February 24, 2025 • 48 mins
Nick Ruffalo is a music marketing expert who helps artists cut through the noise and build real, engaged audiences with his agency, Unleashd Creative Solutions. In this episode, we break down the biggest mistakes artists make when promoting their music, why simply posting content isn’t enough, and how to actually connect with fans in a way that drives long-term success.
We also talk about the platforms that matter most in 2024, the strategies that actually move the needle, and how to market your music without feeling like you’re selling out. If you want to grow your brand, increase your reach, and make a lasting impact, this episode is packed with game-changing insights.
Follow Nick and apply to work with Unleashd Creative here:
https://www.instagram.com/ruffmusicofficial
https://www.unleashdcreative.com
Follow Nik Cherwink here:
https://www.instagram.com/nikcherwink
And visit my site to join the mailing list or book a free coaching call:
https://www.nikcherwink.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (00:00):
when you're putting a message out into the
(00:01):
world, the goal of that contentis for it to be consumed by
another person.
So if you're making everythingwithin that video, that post all
about you, as if you're almostignoring the person who's
viewing it, they're not going toresonate.
They're not going to feel likethis was made for me.
Nik (00:32):
What's up everybody?
Welcome to the Headliner MindsetPodcast.
I have a really exciting episodefor you guys today because I
know a lot of you are trying tofigure out What the hell do I do
on social media?
What is the right strategy thatI should take?
how do I even make content?
What types of content should Ibe making?
How often should I be posting?
And obviously it's a really bigpart of building an audience.
(00:54):
If you want to build a fan base,we got to be on social media and
we got to be using itconsistently.
It's probably how you found outabout this podcast in the first
place.
So in this episode, I got to sitdown with the owner of a
marketing agency thatspecializes specifically in
helping artists create content,build their brand and build
their audience.
They're called UnleashedCreative, and this is their
owner and founder, Nick Ruffalo.
(01:15):
Welcome to the Headliner MindsetPodcast, bro.
I am so stoked to have you hereand really excited to dive in
with you.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (01:22):
Same here.
Thanks for having me.
Nik (01:24):
I would love to really start.
By just hearing a bit about yourstory, and kind of how you got
to where you are now runningthis marketing agency, I know
that you were an artist yourselfand so you actually, you know,
walked that path.
And so tell me a little bitabout your background and how
you got to where you are today.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (01:42):
Yeah.
So it all started when I was inhigh school.
We're in, I want to say socialstudies class.
My buddy was watching ultra livestream of the chain smokers,
2016 goaded set of all time.
And I was like, Oh, that issick.
Like I want to do that so bad.
So I downloaded logic, didn'treally do much with it.
(02:03):
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 sophomoreyear of college.
It was a perfect time for me to,you know, dedicate pretty much
every hour of every day tolearning production.
Early 2021 jumped on TikTok,started putting out originals
(02:23):
and remixes.
Had some viral moments in late2021.
So I graduated college asemester early Was doing some
djing and opening sets down inmiami and in new york and had
this kind of epiphany momenttowards the end of the summer of
2022 where I just felt like forme I didn't want to be in the
club and nightlife scene longterm, you know for lack of a
better term I had done so muchpartying in college that I was
(02:46):
like, okay You know Production,working with pop artists,
diversifying the genre.
That's where I see my path, youknow, leading down.
So I took a step back from beingan artist, rebrand all my social
media to producer for otherartists, moved out to LA in June
of 2023.
Pretty much first day I movedout here, just started running,
(03:07):
you know, one, two, sometimesthree sessions a day, a bunch of
different artists and a bunch ofdifferent genres.
Through that process, just beingin all these sessions with all
of these different artists andseeing the same complaint of
social media content.
I hate social media.
I don't know what to post justconstantly come up over and over
and over again.
I just started giving theartists I was working with, you
(03:28):
know, ideas here and there inthe middle of sessions and then
things started to work for them.
So I was like, okay, let me justpost about this on my page.
So very slowly I started postingMaybe like once every couple of
weeks stuff in the social mediamarketing lane.
Just here's what I told thisartist, here's what happened.
And that stuff just started todo really, really well, really
fast.
So early 2024, I kind of saw thehandwriting on the wall, took a
(03:51):
step back from production andreally went all in on building
this company, brought on ourteam all throughout 2024 and now
we're, we're locked in and we'rerocking and rolling.
Nik (04:00):
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, it's so coolbecause, you know, right before
we started recording, I was justtalking about how so many of my
clients and so many of thelisteners and just every artist
out there I think is just tryingto figure out like How the fuck
do I grow my audience, right?
I love making music, right?
This is where my heart sayswhere my passion is that I love
making music.
(04:20):
And then there's oftentimes ahuge block when it's like, okay,
well now I need to promote itand build a brand and build an
audience.
And for a lot of people, it justseems like this really Kind of
complicated world that a lot ofpeople are, struggling to figure
out.
So, I'd love to really just digin with you and offer everybody
some, some basic, you know,guidelines and some steps.
(04:42):
And like, what are you seeingactually is working?
Uh, obviously the, the landscapechanges all the time.
You know, what worked a year agodoesn't necessarily work today.
Technology and trends are alwaysevolving.
So, um, let's start, let's starthere.
What would you say are.
Some of the biggest mistakes.
Where are people getting itwrong?
What do you see there?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (05:03):
Easily number one is making it about
me, not about them.
In the content, in the brandingand the messaging, when you're
putting a message out into theworld, you know, regardless of
being an artist or not, justanybody who's creating content,
the goal of that content is forit to be consumed by another
person.
So if you're making everythingwithin that video, that post all
(05:27):
about you, as almost you're asalmost as if you're almost
ignoring the person who'sviewing it, they're not going to
resonate.
They're not going to feel likethis was made for me.
And it's the same kind of, youknow, mindset when you are
making music, yes, it's for you,but you're also saying, okay,
other people are going to listento this, whether you're doing it
(05:47):
consciously or subconsciously,you are pulling inspiration
from, songs that you know, youlove and that other people love.
So when it comes from a contentperspective, you always have to
keep that viewer in mind andflip 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.
(06:07):
Why?
To serve you, the artist?
I don't even know you.
So why am I taking my time torun up your numbers when you've
done nothing for me as theviewer, as the consumer?
Tell me about why this is a fitin my life.
If I'm going through XYZproblems, and this song comes
from a place that's going toalso talk about XYZ problems and
(06:30):
provide a solution, tell Then asthe viewer, I'm going to be more
compelled to listen.
But if you're just telling meit's out, run it up, pre save
it.
Why do I care?
Nik (06:41):
yeah, yeah.
Something I like to point out islike, there's a hundred thousand
songs being uploaded to Spotifyevery single day.
When I found out that statistic,my fucking head exploded.
I was like, that's insane,right?
Not to mention, I've alreadygot, like, countless artists and
songs and bands and things thatI enjoy listening to.
So, like, what's the point?
Why am I going to listen to you?
(07:03):
Most likely there's alreadysomething out there that I love
listening to, you know, justsaying, Hey, yeah, this is, this
is out.
Listen to it.
It's like, all right, I'mprobably not going to become a
fan just because of that.
All right.
So making it not just about youand my song that I have out and
listen to it and run up thenumbers, um, great great first
step.
What else, where else do you seepeople getting it wrong?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (07:26):
Just not being themselves.
I mean, when we onboard a newartist onto our roster, we have,
you know, multiplequestionnaires and still my
favorite question across all ofthem is if you woke up tomorrow
with a hundred million followersand a guaranteed 1 million
people are going to see everysingle thing that you post.
What kind of content would youmake?
And the answers that we get,even from the biggest artists we
(07:49):
work with is always, you know,they're putting something in
that answer.
That's not what they're postingright now.
So it's like, okay, so you'rewaiting for, you're waiting for
this like vanity metric to hit acertain place to where now you
feel like you can post this typeof content.
You can say these types ofthings.
You can show this side ofyourself.
But if you're going to wait andsay, okay, When I know that like
(08:11):
success quote unquote in thevanity metrics of views, which
really doesn't mean anything inthe grand scheme of things, if
I'm just going to wait for aspecific view number to be who I
actually want to be online,people see right through that.
So like holding back certainthings until you know, or feel
like, Oh, this is when I can bethis, or this is when I can say
(08:32):
that.
You're never going to comeacross as who you know, you want
to come across as in yourcontent and in your branding
online.
Nik (08:40):
Yeah, I, I get that.
I've seen that a lot where a lotof people have this sort of
dream and desire to make animpact.
And there's this like, well,once I'm at this certain level,
like, then I can really make animpact.
and I like to point them back tolike, no, you start just
becoming an impactful personnow.
Right.
And if there's five people thatyou can impact, like, then
(09:01):
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 wantto be now saying those things
that you want to say now, not atsome later stage, right?
It doesn't necessarily work thatway.
So I want to, you know, Iactually totally skipped over
where I really wanted to startthis conversation was talking
(09:22):
about the agency, and what youguys do unleashed creative.
I'd love to hear like, what isit specifically that you guys do
over there?
And what's your, what's yourprocess for how you work with
people?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (09:31):
Yeah, so we are a content branding, digital
marketing, A& R, a little bit ofeverything at this point.
And our process, you know, isvery fluid depending on who
we're working with.
I mean, at the core of what wedo, we're meeting weekly and
we're talking through, okay,over the next seven days, what
is going on?
Cause we don't want to live inthis bubble of like, Oh, I've
(09:53):
got a, you know, a tour thatlaunches in August.
Oh, I've got a album that dropsin 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 nextseven days.
This is what's going to go outon social media.
This is going to be your postMonday, Tuesday, et cetera.
Then either we're filming andediting that content for the
(10:14):
artists, or if they're not herein LA, They got their team, you
know, or themselves to film andedit.
We'll approve everything.
Make sure it looks good.
Goes out, meet again the nextweek, continue to tweak our
strategies in the content lane.
And then in the background, youknow, we're also continuing to
build their visual identity,their branding, and we'll
create, you know, an establishedcreative direction deck over 90
(10:35):
days to ensure that, okay, likethis from an online perspective.
Who you are, who you represent,who you will be and continue to
be for, you know, theforeseeable future.
And then we put those twotogether and we're, we're, in
biz.
Nik (10:49):
Yeah, yeah.
So the question I want to askis, which I think everybody is
kind of asking themselves is,how do I know what to post?
Right.
I'm looking at my calendar andI'm like, I don't, what the fuck
do I post over the next sevendays?
What do I post over the next 30days?
so how do you go about helpingsomebody figure out like what
they quote unquote should beposting?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (11:12):
We take it in phases.
So, you know, again, we have,artists with millions and
millions of followers andthey're still obviously coming
to us for a reason.
And it's they don't feel like.
You know what they're doing onsocial media, who they are and
their content is what they wantto be.
That's why they're working withus.
So no matter how big the artistis, we're always going to go
through a test phase of like, weneed to just test a lot of
(11:34):
formats.
