are interviewed on the street. A vlog-style walkthrough of someone's day, often sped up with captions or voiceover. Then there's hot takes. A creator shares bold or contrarian opinions to spark discussion. There's blind listen. This is where someone reacts to hearing something for the first time. This could be a fan, a stranger, or a friend. Their reaction of whether they like it or dislike it is the core of the content. These formats can work for short-form or long-form. While there's endless variations, many follow a common structure. That structure being: hook, lean-in, story, punchline. So the hook is stop the scroll, get the attention. Then there's the lean-in, which is sparking interest and starting a curiosity loop. And then there's the story, presenting the core of what the content is. And finally, there's the punchline or payoff that closes the curiosity loop and ideally delivers a moment that makes it sharable. And although this is short-form, it's the same structure you see in movies or reality TV, it's just condensed.
So when using a specific format, ask yourself these questions: Would I stop and watch this? Would I be curious? Would I lean in and stay till the end? And then the ultimate: Would I engage with or share this?
All right, so now you understand format and structure, but you might be thinking, which format should I use for my project? And that's what we're going to cover next.
Section seven, how to find your formats. So if you've done the brand personality archetype exercise from the storytelling video, this next part will feel familiar. If you remember from doing that exercise that not every archetype fits perfectly, but most artists will naturally align with one or two based on their mission and then their authentic personality. So then choosing which formats you should use for your brand is no different. You're asking yourself the main high-level questions. Questions like: Who am I? What's my story? And what's on brand?
So for example, let's say that you're a creator archetype, but you're more introverted and you're not a huge fan of being on camera. If this is the case, you probably shouldn't do skits or man-on-the-street type interviews. But a cinematic voiceover, B-roll driven story, using your music as the score could be a powerful way to share your creativity and your ideas without putting your face front and center.
So, let's look at another example. Maybe you're a hero brand archetype and your plot is overcoming the monster. In your story, maybe the monsters are the naysayers and the ultimate dragon to slay is your own self-doubt. So, with this story, here's a few formats that would fit perfectly: a day-in-the-life vlog, but it's filled with challenges. The hero has something to overcome. Formats having to do with acts of kindness. This makes the audience root for and fall in love with the hero. Motivational posts could be a good format. This helps other heroes with their challenges. And then lastly, formats having to do with failure. These kind of posts historically perform really well because the audience will come to the aid of the hero, pumping him or her up to take on the challenge. Again, at Colt, we tailor brand builds, strategy, and marketing plans to the artist. I always say I feel like we're suit tailors. We help the artist design the suit, but ultimately they have to wear it. The goal is to design a beautiful suit, but it has to fit them and it has to feel right.
So, when choosing formats, ask yourself these questions: How do these formats tie into my current campaign? Are they aligned with me, my personality, and my story? Would these formats resonate with my community? And are they doable or achievable with the current resources I have? So, if you're the same as your target demographics, the best way to find formats is to explore the platforms you're already on. Study what works. And yes, performance metrics matter, but don't chase only what works algorithmically or high-performance numbers. Follow what feels aligned to you and follow what feels on brand.
And speaking of platforms, how do you choose the platforms you should be on? That's what we're going to talk about next.
Section eight, what platforms to choose? Choosing platforms starts with a few questions. If I were a fan of this project, what platforms would I be on? Where are like-minded people like me digitally hanging out? For the community I seek to build, what platforms are they spending their most time on? So, for example, if you're targeting a younger audience, that likely means you're going to be on one set of platforms. Or if you want to reach people that are more in a midlife audience, that might be another set of platforms. So, a question I get asked a lot at Colt is that, do I need to be on all the platforms? Should I be omniscient? Unless you're already a mainstage headliner touring all over the world, which some people watching this video may be, my suggestion is to go deep, not wide. Focus on key platforms where your people are actually hanging out and build there. As your team grows and you expand your marketing efforts, you can also expand your presence. And also, as a quick note here, when you're thinking about making content for the different platforms, don't make broccoli. So, what I mean by this is think about whenever you make broccoli, then you chop up the broccoli. What do you have? Smaller broccoli. It's not new. It's just a cut-up version of the same thing. Each platform has a native style and audience. There are key reasons people are hanging out on these platforms. So for whatever platforms you're committing to, create content that's native to that platform.
So to review how to choose your platforms, ask yourself these questions: What platforms do I want to build community on? Are they aligned with my brand and my audience? And can I execute consistently here?
All right. So now you've got your story, campaign ideas, content properties, formats, and you know the platforms you're going to be on. The final step here is the one that separates the artists who are going to grow and the ones that are going to stall.