We need to test a lot of thingsbecause no two artists, no two
people on social media are goingto have the exact same formula.
There is no formula to this.
Posting times do not matter.
Hashtags do not matter.
None of trending audio doesthat.
None of this matters.
I promise you.
The only thing that matters isfinding your formats and keeping
your brand consistent and beingyou.
(11:54):
It's okay.
What are your formats?
Is it B roll wall of text?
Cause for some people they couldjust literally walk down the
street in an aesthetic, look,put a wall of text over it with
their song behind it.
And that's the thing for somepeople that does work for many
others.
It does not.
So we need to test.
A bunch of different formatsover month one to figure out.
Okay.
From a format perspective,regardless of song, these are
(12:17):
your buckets to pull from.
Now we're into, you know, oursecond phase, which is okay.
What does your content funnellook like?
What is your top of funnel?
What is your middle of funnel?
What is your bottom of funnel?
Top of funnel is discoverycontent.
How are, how are new peoplegoing to discover you?
It's not going to be throughyour music.
And the example I always give iswhether it was intentional or
not, Taylor Swift is.
(12:38):
currently living this funnel inreal time because the shared
interest that she's connectingherself to is the NFL.
So if you've never heard ofTaylor Swift in your life, but
you're a fan of the NFL and youwatch the super bowl and you see
her on screen, you've nowdiscovered Taylor Swift.
Now, if you want to go deeperand you say, who is this?
(12:59):
Let me Google Taylor Swift andinterviews 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.
(13:20):
top of funnel discovery, middleof funnel connection, bottom of
funnel conversion and allcontent needs to serve a purpose
within one of those buckets.
So now we're into phase two andwe're figuring out what are your
formats for these differentsections of your funnel?
What's the ideal frequency foryou?
in terms of segmenting top,middle, and bottom across a week
schedule.
(13:40):
And then we implement,
Nik (13:42):
Yeah, that's huge.
I think even for myself, it'sgreat because I've been really
lazy on social media and I'mlike, okay, I know I can grow my
account and my brand way bigger,but I think that piece that you
just said about, you know, Theintention behind each piece of
content.
Is this a discovery piece?
Is this going out to people thathave never heard of me?
(14:02):
And I'm trying to just, youknow, have that top of funnel
first introduction.
What am I saying?
Right?
I'm going to speak differentlyto that audience than I would to
people that are alreadyfollowing me.
Right?
So that's just so huge rightthere that that top of funnel.
and tell me what what you said.
Those those three are.
This is the top of funnel kindof discovery.
Then there's the connection and
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (14:21):
which is middle of funnel.
Nik (14:23):
Yeah.
So like now that, that, thatmiddle place, I'm like, I'm just
putting stuff out to get you toknow me, to connect with me, see
what kind of like, do we, do wevibe on the same frequency?
Do we have the same interest?
And then there's that conversionwhere I'm really converting you
over to being a fan of, themusic and the art like that
right there.
That's huge.
I don't think a lot of peopleare doing that.
So I hope that everybody'staking notes right now.
(14:44):
Right?
Like really think about what isthe actual intention of, yeah.
Behind what you're doing,because yeah, I think a lot of
people are in this phase of justlike, Oh, I have a new song.
Let me just jump, really jumpstraight to marketing.
And this is where we get to havea branding conversation, but
it's like, okay, I have a newsong.
Let me put it out there, newsong out, check it out, listen
to it, you know, or here's me inthe studio just playing my song
(15:07):
or whatever it may be.
And, um, We're not reallythinking about like, what,
what's the experience of theperson on the other side going
to be?
All right.
We're just thinking aboutourselves.
I have a song, I have a thingthat I want people to hear.
So let me just push it outthere, shove it down their
throats.
Maybe I'm even running an ad tolike push it in front of their
face, but like.
If that person has never heardof you, like, what's, what's
(15:29):
going to be the thing thatactually hooks them in and gets
them to be interested in you inthe first place, right?
There's a lot of psychologyaround this that I think people
are missing out on, myselfincluded.
I'm going to take this and runwith it and like really sit down
and think about what are mythree, types of content I could
be creating in those funnels orin those buckets.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (15:45):
a hundred percent and top of funnel is
never going to be about yourmusic.
That's the big misconception.
Nik (15:50):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (15:52):
you
Nik (15:52):
What would, what would an example.
what would an example of a good,like, top of funnel piece of
content be?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (15:58):
Okay.
So let's say, let's say anartist has a song called, I hate
my ex.
Okay, so if we want to segmentthis, I hate my ex concept.
Okay.
So you wrote this song becauseyou quite literally hate your ex
and they were the worst, youknow, worst boyfriend,
girlfriend, whatever.
ever.
So it would compel you enough inyour life to write this vicious
(16:18):
song about them.
Okay.
Well, you're top of funnelcontent.
We're not even going to put thesong in the video at all.
We're not going to talk aboutit.
You're literally just go sit inyour car, put the phone on the
dashboard, start the video offsaying anybody else have that
one X who blank go into listingoff everything terrible that
that X did.
Now you're creating conversationaround the concept of the song
without even mentioning thesong.
(16:39):
So now you're attractingeverybody who's bought it and be
like, Oh my God, me too.
My ex is the worst.
My ex did that.
I hate my ex too.
So now you're literally gettingpeople who are bought into the
conceptual concept of the songinto your world before they've
even heard the song.
Cause it's a lot easier to sella concept than a product,
especially when it's anemotionally rooted, you know,
(16:59):
experience.
Okay.
Now they're in, now they'vediscovered you and they've
created, you've got aconversation going on around
this topic.
Alright, let's connect them tothe music.
So now let's do a video whereyou quite literally just put the
phone down on the ground, stepback, lip sync your song into
the camera, text on screen, whenmy ex did blank, so I wrote
this.
Okay, now we've connected thatsame exact thing from the
(17:22):
discovery of like, this is thething your ex did that made you
hate them and why you wrote thesong, but now we're actually are
going to connect it to the song.
And then conversion content,let's just do high quality, you
know, many music videoperformance pieces to really
just show, okay, this is alegitimate artist.
Like they are doing it at a highlevel.
They're clearly putting budgetinto this.
It's not all just iPhone intheir car.
(17:42):
So now you've kind of alsowithin the conversion content
and planted on the viewer thatlike you are a legitimate
artist.
You're not in your bedroomtrying to be a tick tocker,
which is so dumb, but somepeople still think that.
So let's play out of that.
And now, you know, We've createdthis cohesive ecosystem.
Nik (18:01):
Hmm.
Got it.
Got it.
So, there's a term that I'veheard used before, which is,
either playing the man orplaying the brand.
And, uh, We have, there'sartists that have more of the
personal brand where it is like,Hey, it's, it's me.
It's like, for me, my brand islike Nick Trewink, right?
And so I'm going to be real.
I'm going to be raw.
I'm going to talk about my, myactual stuff.
(18:21):
Uh, but there are those brandsthat are also more about.
sort of creating a universe in aworld, you know, where it's
like, not necessarily about theperson, uh, as much as it is
about the, the brand, like, likean excision or a seven lions or
something where they've sort ofcreated these worlds and these
universes, how do you see forsomeone that's like kind of
(18:42):
taking that path, which I dothink is kind of a harder path
to take because it's, uh, youcan't, It's not that you can't,
but it's like, it's, it feelslike it's a little bit less
about pulling up the phone andtalking directly to the fans.
You know, how do you advisesomebody that's trying to take
that path, in this strategy?
How would that work for them?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (19:01):
Very hard.
You know, the biggest, biggestthing I'll always say is you're
not allowed to pull an artistfrom pre 2021, almost pre 2022.
You can't pull them as anexample for anything.
Nik (19:17):
Hmm.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (19:17):
Like if they had, if they blew up, you
know, and became, you know,household name, what have you
pre 2022, you're not allowed touse them as an example.
Nik (19:27):
Hmm.
Yeah.
The
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (19:28):
well, a lot of you didn't have to do any of
this.
Yes, because that was 10 yearsago.
That was almost 15 years ago.
Nik (19:35):
Good point.
They were playing.
They were playing with acompletely different set of
rules, right?
And again, two years from now,three years from now, the
landscape is going to looktotally fucking different and
we're going to be having adifferent conversation, right?
So yeah, what's happening rightnow?
I think this is a really goodpoint.
A lot of a lot of artists arecomparing themselves to their
favorite artists.
And I've had multiple artiststhat have come on the podcast
(19:55):
that are like, yeah, dude, whenwe came up, like we didn't have
to deal with this shit.
Like, we weren't like obsessedwith posting on social media
every day.
We were just making bangers andputting them on SoundCloud and
getting fucking tours off of it.
Like, that was all it took.
You know, it was totallydifferent game.
So that's, that's, that's areally good, I think, kind of
gut punch reality check is to,you know, Really be present
(20:16):
with, like, what's working rightnow, and, and, yeah, not
comparing yourself to, like,what worked five years ago, or
ten years ago for somebody.
Heh.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (20:25):
totally different time.
And it's the same.
Same kind of mindset of like,you know, with Netflix and all
like the streaming services,cable companies and, shows that
thrived on like cable.
Now they're not allowed to say,Oh, well, Seinfeld, you know,
had this run on NBC.
That was the nineties.
So now we're talking like theway that people are creating
(20:46):
television has changed becauseof the medium.
So in the same fashion that likethe way you're building your
brand as an artist has to changebecause of the medium.
It's not whoever has the coolestalbum art.
On SoundCloud anymore.
It's about you.
And the biggest, you know, ifwe're talking EDM dance lane,
like really the only artistwho's breaking through to a
(21:07):
borderline Calvin Harris, chainsmokers, like that period of
2014 to 2016, where EDM was themainstream, the only real person
to wear, like, if you don'treally care about dance music,
but you're just like on socialmedia, you would know is
probably John summit.
Nik (21:23):
Yeah, yeah, and
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (21:24):
the one.
Nik (21:25):
and he's a personal brand where it's like it's straight
up.
It's it's him, right?
It's it's him doing his thingand his antics and his message
and his voice and all of that isvery, very connected to his
fans.
There's no big degree ofseparation there.
Now, I do think that itdefinitely still is possible to.
Have a big brand in that sense.
(21:48):
in terms of it not being like apersonal brand, it's just one, I
think it's either gotta bemystery.
Like I think of one of myfavorite bands is this band
called sleep token.
If you're familiar with likethe, the, they're in the metal
world, but they've completelytaken over and they've blown up
specifically in the last liketwo years.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (22:05):
Yup, they're, they get cherry picked
all the time in my commentsection.
Nik (22:09):
yeah, it's a, um, It's a, but it's a mask thing, you know,
and there's like the allure andthe mystery and there's a story,
you know, there's a story behindit, but I think in general,
really what it, it just requiresa really high level creative
assets.
So it's like, it's a lot easierand cheaper for me to flip on
the phone and I can, I can spitto my fans all day and I can
(22:30):
build an audience that way basedoff of my personality and my
energy and I don't require ahigh budget, but if you want to
create a, a, you know, Right,that's going to be a bit
separated from you.
That's going to require graphicdesign.
That's going to require videoanimation.
It's just going to require moreof a heavy lift.
I think if you have the budgetyou can do it, but um, if you're
(22:51):
just trying to do it yourself,like, good luck.
I don't know, this is going tobe pretty hard.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (22:56):
Yeah, no, 100%.
It's also like, again, thinkabout the viewer, like, Why
would I care about your, youknow, highly edited graphic
design, just like, visualizer onmy feed?
I have multiple, multiple, many,many, many fake accounts on
Instagram, where I put thataccount into the You know, into
(23:16):
a certain persona of like, okay,this is Noah Mint.
He's 33.
What kind of content is heconsuming?
This is Ashley.
She's 24.
What kind of content?
And I curate, you know, the ForYou pages on those accounts
based around like thatdemographic.
And you start to think in thismindset of like, what would
stand out like a sore thumb onthis feed?
(23:38):
And it's like 99 percent of 99percent of the music content you
see that isn't performing wellwould stick out like a sore
thumb on this feed because itpeople aren't going on social
media to find your music andwatch your like even 5, 000
visualizer like it's stuff theycould send to their friends
something they could comment onsomething they can save
(23:58):
something that can make themfeel something
Nik (24:01):
Yeah, and I think to feel something, for people to feel
something, you have to befeeling something on the other
end of it.
What actually lights you up?
What are you passionate about?
What are you emotional about?
Right?
I think the way that you createcontent because you can also
read scripts all day, you can dotick tock dances all day or
(24:21):
whatever, but it's like it'swhen you actually see somebody
sharing something from thefucking heart.
That that energy is transmutedthrough the phone and it lands
in your heart, you know, I thinkthat that's an important piece
of it because I can, I can geton and I can, you know, I, even
with myself, I noticed like ifI, I could show up and maybe
post something that's more ofjust like mental energy, like,
(24:44):
Hey, here's a good thought andhere's a good perspective, but
if I show up and I like say somereal shit from the heart and
it's like, it's actually comingfrom here and I'm, I, I care
about it.
that's going to land so muchmore.
You know, there's, there's likean energy that gets transmuted
through what we're creating.
What's the energy that you'reactually putting into, into the
content itself, I think plays abig role.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (25:03):
Yeah, 100%
Nik (25:04):
Yeah.
Now a big part of this, and Italk about this a lot is, uh, I
think the big missing piece fora lot of people when it comes to
marketing is they're jumpingstraight from I'm making music.
I, I, I made just, we'll call itthe product.
If we want to just think aboutit strictly from a business
perspective, you know, from thatsort of assembly line of I've
(25:25):
created a product and now I'mgoing to go market it, bring it
to the marketplace.
But a lot of people are skippingthis really important step,
which is like building yourbrand and figuring out your
brand, right?
A lot of people are like, cool,I made the music.
Now let me go put it out.
And again, just put it in frontof people, but that's why it's
not fucking landing, right?
Because a lot of people haven'tactually figured out what their
(25:47):
brand is.
So it sounds like that's a bigpart of your guys's process as
well, is really helping peoplefigure out what's their, what's
their brand.
Who are they?
What are they trying to say?
What are some of the questionsthat you walk people through and
get them to answer to like,really get clear on what their
brand is before you startputting everything out?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (26:05):
Well, the first thing I always like to do
is figure out the person.
So who is like that one singularperson, you know, and this
obviously works much better withour artists who tour and we, can
ask them to really sit, like,sit and think about, who's that
person from the meet and greetsthat, you know, they stand out
(26:27):
like immediately.
And there's always someone andit's like, okay, let's describe
them.
Sarah, she's 34.
She's from here.
She likes this and now we'restarting to like build this
persona of like, this is whoyour biggest fan is.
So what are they going throughand what are the demographics of
your fan base?
Are they 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35to 44?
(26:51):
Because what people are goingthrough at different stages of
their life, they're going toresonate with content and brands
and messages.
at a much different, level, likeif you're 18 to 24, a breakup is
happening much more frequentlythan 35 to 44, like 35 to 44,
you're probably married.
(27:12):
So like, yeah, you can getdivorced.
Yeah.
You can still be dating, butyou're not going to be breaking
up with people at the frequencythat you are where you're 18
like, okay, most of your musicis about breakups.
And we know most of your targetaudience is 18 to 24.
Then we've got to start to guidethe brand to speak to them
(27:32):
because we can't start talkingabout Like this is for your
grandkids and it's like yeah,your your target audience are
the grandkids like
Nik (27:39):
yeah, you can't be,
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (27:40):
who?
Nik (27:41):
you can't be good at marketing if you don't know who
you, who your market is.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (27:45):
Exactly so we got to figure out the who
first then we've got to figureout the why so like Why do you
make music?
Why did you start making music?
And why is You the message ofyour music important.
So we've got the who, we've gotthe why.
Now we need the how, how are wegoing to communicate that
message of your why to the, whothese people or this singular
(28:07):
person, this group.
And then from there we startedto boil it down to, okay, what
are, what are your brandpillars?
What are these four things thatrepresent you, you know, outside
of the music?
And we've got, you know, amillion questions.
We asked people around that,like, you know, what is the
impact that you want to leave?
Outside of music, what arepersonality traits that you had
(28:27):
at 12 years old that you stillhave today?
What are things that yourfriends and family would say
first were to describe you whereversus romantic relationships?
Versus how you think strangerson the internet would describe
you in one word and just askingYou know as many questions as we
need to from like a we call itlike brand therapy standpoint to
(28:48):
walk away You know from thatfirst call knowing like This is
how we've kind of interpretedwho you are.
This is what you've told us.
This is how you've kind ofstarted to change your thinking.
And then we'll lay the brandfoundation and then continue to
build it, you know, messagingwise, but also visually from
there, over the next threemonths, staying in line with
(29:10):
that first conversation of like,this is the core foundation from
a messaging perspective.
This is who, We're talking tonow everything has to you know
stay on point stay on messagestay on brand But also like past
the gate of this You know groupof people or that singular
person to where like it shouldresonate with that
Nik (29:32):
Yeah, and so Once you have all of that figured out.
It's really just creating thosethree types of content then the
that top of funnel Connectioncontent conversion content.
Can we go a little bit deeper?
I'd love to hear some examples.
I think a lot of times peopleare just kind of a little stuck
(29:53):
on like, you know, what types ofcontent should I be making?
Let's go a little bit deeperinto that and give everyone some
some ideas.
I'd love to hear like, what'swhat do you see working as
you're working with clients andpeople on your roster?
Like, what What kind of shit areyou seeing that actually is
working right now for people interms of specific formats of
content?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (30:14):
It always comes down to the demographic,
like where are they based?
How old are they?
What is your gender split?
Because the way, all of thosedifferent factors play into what
content works is going to bewildly different.
Like we've got artists with verybig Southeast Asia and Asia fan
bases, and they just love.
(30:35):
High quality performance videos,people in the U S do not, those
read as ads.
Nik (30:41):
Yeah.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (30:41):
if you're just, you know, mini music
video, high quality performance,every single post to the U S
add, add, add, but to theSoutheast Asia market, like what
we've seen is they love thatthey love it.
So it's like, okay, what is yourdemographics?
Let's like decide at least whatour initial test phase formats
(31:02):
are going to look like based offthe demographic.
It's always going to come downto talking to camera though.
Not that every video is going tobe you talking to camera, but
when that door's open for you totalk to camera, the amount of
content that can be made is somuch more vast than like,
everything's got to be silent,every message has to be
(31:23):
communicated through text onscreen, like,
Nik (31:26):
Yeah.
And this is where this is whereit comes back to figuring out
who the fuck you are and whatyou're all about.
Right?
Like, yes, your brand, but it'seven deeper than that.
It's like really you knowing whoyou are as a person, as an
artist, like what is yourmessage?
I think this is hard for a lotof electronic music artists,
which are most of the artiststhat are listening to this
(31:46):
podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because a lot of them are justmaking bleeps and bloops and
you're putting shit out and it'slike, okay, cool Here's my you
know, my like You knowinstrumental electronic music
It's different when you're arapper And you're actually
writing lyrics about shit.
It's different when you're a popartist and you're actually
writing lyrics about songs.
If you're not songwriting, then,you know, there's sometimes as a
(32:08):
disconnect about what are youactually fucking saying, right?
Besides just putting out a bunchof bleeps, bleeps and bloops,
right?
And so that's just an importantthing.
Like, what do you care about?
What are you trying to say?
What is your message?
Cause I think this is where alot of people struggle in with
their marketing is they just.
They don't necessarily stand foranything or they haven't taken
(32:31):
the time to really figure outwhat it is that they stand for.
What do you believe in?
What do you care about?
Because once you've got thatclear, yeah, like you said, I'll
make content all day.
I can pop open the phone andtalk to my audience.
But, for anyone that'sstruggling to come up with
content ideas, it's probablybecause you haven't actually
figured out who you are, whatyou stand for and what you
believe in.
Yeah.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (32:55):
initial brand message that we, came up
with together early stage was ifyou love, if you love music for
the feeling, not the genre, thisis your new home.
And then that spoke really wellto his audience because.
as somebody who wants to, youknow, put out music in a lot of
different lanes of the dancegenre as a whole, you're now
(33:18):
honing in and standing for like,I'm not just going to make the
same super soft future bass dropover and over and over again.
So if you are a fan of dancemusic, but more just for the
feeling, not like you're, I onlylistened to rhythm and I'm like,
you're not, you're not one ofthose people.
Come on down.
And like just finding your waysof communicating what you stand
(33:40):
for is everything.
Nik (33:42):
Yeah.
There's something that you saidearlier and you kind of touched
on it again, talking about likethe testing, the content, right?
Like you said, when that firstmonth of working with people, a
lot of it is testing, like let'sfigure out what works, let's
figure out what format works.
Let's figure out, you know,what's actually going to land
and resonate.
I think that that's a huge,important point to make is, It
(34:08):
takes a lot of experimentationand I see a lot of artists that
are like Focusing so hard ontrying to do it right and it's
like You also got to just do itwrong a bunch to then figure out
what is right, right?
I remember seeing Gary V talkabout this before where he was
like, yo, it's like a lot of youare just so focused on making
(34:28):
like one or two pieces ofcontent and making them the best
pieces of content possible.
And, and it's like, maybe thosework, maybe they don't.
He's like, I'd rather see youmake 20 pieces of content and
fucking 16 of them don't work,but four of them do.
And now, you know, What'sactually starting to work.
So I think for especially a lotof, younger artists that are,
and, and not only, not onlyyounger, we all need to be
(34:49):
experimenting, but, but yeah, Ithink, especially in the
beginning, it's like, fuckaround and find out, go make a
bunch of different things, abunch of different formats, like
actually see what works.