Section nine, content calendar and execution. Whether you're just starting out or you're already touring, time is tight. There's only so many hours in a day and there's barely enough time to even make the music, let alone the content to go with it. But here's the shift: If it's on the calendar, it usually gets done. If it's not, it slips down the list of priorities. If you plan the rollout and you schedule when the posts are actually going to happen, then you time block when you're actually going to take the time to make the content for this plan. Do you think that bigger pop artists wake up and wonder what to post that day? No, they don't. Because their teams plan content months and months in advance around album releases, merch drops, and tour announcements. But even if you don't have a team, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't start thinking like a pro. Map your content and have a plan. This is the biggest difference I see between artists that are growing and artists that aren't. And as I mentioned before, there's all kinds of content calendars online that you can use to map your content. But if you want a basic one similar to what we use at Colt, comment "cult calendar" and then share a topic that you want us to cover in a future video and we'll send you a link to the calendar.
So, in terms of mapping your content, this is how it works. You'll do all the things that I've laid out here with defining your story, your brand, and defining the current campaign that you're on. And once you have all that, you'll create your page with your content buckets. Then, once you have the content bucket page, you'll use the ideas and concepts from that to start laying out this month's content. So, first, you're going to want to look at tentpole things that will happen this month. Are you releasing any new music, new art? Do you have any shows you need to announce? Do you have any shows this month that you will have played? And then you'll want to put content up from those shows. For all these items, put placeholders for where these things should fall. For example, a song release might have 10 total posts that go with it. Those content pieces fill up 10 blocks just by themselves. So now, after you have all of these main items laid out, you're going to need to fill in the rest of the days. You'll then go back to your content buckets and you'll pull ideas from here. Make sure that you have a healthy balance of storytelling posts as well as posts that are more awareness-oriented. This means don't try to go viral with every post. Make sure the audience knows who you are. And on the flip side of that, don't get so caught up telling your story, you've forgotten about the marketing side and bringing awareness to the things that you're making.
And a question that I'll get asked a lot here is, how much content should I actually be posting? And my answer to that is, it depends on the game that you're in and what kind of game you want to play. Some artists are in a game of quantity while others are in a game of quality. There's no right or wrong. It just depends on you. So look at someone like Alex Hormozi, who from what I understand does 350 pieces of content every week across multiple platforms, while an artist like Gox will only post a few times a year, but his videos get millions and millions of views, and he's found amazing opportunities spending more time on less videos. So, there's no right or wrong answer. It just depends on who you are as a creator. But I'll tell you that if planning and making content is an afterthought in your world, you may not be having the full success you're seeking. In my experience, bigger artists plan four to six months in advance, while mid-tier artists usually plan one to two months in advance, and newer artists may not have a plan at all. The plan is everything because it allows you to organize your execution. But in order to really grow, there's one last step to this whole process.
Section 10, content analysis. So, this part may seem obvious, but a lot of artists will miss it. They'll post their content, and then they'll glance performance numbers from a high level. But what they don't do is they don't pause to ask the deeper questions. Yes, analytics matter, but just going viral isn't the goal. In fact, going viral for the wrong reason can actually be super damaging. It can attract the wrong people and the wrong audience to your project. So, when analyzing content performance, ask yourself these questions: Does this content feel aligned to me and my story? Am I chasing performance or am I chasing purpose? Am I telling my story or am I just trying to get views? And is this the best that I can make it with the resources that I have? So, it's important to try and look at this through a lens of, am I connecting with the right audience here? Are we truly bonding? I've worked with a few artists who have insane numbers with consistent viral posts, but no one's coming to see their art or buy tickets to their shows because the metrics are there, but the connection is not. And after 15 years of working in branding and content, I can tell you this with full confidence: If you have a real story to tell, you know who you are, you have a plan, and you consistently show up, the right people will find you. From my view, it's black and white. The artists who are growing have this locked in, and the ones who aren't are likely struggling with one of these elements.
So, let's quickly recap this video as a whole, but let's reverse engineer this time. Think of it as a microscope that's zooming further and further out with each move. So, the big question that we started with is: What do I actually post to social media? And how can that bring awareness to me and my art? So, when we think about individual post, it should be informed by three things: What is the format? What is the scripted idea or concept for that format? What's the platform it's going to be on? And is this the platform where my demographics and like-minded audience are going to be hanging out?
So then zoom the microscope out a little further. What are the content buckets that these individual ideas will fit into? How are the content buckets tied to the current campaign or overall brand story? Another zoom out. What's the current campaign for our newest offerings? Then zoom out a little further. What's the current era, period, or chapter that we're in? Then zoom all the way out. What's the overarching movie? Who are the characters? What's the story? And what's this all about?
So, as I mentioned earlier, I'd give you the formula on how to find unlimited content ideas. This is it. By understanding the sandbox you're in, what the universe is, and how to zoom in and zoom out, it enables you to consistently find new ideas and new methods to tell your story. As time goes on, you'll get inspired by other creators, both new and old, and you'll use that inspiration to create new content pieces, but you'll do it through your point of view and your taste. That's the formula, and that's how you can get from the macro level of your full story into the micro level of what you're actually going to post.
So, I hope all this helps you better understand how to tell your story and how to bring awareness to your art. If there's other topics that you want us to cover, please let us know in the comments. We actually read everyone. I think we respond to almost everyone as well. I truly want this channel to be a direct link between you and us. But good luck with your art and making your content. And until next time, peace.