Cause you don't know, unless youreally put that quantity out.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (35:05):
Yep, Exactly.
Exactly.
And you know, for me and my,content, like I've tried it all
too.
There was a minute where justreels of tweets that were like
four seconds long with trendingaudio were like a format I was
seeing quite a bit.
So I tried it.
You know, and I always alwayssay you cannot give up on
(35:26):
anything until five five posts Iwas trying that it wasn't
working for me.
It just didn't it just wasn't afit and then you know carousels
I'm like, okay, let me startdoing some carousels First four
carousels I posted did nothinglike only a couple hundred likes
and i'm like, oh my god, likeI'm done with carousels like
these do nothing for me, but letme hold myself to that five
(35:49):
number And then the fifthcarousel I posted got like, as a
carousel, like went to reels, itgot like 450, 000 views.
I'm like, okay Carousels are mything.
So I rode that carousel train sohard and then they just like
dwindled off And then I fellonto the green screen thing.
Now these green screen videoshave like Took me from maybe 15k
(36:12):
to almost 70k in like a monthand a half, two months 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 myphone.
Now it's me talking to my phonewith a green screen in the back.
I'm like never being comfortableand just testing as many
different formats.
It's the same message.
I'm reusing the same exactconcepts from the carousels in
(36:34):
my green screen videos, but theformat and the medium is
presented has changed.
And that's, you know, alteredthe success level, quote unquote
of, of a specific video.
Nik (36:44):
yeah.
Yeah, I saw someone showed me anaccount of this guy who was
literally just sitting in hiscar like listening to his song
off of his laptop filminghimself just sitting in the
driver's seat and He basicallyposted the same exact video like
ten times and I'm seeing moreand more people do this where a
(37:05):
lot of times It's like okay.
Well, well, you know Do our oneidea and we'll just post it once
and that's like, okay if itworks it does and if not,
whatever But I've been seeingthis more where people are
posting the same thing It's notliterally the same exact video
But it was like he just rerecorded pretty much the same
thing him sitting there in hiscar listening to it and it was
like if you write like Skrillexand whoever like you're gonna
(37:26):
fuck with this, you know thatkind of a video and it was like
the first video was like 500views.
You know, the second video was athousand views.
The third video was 1100 views.
And then the fourth video waslike 150, 000 views.
And it just, it just eventuallyworked.
And I don't know that, thescience behind that, but I don't
know if it's just being in theright place at the right time.
(37:47):
But like you said, you'reliterally saying the same
message sometimes, but just in abunch of different formats.
I'm seeing that more and morewhere it's like, you know,
Taking that one idea and maybeposting a handful of different
versions of it to really give itthe actual Time and space that
it deserves to see if it reallyworks because it might not be
that it's not a bad idea Itmight just be the fucking wrong
(38:08):
day in the wrong time, or Idon't know.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (38:10):
Well, day and time, doesn't matter.
Remember dick?
Nik (38:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why do
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (38:15):
just, it is me.
It's
Nik (38:16):
hmm.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah Tell me about, I, I, Inoticed in browsing through your
Instagram, you had a couple coolposts.
one of them was this idea of the15 by six method.
Tell me what that is.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (38:35):
Yes.
So I've now changed it to five,five by five, but similar, uh,
similar mindset.
So what we do when we have anin-person shoot and we're go,
we're going into this in-person,shoot solely to get conversion
content.
So mini music videos, we'll getsome iPhone stuff, but we'll get
like.
All of the high qualityperformance videos if you guys
(38:56):
check out fly by midnight onInstagram We've been doing their
content for the last six monthsand pretty much all conversion
content.
They're an anomaly They're aunicorn like they're the ones
with the Southeast Asia fan basewhere you know We just do a lot
of high quality videos and itjust grows and grows and grows
them We'll go.
Okay What are the five songsover the course of the next 30
(39:18):
days?
We'll hit the feed at somepoint.
You know, if it's the mostrecent release, we might
allocate like 60 percent of theshoot to that, but there's old
catalog songs.
We'll throw two, three videos inthe mix with got those five
songs mapped out five locations,five different, you know, it
could be the same.
Like we just did a shoot fly bymidnight Monday at UCLA, but
(39:39):
that we consider three differentlocations because we did.
The grass field, we did in frontof a building, and then we did
on the steps.
And then we went to the footballfield, and then we went in the
parking lot.
So we got five different looks,five different locations.
Bring five different outfitswith you.
Change the outfit at each newlocation.
So now, you're getting, even ifyou do one song at each
(40:00):
location, right there you'vegot, you know, 25 videos.
Nik (40:04):
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Content batching.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (40:06):
Exactly.
Nik (40:07):
Yeah, cool.
Um, I love that.
So that's what, so you guys willgo out and actually produce all
of that, film that and stuffwith your LA based clients.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (40:17):
Correct, yes.
Or we'll have people fly intoand we'll, we'll structure it.
You know, we're not just gonnasay stand there and lip sync.
We still start to do likediscovery, connection,
conversion within that shoot.
But all, you know, with DSLR allhigh quality.
'cause the iPhone stuff like,you know, we can, we can guide
you through that.
We'll get some iPhone stuff, butwe really wanna hone in, make
(40:40):
the use of our time with ourvideographer, Julian.
Name is Julian York on IG if youguys want to check him out as
well He's the goat, but you gotto go through us to get him, but
he's the man.
He kills it,
Nik (40:50):
another.
Big question I think a lot ofpeople have is, should I post
the same stuff on TikTok that Iam on Instagram?
There are obviously differentplatforms, they function
differently.
You could just post the samethings, maybe you do sometimes.
I don't know, what are yourthoughts around Instagram
strategy versus TikTok?
Those are kind of the two bigplatforms that people are
(41:11):
focusing on.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (41:14):
It all comes down to a time perspective
like how much time do you haveto allocate because everything
should go everywhere That's agiven everything that you post
on Instagram should go on tiktok But you can double up on tik
tok with things that don't hitInstagram Cause TikTok, you have
more capability.
And I think this is more of amental roadblock that people
(41:36):
find themselves in than anythingrooted in like facts or data.
But people just feel like,because when you pull up your
Instagram homepage, you're goingto see people that you know,
personally, you can go two hoursscrolling on TikTok and not see
a soul that you know in reallife.
So now people have less of amental barrier of like.
(41:59):
Oh, I can't post that becauseyou know, my ex's friend who,
from college who still followsme, if he sees that I'm shitting
on him in this new song, butit's like, oh, but on TikTok, I
could do that because nobody Iknow might not see it.
So people feel a little morefree on TikTok to like be a
little more real, a little moreauthentic.
So like doubling up on TikTok,if there's a time to do it and
(42:22):
posting everything that's goingto be posted on Instagram, also
on TikTok.
Is the best cross pollinationstrategy.
And if you really want to honein on YouTube shorts
demographically, YouTube shortsis a young demographic, young,
like 10 17.
So they love brain rot.
So like, if you really want tolike tailor a strategy platform
(42:45):
by platform, whatever youronscreen lyrics look like, make
them the most brain rot possiblefor YouTube shorts.
So if you're gonna do smalllittle white text lyrics for
Instagram, make them the big oneword at a time yellow for
YouTube shorts.
Cause it's just, that's thatgeneration.
That's what they grew up on theMr.
Beast
Nik (43:04):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Damn.
That's wild.
That's wild.
Okay.
So definitely post everythingyou're posting on Instagram,
post it on Tik Tok and, and moreon Tik Tok.
In addition, add even more tothat if you have the time and
energy to it.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (43:19):
Exactly.
Like if, if you're literallycooking chili and you spill the
chili everywhere, you canliterally take a video and be
like, Oh my God.
I was just making chili and nowI spilled it everywhere.
My life is a mess.
Tick tock.
That's not going to go onInstagram, but like, exactly,
Nik (43:40):
You can, you can just turn that, you could just post that
on the tick tock.
Like I look at stories as like,that's people that are already
following me.
my 500 people that view mystories every day or however
many, are the ones that, yeah,they're, they're following me a
little bit more closer to myjourney.
yeah, you could just do the sameshit.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (43:58):
exactly.
Or even like your, your Finsta
Nik (44:02):
Mm
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:02):
the Finsta mindset for tech doc.
Nik (44:05):
Mm hmm.
Cool.
Cool.
Yeah, alright.
What else, what else should wecover, dude?
Like, I feel like we havecovered a lot.
What else have we, what elsehave we not covered yet?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:17):
Hmm.
I mean, I'm an open book, so askme anything.
Nik (44:20):
what else besides content creation and strategy do you
guys do at the agency?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:26):
So On a, as much as I can say level, we're
starting to consult for labelsand management companies on
their content strategyinternally and start to build
out, their teams, theirprocesses, their systems, so
that they don't have to hire us.
They can just keep it internal.
So that's where we're startingto move a little more B2B still
working with artists, but alsobuilding that side of what we do
(44:49):
because everyone wants to keepit internal.
I mean, no one wants to bebeholden to an agency.
That's also working with theircompetition.
You know, for
Nik (44:57):
hmm.
Yeah,
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:58):
we're starting to, I guess, for, for
lack of a better term, likepioneer that lane of like kind
of going against what wouldbenefit us in the long term of
like, yeah, you can justhopefully hire us forever.
Or we could just come in andbuild franchise ourselves out to
you.
Nik (45:14):
Yeah.
Uh, who's an example of a clientthat you've really seen
skyrocket during their time withyou?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (45:23):
Chanel Yates for sure.
She actually was a EDM vocalistthat I had on quite a few of my
songs when I was an artist.
Then she came to me just as afriend cause we're very good
friends saying like, Hey, Ithink I'm going to go down this
country lane.
So we worked for a while onjust, you know, figuring out
what that rebrand was going tolook like.
How could things shift over,from basically dance pop
(45:46):
vocalist to now country artistsbased in London too.
So he made her being from the UKand being a country artist, a
very kind of key identifier forher brand.
Cause that's unique in and ofitself.
Not a lot of country artists arecoming out of the UK.
And then we just really honed inon formats and her formats have
pretty much stayed the sameregardless of song and things
(46:06):
have grown, you know, prettyrapidly for her about 4, 000
followers to now over 30, 000and the new song is crushing.
So we're, we're super stoked onher, but it took a while because
we had to completely find hernew identity.
Nik (46:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That, and that's again, back tothat foundation of the brand,
like figuring out who you are,what you're all about, getting
your story and your messagereally dialed in and like, yeah,
then you know what to actuallycreate, right?
All of that is going toinfluence and inspire like what
the content's all about.
So yeah, back to that, I justsee it more and more.
(46:40):
Like it's such a, it's such a, amissing piece for a lot of
people.
So if people are interested inworking with you, I think that
that is the dream perhaps for, alot of artists that are like,
man, how rad would it be to havehelp and support?
And, you know, I've been talkingabout this more and more on the
podcast, but you know, reallystepping into that business
owner mindset.
If you want to scale yourbusiness, there is going to be a
(47:02):
point in time where you got tostart hiring.
Other people, right?
You got to start actually likebuilding out your business.
You can only take it so faryourself.
So if people were interested inworking with you, how would they
go about that?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (47:14):
Yeah, we got a wonderful website in my
Instagram bio with all the infoyou need to apply.
Nik (47:20):
Perfect.
Perfect.
What's, what's the Instagram?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (47:23):
Rough Music Official.
Nik (47:25):
Ruff.
R U F F music official.
I'll put the link in the shownotes.
If you guys want to work withUnleashed Creative and Nick and
the team and have some peoplecreate some awesome content for
you, provide some strategy,they, they obviously know what
they're doing.
So, Nick, thanks so much fortaking the time to hop on, bro.
Really appreciate you.
Peeling back the curtain andshowing us, some of these like
(47:47):
deeper strategies that I thinkare so important for us all to
be aware of.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (47:51):
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
when you're putting a message out into the
(00:01):
world, the goal of that contentis for it to be consumed by
another person.
So if you're making everythingwithin that video, that post all
about you, as if you're almostignoring the person who's
viewing it, they're not going toresonate.
They're not going to feel likethis was made for me.
Nik (00:32):
What's up everybody?
Welcome to the Headliner MindsetPodcast.
I have a really exciting episodefor you guys today because I
know a lot of you are trying tofigure out What the hell do I do
on social media?
What is the right strategy thatI should take?
how do I even make content?
What types of content should Ibe making?
How often should I be posting?
And obviously it's a really bigpart of building an audience.
(00:54):
If you want to build a fan base,we got to be on social media and
we got to be using itconsistently.
It's probably how you found outabout this podcast in the first
place.
So in this episode, I got to sitdown with the owner of a
marketing agency thatspecializes specifically in
helping artists create content,build their brand and build
their audience.
They're called UnleashedCreative, and this is their
owner and founder, Nick Ruffalo.
(01:15):
Welcome to the Headliner MindsetPodcast, bro.
I am so stoked to have you hereand really excited to dive in
with you.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (01:22):
Same here.
Thanks for having me.
Nik (01:24):
I would love to really start.
By just hearing a bit about yourstory, and kind of how you got
to where you are now runningthis marketing agency, I know
that you were an artist yourselfand so you actually, you know,
walked that path.
And so tell me a little bitabout your background and how
you got to where you are today.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (01:42):
Yeah.
So it all started when I was inhigh school.
We're in, I want to say socialstudies class.
My buddy was watching ultra livestream of the chain smokers,
2016 goaded set of all time.
And I was like, Oh, that issick.
Like I want to do that so bad.
So I downloaded logic, didn'treally do much with it.
(02:03):
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 sophomoreyear of college.
It was a perfect time for me to,you know, dedicate pretty much
every hour of every day tolearning production.
Early 2021 jumped on TikTok,started putting out originals
(02:23):
and remixes.
Had some viral moments in late2021.
So I graduated college asemester early Was doing some
djing and opening sets down inmiami and in new york and had
this kind of epiphany momenttowards the end of the summer of
2022 where I just felt like forme I didn't want to be in the
club and nightlife scene longterm, you know for lack of a
better term I had done so muchpartying in college that I was
(02:46):
like, okay You know Production,working with pop artists,
diversifying the genre.
That's where I see my path, youknow, leading down.
So I took a step back from beingan artist, rebrand all my social
media to producer for otherartists, moved out to LA in June
of 2023.
Pretty much first day I movedout here, just started running,
(03:07):
you know, one, two, sometimesthree sessions a day, a bunch of
different artists and a bunch ofdifferent genres.
Through that process, just beingin all these sessions with all
of these different artists andseeing the same complaint of
social media content.
I hate social media.
I don't know what to post justconstantly come up over and over
and over again.
I just started giving theartists I was working with, you
(03:28):
know, ideas here and there inthe middle of sessions and then
things started to work for them.
So I was like, okay, let me justpost about this on my page.
So very slowly I started postingMaybe like once every couple of
weeks stuff in the social mediamarketing lane.
Just here's what I told thisartist, here's what happened.
And that stuff just started todo really, really well, really
fast.
So early 2024, I kind of saw thehandwriting on the wall, took a
(03:51):
step back from production andreally went all in on building
this company, brought on ourteam all throughout 2024 and now
we're, we're locked in and we'rerocking and rolling.
Nik (04:00):
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, it's so coolbecause, you know, right before
we started recording, I was justtalking about how so many of my
clients and so many of thelisteners and just every artist
out there I think is just tryingto figure out like How the fuck
do I grow my audience, right?
I love making music, right?
This is where my heart sayswhere my passion is that I love
making music.
(04:20):
And then there's oftentimes ahuge block when it's like, okay,
well now I need to promote itand build a brand and build an
audience.
And for a lot of people, it justseems like this really Kind of
complicated world that a lot ofpeople are, struggling to figure
out.
So, I'd love to really just digin with you and offer everybody
some, some basic, you know,guidelines and some steps.
(04:42):
And like, what are you seeingactually is working?
Uh, obviously the, the landscapechanges all the time.
You know, what worked a year agodoesn't necessarily work today.
Technology and trends are alwaysevolving.
So, um, let's start, let's starthere.
What would you say are.
Some of the biggest mistakes.
Where are people getting itwrong?
What do you see there?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (05:03):
Easily number one is making it about
me, not about them.
In the content, in the brandingand the messaging, when you're
putting a message out into theworld, you know, regardless of
being an artist or not, justanybody who's creating content,
the goal of that content is forit to be consumed by another
person.
So if you're making everythingwithin that video, that post all
(05:27):
about you, as almost you're asalmost as if you're almost
ignoring the person who'sviewing it, they're not going to
resonate.
They're not going to feel likethis was made for me.
And it's the same kind of, youknow, mindset when you are
making music, yes, it's for you,but you're also saying, okay,
other people are going to listento this, whether you're doing it
(05:47):
consciously or subconsciously,you are pulling inspiration
from, songs that you know, youlove and that other people love.
So when it comes from a contentperspective, you always have to
keep that viewer in mind andflip 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.
(06:07):
Why?
To serve you, the artist?
I don't even know you.
So why am I taking my time torun up your numbers when you've
done nothing for me as theviewer, as the consumer?
Tell me about why this is a fitin my life.
If I'm going through XYZproblems, and this song comes
from a place that's going toalso talk about XYZ problems and
(06:30):
provide a solution, tell Then asthe viewer, I'm going to be more
compelled to listen.
But if you're just telling meit's out, run it up, pre save
it.
Why do I care?
Nik (06:41):
yeah, yeah.
Something I like to point out islike, there's a hundred thousand
songs being uploaded to Spotifyevery single day.
When I found out that statistic,my fucking head exploded.
I was like, that's insane,right?
Not to mention, I've alreadygot, like, countless artists and
songs and bands and things thatI enjoy listening to.
So, like, what's the point?
Why am I going to listen to you?
(07:03):
Most likely there's alreadysomething out there that I love
listening to, you know, justsaying, Hey, yeah, this is, this
is out.
Listen to it.
It's like, all right, I'mprobably not going to become a
fan just because of that.
All right.
So making it not just about youand my song that I have out and
listen to it and run up thenumbers, um, great great first
step.
What else, where else do you seepeople getting it wrong?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (07:26):
Just not being themselves.
I mean, when we onboard a newartist onto our roster, we have,
you know, multiplequestionnaires and still my
favorite question across all ofthem is if you woke up tomorrow
with a hundred million followersand a guaranteed 1 million
people are going to see everysingle thing that you post.
What kind of content would youmake?
And the answers that we get,even from the biggest artists we
(07:49):
work with is always, you know,they're putting something in
that answer.
That's not what they're postingright now.
So it's like, okay, so you'rewaiting for, you're waiting for
this like vanity metric to hit acertain place to where now you
feel like you can post this typeof content.
You can say these types ofthings.
You can show this side ofyourself.
But if you're going to wait andsay, okay, When I know that like
(08:11):
success quote unquote in thevanity metrics of views, which
really doesn't mean anything inthe grand scheme of things, if
I'm just going to wait for aspecific view number to be who I
actually want to be online,people see right through that.
So like holding back certainthings until you know, or feel
like, Oh, this is when I can bethis, or this is when I can say
(08:32):
that.
You're never going to comeacross as who you know, you want
to come across as in yourcontent and in your branding
online.
Nik (08:40):
Yeah, I, I get that.
I've seen that a lot where a lotof people have this sort of
dream and desire to make animpact.
And there's this like, well,once I'm at this certain level,
like, then I can really make animpact.
and I like to point them back tolike, no, you start just
becoming an impactful personnow.
Right.
And if there's five people thatyou can impact, like, then
(09:01):
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 wantto be now saying those things
that you want to say now, not atsome later stage, right?
It doesn't necessarily work thatway.
So I want to, you know, Iactually totally skipped over
where I really wanted to startthis conversation was talking
(09:22):
about the agency, and what youguys do unleashed creative.
I'd love to hear like, what isit specifically that you guys do
over there?
And what's your, what's yourprocess for how you work with
people?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (09:31):
Yeah, so we are a content branding, digital
marketing, A& R, a little bit ofeverything at this point.
And our process, you know, isvery fluid depending on who
we're working with.
I mean, at the core of what wedo, we're meeting weekly and
we're talking through, okay,over the next seven days, what
is going on?
Cause we don't want to live inthis bubble of like, Oh, I've
(09:53):
got a, you know, a tour thatlaunches in August.
Oh, I've got a album that dropsin 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 nextseven days.
This is what's going to go outon social media.
This is going to be your postMonday, Tuesday, et cetera.
Then either we're filming andediting that content for the
(10:14):
artists, or if they're not herein LA, They got their team, you
know, or themselves to film andedit.
We'll approve everything.
Make sure it looks good.
Goes out, meet again the nextweek, continue to tweak our
strategies in the content lane.
And then in the background, youknow, we're also continuing to
build their visual identity,their branding, and we'll
create, you know, an establishedcreative direction deck over 90
(10:35):
days to ensure that, okay, likethis from an online perspective.
Who you are, who you represent,who you will be and continue to
be for, you know, theforeseeable future.
And then we put those twotogether and we're, we're, in
biz.
Nik (10:49):
Yeah, yeah.
So the question I want to askis, which I think everybody is
kind of asking themselves is,how do I know what to post?
Right.
I'm looking at my calendar andI'm like, I don't, what the fuck
do I post over the next sevendays?
What do I post over the next 30days?
so how do you go about helpingsomebody figure out like what
they quote unquote should beposting?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (11:12):
We take it in phases.
So, you know, again, we have,artists with millions and
millions of followers andthey're still obviously coming
to us for a reason.
And it's they don't feel like.
You know what they're doing onsocial media, who they are and
their content is what they wantto be.
That's why they're working withus.
So no matter how big the artistis, we're always going to go
through a test phase of like, weneed to just test a lot of
(11:34):
formats.
We need to test a lot of thingsbecause no two artists, no two
people on social media are goingto have the exact same formula.
There is no formula to this.
Posting times do not matter.
Hashtags do not matter.
None of trending audio doesthat.
None of this matters.
I promise you.
The only thing that matters isfinding your formats and keeping
your brand consistent and beingyou.
(11:54):
It's okay.
What are your formats?
Is it B roll wall of text?
Cause for some people they couldjust literally walk down the
street in an aesthetic, look,put a wall of text over it with
their song behind it.
And that's the thing for somepeople that does work for many
others.
It does not.
So we need to test.
A bunch of different formatsover month one to figure out.
Okay.
From a format perspective,regardless of song, these are
(12:17):
your buckets to pull from.
Now we're into, you know, oursecond phase, which is okay.
What does your content funnellook like?
What is your top of funnel?
What is your middle of funnel?
What is your bottom of funnel?
Top of funnel is discoverycontent.
How are, how are new peoplegoing to discover you?
It's not going to be throughyour music.
And the example I always give iswhether it was intentional or
not, Taylor Swift is.
(12:38):
currently living this funnel inreal time because the shared
interest that she's connectingherself to is the NFL.
So if you've never heard ofTaylor Swift in your life, but
you're a fan of the NFL and youwatch the super bowl and you see
her on screen, you've nowdiscovered Taylor Swift.
Now, if you want to go deeperand you say, who is this?
(12:59):
Let me Google Taylor Swift andinterviews 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.
(13:20):
top of funnel discovery, middleof funnel connection, bottom of
funnel conversion and allcontent needs to serve a purpose
within one of those buckets.
So now we're into phase two andwe're figuring out what are your
formats for these differentsections of your funnel?
What's the ideal frequency foryou?
in terms of segmenting top,middle, and bottom across a week
schedule.
(13:40):
And then we implement,
Nik (13:42):
Yeah, that's huge.
I think even for myself, it'sgreat because I've been really
lazy on social media and I'mlike, okay, I know I can grow my
account and my brand way bigger,but I think that piece that you
just said about, you know, Theintention behind each piece of
content.
Is this a discovery piece?
Is this going out to people thathave never heard of me?
(14:02):
And I'm trying to just, youknow, have that top of funnel
first introduction.
What am I saying?
Right?
I'm going to speak differentlyto that audience than I would to
people that are alreadyfollowing me.
Right?
So that's just so huge rightthere that that top of funnel.
and tell me what what you said.
Those those three are.
This is the top of funnel kindof discovery.
Then there's the connection and
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (14:21):
which is middle of funnel.
Nik (14:23):
Yeah.
So like now that, that, thatmiddle place, I'm like, I'm just
putting stuff out to get you toknow me, to connect with me, see
what kind of like, do we, do wevibe on the same frequency?
Do we have the same interest?
And then there's that conversionwhere I'm really converting you
over to being a fan of, themusic and the art like that
right there.
That's huge.
I don't think a lot of peopleare doing that.
So I hope that everybody'staking notes right now.
(14:44):
Right?
Like really think about what isthe actual intention of, yeah.
Behind what you're doing,because yeah, I think a lot of
people are in this phase of justlike, Oh, I have a new song.
Let me just jump, really jumpstraight to marketing.
And this is where we get to havea branding conversation, but
it's like, okay, I have a newsong.
Let me put it out there, newsong out, check it out, listen
to it, you know, or here's me inthe studio just playing my song
(15:07):
or whatever it may be.
And, um, We're not reallythinking about like, what,
what's the experience of theperson on the other side going
to be?
All right.
We're just thinking aboutourselves.
I have a song, I have a thingthat I want people to hear.
So let me just push it outthere, shove it down their
throats.
Maybe I'm even running an ad tolike push it in front of their
face, but like.
If that person has never heardof you, like, what's, what's
(15:29):
going to be the thing thatactually hooks them in and gets
them to be interested in you inthe first place, right?
There's a lot of psychologyaround this that I think people
are missing out on, myselfincluded.
I'm going to take this and runwith it and like really sit down
and think about what are mythree, types of content I could
be creating in those funnels orin those buckets.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (15:45):
a hundred percent and top of funnel is
never going to be about yourmusic.
That's the big misconception.
Nik (15:50):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (15:52):
you
Nik (15:52):
What would, what would an example.
what would an example of a good,like, top of funnel piece of
content be?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (15:58):
Okay.
So let's say, let's say anartist has a song called, I hate
my ex.
Okay, so if we want to segmentthis, I hate my ex concept.
Okay.
So you wrote this song becauseyou quite literally hate your ex
and they were the worst, youknow, worst boyfriend,
girlfriend, whatever.
ever.
So it would compel you enough inyour life to write this vicious
(16:18):
song about them.
Okay.
Well, you're top of funnelcontent.
We're not even going to put thesong in the video at all.
We're not going to talk aboutit.
You're literally just go sit inyour car, put the phone on the
dashboard, start the video offsaying anybody else have that
one X who blank go into listingoff everything terrible that
that X did.
Now you're creating conversationaround the concept of the song
without even mentioning thesong.
(16:39):
So now you're attractingeverybody who's bought it and be
like, Oh my God, me too.
My ex is the worst.
My ex did that.
I hate my ex too.
So now you're literally gettingpeople who are bought into the
conceptual concept of the songinto your world before they've
even heard the song.
Cause it's a lot easier to sella concept than a product,
especially when it's anemotionally rooted, you know,
(16:59):
experience.
Okay.
Now they're in, now they'vediscovered you and they've
created, you've got aconversation going on around
this topic.
Alright, let's connect them tothe music.
So now let's do a video whereyou quite literally just put the
phone down on the ground, stepback, lip sync your song into
the camera, text on screen, whenmy ex did blank, so I wrote
this.
Okay, now we've connected thatsame exact thing from the
(17:22):
discovery of like, this is thething your ex did that made you
hate them and why you wrote thesong, but now we're actually are
going to connect it to the song.
And then conversion content,let's just do high quality, you
know, many music videoperformance pieces to really
just show, okay, this is alegitimate artist.
Like they are doing it at a highlevel.
They're clearly putting budgetinto this.
It's not all just iPhone intheir car.
(17:42):
So now you've kind of alsowithin the conversion content
and planted on the viewer thatlike you are a legitimate
artist.
You're not in your bedroomtrying to be a tick tocker,
which is so dumb, but somepeople still think that.
So let's play out of that.
And now, you know, We've createdthis cohesive ecosystem.
Nik (18:01):
Hmm.
Got it.
Got it.
So, there's a term that I'veheard used before, which is,
either playing the man orplaying the brand.
And, uh, We have, there'sartists that have more of the
personal brand where it is like,Hey, it's, it's me.
It's like, for me, my brand islike Nick Trewink, right?
And so I'm going to be real.
I'm going to be raw.
I'm going to talk about my, myactual stuff.
(18:21):
Uh, but there are those brandsthat are also more about.
sort of creating a universe in aworld, you know, where it's
like, not necessarily about theperson, uh, as much as it is
about the, the brand, like, likean excision or a seven lions or
something where they've sort ofcreated these worlds and these
universes, how do you see forsomeone that's like kind of
(18:42):
taking that path, which I dothink is kind of a harder path
to take because it's, uh, youcan't, It's not that you can't,
but it's like, it's, it feelslike it's a little bit less
about pulling up the phone andtalking directly to the fans.
You know, how do you advisesomebody that's trying to take
that path, in this strategy?
How would that work for them?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (19:01):
Very hard.
You know, the biggest, biggestthing I'll always say is you're
not allowed to pull an artistfrom pre 2021, almost pre 2022.
You can't pull them as anexample for anything.
Nik (19:17):
Hmm.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (19:17):
Like if they had, if they blew up, you
know, and became, you know,household name, what have you
pre 2022, you're not allowed touse them as an example.
Nik (19:27):
Hmm.
Yeah.
The
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (19:28):
well, a lot of you didn't have to do any of
this.
Yes, because that was 10 yearsago.
That was almost 15 years ago.
Nik (19:35):
Good point.
They were playing.
They were playing with acompletely different set of
rules, right?
And again, two years from now,three years from now, the
landscape is going to looktotally fucking different and
we're going to be having adifferent conversation, right?
So yeah, what's happening rightnow?
I think this is a really goodpoint.
A lot of a lot of artists arecomparing themselves to their
favorite artists.
And I've had multiple artiststhat have come on the podcast
(19:55):
that are like, yeah, dude, whenwe came up, like we didn't have
to deal with this shit.
Like, we weren't like obsessedwith posting on social media
every day.
We were just making bangers andputting them on SoundCloud and
getting fucking tours off of it.
Like, that was all it took.
You know, it was totallydifferent game.
So that's, that's, that's areally good, I think, kind of
gut punch reality check is to,you know, Really be present
(20:16):
with, like, what's working rightnow, and, and, yeah, not
comparing yourself to, like,what worked five years ago, or
ten years ago for somebody.
Heh.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (20:25):
totally different time.
And it's the same.
Same kind of mindset of like,you know, with Netflix and all
like the streaming services,cable companies and, shows that
thrived on like cable.
Now they're not allowed to say,Oh, well, Seinfeld, you know,
had this run on NBC.
That was the nineties.
So now we're talking like theway that people are creating
(20:46):
television has changed becauseof the medium.
So in the same fashion that likethe way you're building your
brand as an artist has to changebecause of the medium.
It's not whoever has the coolestalbum art.
On SoundCloud anymore.
It's about you.
And the biggest, you know, ifwe're talking EDM dance lane,
like really the only artistwho's breaking through to a
(21:07):
borderline Calvin Harris, chainsmokers, like that period of
2014 to 2016, where EDM was themainstream, the only real person
to wear, like, if you don'treally care about dance music,
but you're just like on socialmedia, you would know is
probably John summit.
Nik (21:23):
Yeah, yeah, and
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (21:24):
the one.
Nik (21:25):
and he's a personal brand where it's like it's straight
up.
It's it's him, right?
It's it's him doing his thingand his antics and his message
and his voice and all of that isvery, very connected to his
fans.
There's no big degree ofseparation there.
Now, I do think that itdefinitely still is possible to.
Have a big brand in that sense.
(21:48):
in terms of it not being like apersonal brand, it's just one, I
think it's either gotta bemystery.
Like I think of one of myfavorite bands is this band
called sleep token.
If you're familiar with likethe, the, they're in the metal
world, but they've completelytaken over and they've blown up
specifically in the last liketwo years.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (22:05):
Yup, they're, they get cherry picked
all the time in my commentsection.
Nik (22:09):
yeah, it's a, um, It's a, but it's a mask thing, you know,
and there's like the allure andthe mystery and there's a story,
you know, there's a story behindit, but I think in general,
really what it, it just requiresa really high level creative
assets.
So it's like, it's a lot easierand cheaper for me to flip on
the phone and I can, I can spitto my fans all day and I can
(22:30):
build an audience that way basedoff of my personality and my
energy and I don't require ahigh budget, but if you want to
create a, a, you know, Right,that's going to be a bit
separated from you.
That's going to require graphicdesign.
That's going to require videoanimation.
It's just going to require moreof a heavy lift.
I think if you have the budgetyou can do it, but um, if you're
(22:51):
just trying to do it yourself,like, good luck.
I don't know, this is going tobe pretty hard.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (22:56):
Yeah, no, 100%.
It's also like, again, thinkabout the viewer, like, Why
would I care about your, youknow, highly edited graphic
design, just like, visualizer onmy feed?
I have multiple, multiple, many,many, many fake accounts on
Instagram, where I put thataccount into the You know, into
(23:16):
a certain persona of like, okay,this is Noah Mint.
He's 33.
What kind of content is heconsuming?
This is Ashley.
She's 24.
What kind of content?
And I curate, you know, the ForYou pages on those accounts
based around like thatdemographic.
And you start to think in thismindset of like, what would
stand out like a sore thumb onthis feed?
(23:38):
And it's like 99 percent of 99percent of the music content you
see that isn't performing wellwould stick out like a sore
thumb on this feed because itpeople aren't going on social
media to find your music andwatch your like even 5, 000
visualizer like it's stuff theycould send to their friends
something they could comment onsomething they can save
(23:58):
something that can make themfeel something
Nik (24:01):
Yeah, and I think to feel something, for people to feel
something, you have to befeeling something on the other
end of it.
What actually lights you up?
What are you passionate about?
What are you emotional about?
Right?
I think the way that you createcontent because you can also
read scripts all day, you can dotick tock dances all day or
(24:21):
whatever, but it's like it'swhen you actually see somebody
sharing something from thefucking heart.
That that energy is transmutedthrough the phone and it lands
in your heart, you know, I thinkthat that's an important piece
of it because I can, I can geton and I can, you know, I, even
with myself, I noticed like ifI, I could show up and maybe
post something that's more ofjust like mental energy, like,
(24:44):
Hey, here's a good thought andhere's a good perspective, but
if I show up and I like say somereal shit from the heart and
it's like, it's actually comingfrom here and I'm, I, I care
about it.
that's going to land so muchmore.
You know, there's, there's likean energy that gets transmuted
through what we're creating.
What's the energy that you'reactually putting into, into the
content itself, I think plays abig role.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (25:03):
Yeah, 100%
Nik (25:04):
Yeah.
Now a big part of this, and Italk about this a lot is, uh, I
think the big missing piece fora lot of people when it comes to
marketing is they're jumpingstraight from I'm making music.
I, I, I made just, we'll call itthe product.
If we want to just think aboutit strictly from a business
perspective, you know, from thatsort of assembly line of I've
(25:25):
created a product and now I'mgoing to go market it, bring it
to the marketplace.
But a lot of people are skippingthis really important step,
which is like building yourbrand and figuring out your
brand, right?
A lot of people are like, cool,I made the music.
Now let me go put it out.
And again, just put it in frontof people, but that's why it's
not fucking landing, right?
Because a lot of people haven'tactually figured out what their
(25:47):
brand is.
So it sounds like that's a bigpart of your guys's process as
well, is really helping peoplefigure out what's their, what's
their brand.
Who are they?
What are they trying to say?
What are some of the questionsthat you walk people through and
get them to answer to like,really get clear on what their
brand is before you startputting everything out?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (26:05):
Well, the first thing I always like to do
is figure out the person.
So who is like that one singularperson, you know, and this
obviously works much better withour artists who tour and we, can
ask them to really sit, like,sit and think about, who's that
person from the meet and greetsthat, you know, they stand out
(26:27):
like immediately.
And there's always someone andit's like, okay, let's describe
them.
Sarah, she's 34.
She's from here.
She likes this and now we'restarting to like build this
persona of like, this is whoyour biggest fan is.
So what are they going throughand what are the demographics of
your fan base?
Are they 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35to 44?
(26:51):
Because what people are goingthrough at different stages of
their life, they're going toresonate with content and brands
and messages.
at a much different, level, likeif you're 18 to 24, a breakup is
happening much more frequentlythan 35 to 44, like 35 to 44,
you're probably married.
(27:12):
So like, yeah, you can getdivorced.
Yeah.
You can still be dating, butyou're not going to be breaking
up with people at the frequencythat you are where you're 18
like, okay, most of your musicis about breakups.
And we know most of your targetaudience is 18 to 24.
Then we've got to start to guidethe brand to speak to them
(27:32):
because we can't start talkingabout Like this is for your
grandkids and it's like yeah,your your target audience are
the grandkids like
Nik (27:39):
yeah, you can't be,
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (27:40):
who?
Nik (27:41):
you can't be good at marketing if you don't know who
you, who your market is.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (27:45):
Exactly so we got to figure out the who
first then we've got to figureout the why so like Why do you
make music?
Why did you start making music?
And why is You the message ofyour music important.
So we've got the who, we've gotthe why.
Now we need the how, how are wegoing to communicate that
message of your why to the, whothese people or this singular
(28:07):
person, this group.
And then from there we startedto boil it down to, okay, what
are, what are your brandpillars?
What are these four things thatrepresent you, you know, outside
of the music?
And we've got, you know, amillion questions.
We asked people around that,like, you know, what is the
impact that you want to leave?
Outside of music, what arepersonality traits that you had
(28:27):
at 12 years old that you stillhave today?
What are things that yourfriends and family would say
first were to describe you whereversus romantic relationships?
Versus how you think strangerson the internet would describe
you in one word and just askingYou know as many questions as we
need to from like a we call itlike brand therapy standpoint to
(28:48):
walk away You know from thatfirst call knowing like This is
how we've kind of interpretedwho you are.
This is what you've told us.
This is how you've kind ofstarted to change your thinking.
And then we'll lay the brandfoundation and then continue to
build it, you know, messagingwise, but also visually from
there, over the next threemonths, staying in line with
(29:10):
that first conversation of like,this is the core foundation from
a messaging perspective.
This is who, We're talking tonow everything has to you know
stay on point stay on messagestay on brand But also like past
the gate of this You know groupof people or that singular
person to where like it shouldresonate with that
Nik (29:32):
Yeah, and so Once you have all of that figured out.
It's really just creating thosethree types of content then the
that top of funnel Connectioncontent conversion content.
Can we go a little bit deeper?
I'd love to hear some examples.
I think a lot of times peopleare just kind of a little stuck
(29:53):
on like, you know, what types ofcontent should I be making?
Let's go a little bit deeperinto that and give everyone some
some ideas.
I'd love to hear like, what'swhat do you see working as
you're working with clients andpeople on your roster?
Like, what What kind of shit areyou seeing that actually is
working right now for people interms of specific formats of
content?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (30:14):
It always comes down to the demographic,
like where are they based?
How old are they?
What is your gender split?
Because the way, all of thosedifferent factors play into what
content works is going to bewildly different.
Like we've got artists with verybig Southeast Asia and Asia fan
bases, and they just love.
(30:35):
High quality performance videos,people in the U S do not, those
read as ads.
Nik (30:41):
Yeah.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (30:41):
if you're just, you know, mini music
video, high quality performance,every single post to the U S
add, add, add, but to theSoutheast Asia market, like what
we've seen is they love thatthey love it.
So it's like, okay, what is yourdemographics?
Let's like decide at least whatour initial test phase formats
(31:02):
are going to look like based offthe demographic.
It's always going to come downto talking to camera though.
Not that every video is going tobe you talking to camera, but
when that door's open for you totalk to camera, the amount of
content that can be made is somuch more vast than like,
everything's got to be silent,every message has to be
(31:23):
communicated through text onscreen, like,
Nik (31:26):
Yeah.
And this is where this is whereit comes back to figuring out
who the fuck you are and whatyou're all about.
Right?
Like, yes, your brand, but it'seven deeper than that.
It's like really you knowing whoyou are as a person, as an
artist, like what is yourmessage?
I think this is hard for a lotof electronic music artists,
which are most of the artiststhat are listening to this
(31:46):
podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because a lot of them are justmaking bleeps and bloops and
you're putting shit out and it'slike, okay, cool Here's my you
know, my like You knowinstrumental electronic music
It's different when you're arapper And you're actually
writing lyrics about shit.
It's different when you're a popartist and you're actually
writing lyrics about songs.
If you're not songwriting, then,you know, there's sometimes as a
(32:08):
disconnect about what are youactually fucking saying, right?
Besides just putting out a bunchof bleeps, bleeps and bloops,
right?
And so that's just an importantthing.
Like, what do you care about?
What are you trying to say?
What is your message?
Cause I think this is where alot of people struggle in with
their marketing is they just.
They don't necessarily stand foranything or they haven't taken
(32:31):
the time to really figure outwhat it is that they stand for.
What do you believe in?
What do you care about?
Because once you've got thatclear, yeah, like you said, I'll
make content all day.
I can pop open the phone andtalk to my audience.
But, for anyone that'sstruggling to come up with
content ideas, it's probablybecause you haven't actually
figured out who you are, whatyou stand for and what you
believe in.
Yeah.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (32:55):
initial brand message that we, came up
with together early stage was ifyou love, if you love music for
the feeling, not the genre, thisis your new home.
And then that spoke really wellto his audience because.
as somebody who wants to, youknow, put out music in a lot of
different lanes of the dancegenre as a whole, you're now
(33:18):
honing in and standing for like,I'm not just going to make the
same super soft future bass dropover and over and over again.
So if you are a fan of dancemusic, but more just for the
feeling, not like you're, I onlylistened to rhythm and I'm like,
you're not, you're not one ofthose people.
Come on down.
And like just finding your waysof communicating what you stand
(33:40):
for is everything.
Nik (33:42):
Yeah.
There's something that you saidearlier and you kind of touched
on it again, talking about likethe testing, the content, right?
Like you said, when that firstmonth of working with people, a
lot of it is testing, like let'sfigure out what works, let's
figure out what format works.
Let's figure out, you know,what's actually going to land
and resonate.
I think that that's a huge,important point to make is, It
(34:08):
takes a lot of experimentationand I see a lot of artists that
are like Focusing so hard ontrying to do it right and it's
like You also got to just do itwrong a bunch to then figure out
what is right, right?
I remember seeing Gary V talkabout this before where he was
like, yo, it's like a lot of youare just so focused on making
(34:28):
like one or two pieces ofcontent and making them the best
pieces of content possible.
And, and it's like, maybe thosework, maybe they don't.
He's like, I'd rather see youmake 20 pieces of content and
fucking 16 of them don't work,but four of them do.
And now, you know, What'sactually starting to work.
So I think for especially a lotof, younger artists that are,
and, and not only, not onlyyounger, we all need to be
(34:49):
experimenting, but, but yeah, Ithink, especially in the
beginning, it's like, fuckaround and find out, go make a
bunch of different things, abunch of different formats, like
actually see what works.
Cause you don't know, unless youreally put that quantity out.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (35:05):
Yep, Exactly.
Exactly.
And you know, for me and my,content, like I've tried it all
too.
There was a minute where justreels of tweets that were like
four seconds long with trendingaudio were like a format I was
seeing quite a bit.
So I tried it.
You know, and I always alwayssay you cannot give up on
(35:26):
anything until five five posts Iwas trying that it wasn't
working for me.
It just didn't it just wasn't afit and then you know carousels
I'm like, okay, let me startdoing some carousels First four
carousels I posted did nothinglike only a couple hundred likes
and i'm like, oh my god, likeI'm done with carousels like
these do nothing for me, but letme hold myself to that five
(35:49):
number And then the fifthcarousel I posted got like, as a
carousel, like went to reels, itgot like 450, 000 views.
I'm like, okay Carousels are mything.
So I rode that carousel train sohard and then they just like
dwindled off And then I fellonto the green screen thing.
Now these green screen videoshave like Took me from maybe 15k
(36:12):
to almost 70k in like a monthand a half, two months 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 myphone.
Now it's me talking to my phonewith a green screen in the back.
I'm like never being comfortableand just testing as many
different formats.
It's the same message.
I'm reusing the same exactconcepts from the carousels in
(36:34):
my green screen videos, but theformat and the medium is
presented has changed.
And that's, you know, alteredthe success level, quote unquote
of, of a specific video.
Nik (36:44):
yeah.
Yeah, I saw someone showed me anaccount of this guy who was
literally just sitting in hiscar like listening to his song
off of his laptop filminghimself just sitting in the
driver's seat and He basicallyposted the same exact video like
ten times and I'm seeing moreand more people do this where a
(37:05):
lot of times It's like okay.
Well, well, you know Do our oneidea and we'll just post it once
and that's like, okay if itworks it does and if not,
whatever But I've been seeingthis more where people are
posting the same thing It's notliterally the same exact video
But it was like he just rerecorded pretty much the same
thing him sitting there in hiscar listening to it and it was
like if you write like Skrillexand whoever like you're gonna
(37:26):
fuck with this, you know thatkind of a video and it was like
the first video was like 500views.
You know, the second video was athousand views.
The third video was 1100 views.
And then the fourth video waslike 150, 000 views.
And it just, it just eventuallyworked.
And I don't know that, thescience behind that, but I don't
know if it's just being in theright place at the right time.
(37:47):
But like you said, you'reliterally saying the same
message sometimes, but just in abunch of different formats.
I'm seeing that more and morewhere it's like, you know,
Taking that one idea and maybeposting a handful of different
versions of it to really give itthe actual Time and space that
it deserves to see if it reallyworks because it might not be
that it's not a bad idea Itmight just be the fucking wrong
(38:08):
day in the wrong time, or Idon't know.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (38:10):
Well, day and time, doesn't matter.
Remember dick?
Nik (38:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why do
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (38:15):
just, it is me.
It's
Nik (38:16):
hmm.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah Tell me about, I, I, Inoticed in browsing through your
Instagram, you had a couple coolposts.
one of them was this idea of the15 by six method.
Tell me what that is.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (38:35):
Yes.
So I've now changed it to five,five by five, but similar, uh,
similar mindset.
So what we do when we have anin-person shoot and we're go,
we're going into this in-person,shoot solely to get conversion
content.
So mini music videos, we'll getsome iPhone stuff, but we'll get
like.
All of the high qualityperformance videos if you guys
(38:56):
check out fly by midnight onInstagram We've been doing their
content for the last six monthsand pretty much all conversion
content.
They're an anomaly They're aunicorn like they're the ones
with the Southeast Asia fan basewhere you know We just do a lot
of high quality videos and itjust grows and grows and grows
them We'll go.
Okay What are the five songsover the course of the next 30
(39:18):
days?
We'll hit the feed at somepoint.
You know, if it's the mostrecent release, we might
allocate like 60 percent of theshoot to that, but there's old
catalog songs.
We'll throw two, three videos inthe mix with got those five
songs mapped out five locations,five different, you know, it
could be the same.
Like we just did a shoot fly bymidnight Monday at UCLA, but
(39:39):
that we consider three differentlocations because we did.
The grass field, we did in frontof a building, and then we did
on the steps.
And then we went to the footballfield, and then we went in the
parking lot.
So we got five different looks,five different locations.
Bring five different outfitswith you.
Change the outfit at each newlocation.
So now, you're getting, even ifyou do one song at each
(40:00):
location, right there you'vegot, you know, 25 videos.
Nik (40:04):
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Content batching.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (40:06):
Exactly.
Nik (40:07):
Yeah, cool.
Um, I love that.
So that's what, so you guys willgo out and actually produce all
of that, film that and stuffwith your LA based clients.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (40:17):
Correct, yes.
Or we'll have people fly intoand we'll, we'll structure it.
You know, we're not just gonnasay stand there and lip sync.
We still start to do likediscovery, connection,
conversion within that shoot.
But all, you know, with DSLR allhigh quality.
'cause the iPhone stuff like,you know, we can, we can guide
you through that.
We'll get some iPhone stuff, butwe really wanna hone in, make
(40:40):
the use of our time with ourvideographer, Julian.
Name is Julian York on IG if youguys want to check him out as
well He's the goat, but you gotto go through us to get him, but
he's the man.
He kills it,
Nik (40:50):
another.
Big question I think a lot ofpeople have is, should I post
the same stuff on TikTok that Iam on Instagram?
There are obviously differentplatforms, they function
differently.
You could just post the samethings, maybe you do sometimes.
I don't know, what are yourthoughts around Instagram
strategy versus TikTok?
Those are kind of the two bigplatforms that people are
(41:11):
focusing on.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (41:14):
It all comes down to a time perspective
like how much time do you haveto allocate because everything
should go everywhere That's agiven everything that you post
on Instagram should go on tiktok But you can double up on tik
tok with things that don't hitInstagram Cause TikTok, you have
more capability.
And I think this is more of amental roadblock that people
(41:36):
find themselves in than anythingrooted in like facts or data.
But people just feel like,because when you pull up your
Instagram homepage, you're goingto see people that you know,
personally, you can go two hoursscrolling on TikTok and not see
a soul that you know in reallife.
So now people have less of amental barrier of like.
(41:59):
Oh, I can't post that becauseyou know, my ex's friend who,
from college who still followsme, if he sees that I'm shitting
on him in this new song, butit's like, oh, but on TikTok, I
could do that because nobody Iknow might not see it.
So people feel a little morefree on TikTok to like be a
little more real, a little moreauthentic.
So like doubling up on TikTok,if there's a time to do it and
(42:22):
posting everything that's goingto be posted on Instagram, also
on TikTok.
Is the best cross pollinationstrategy.
And if you really want to honein on YouTube shorts
demographically, YouTube shortsis a young demographic, young,
like 10 17.
So they love brain rot.
So like, if you really want tolike tailor a strategy platform
(42:45):
by platform, whatever youronscreen lyrics look like, make
them the most brain rot possiblefor YouTube shorts.
So if you're gonna do smalllittle white text lyrics for
Instagram, make them the big oneword at a time yellow for
YouTube shorts.
Cause it's just, that's thatgeneration.
That's what they grew up on theMr.
Beast
Nik (43:04):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Damn.
That's wild.
That's wild.
Okay.
So definitely post everythingyou're posting on Instagram,
post it on Tik Tok and, and moreon Tik Tok.
In addition, add even more tothat if you have the time and
energy to it.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (43:19):
Exactly.
Like if, if you're literallycooking chili and you spill the
chili everywhere, you canliterally take a video and be
like, Oh my God.
I was just making chili and nowI spilled it everywhere.
My life is a mess.
Tick tock.
That's not going to go onInstagram, but like, exactly,
Nik (43:40):
You can, you can just turn that, you could just post that
on the tick tock.
Like I look at stories as like,that's people that are already
following me.
my 500 people that view mystories every day or however
many, are the ones that, yeah,they're, they're following me a
little bit more closer to myjourney.
yeah, you could just do the sameshit.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (43:58):
exactly.
Or even like your, your Finsta
Nik (44:02):
Mm
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:02):
the Finsta mindset for tech doc.
Nik (44:05):
Mm hmm.
Cool.
Cool.
Yeah, alright.
What else, what else should wecover, dude?
Like, I feel like we havecovered a lot.
What else have we, what elsehave we not covered yet?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:17):
Hmm.
I mean, I'm an open book, so askme anything.
Nik (44:20):
what else besides content creation and strategy do you
guys do at the agency?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:26):
So On a, as much as I can say level, we're
starting to consult for labelsand management companies on
their content strategyinternally and start to build
out, their teams, theirprocesses, their systems, so
that they don't have to hire us.
They can just keep it internal.
So that's where we're startingto move a little more B2B still
working with artists, but alsobuilding that side of what we do
(44:49):
because everyone wants to keepit internal.
I mean, no one wants to bebeholden to an agency.
That's also working with theircompetition.
You know, for
Nik (44:57):
hmm.
Yeah,
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (44:58):
we're starting to, I guess, for, for
lack of a better term, likepioneer that lane of like kind
of going against what wouldbenefit us in the long term of
like, yeah, you can justhopefully hire us forever.
Or we could just come in andbuild franchise ourselves out to
you.
Nik (45:14):
Yeah.
Uh, who's an example of a clientthat you've really seen
skyrocket during their time withyou?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (45:23):
Chanel Yates for sure.
She actually was a EDM vocalistthat I had on quite a few of my
songs when I was an artist.
Then she came to me just as afriend cause we're very good
friends saying like, Hey, Ithink I'm going to go down this
country lane.
So we worked for a while onjust, you know, figuring out
what that rebrand was going tolook like.
How could things shift over,from basically dance pop
(45:46):
vocalist to now country artistsbased in London too.
So he made her being from the UKand being a country artist, a
very kind of key identifier forher brand.
Cause that's unique in and ofitself.
Not a lot of country artists arecoming out of the UK.
And then we just really honed inon formats and her formats have
pretty much stayed the sameregardless of song and things
(46:06):
have grown, you know, prettyrapidly for her about 4, 000
followers to now over 30, 000and the new song is crushing.
So we're, we're super stoked onher, but it took a while because
we had to completely find hernew identity.
Nik (46:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That, and that's again, back tothat foundation of the brand,
like figuring out who you are,what you're all about, getting
your story and your messagereally dialed in and like, yeah,
then you know what to actuallycreate, right?
All of that is going toinfluence and inspire like what
the content's all about.
So yeah, back to that, I justsee it more and more.
(46:40):
Like it's such a, it's such a, amissing piece for a lot of
people.
So if people are interested inworking with you, I think that
that is the dream perhaps for, alot of artists that are like,
man, how rad would it be to havehelp and support?
And, you know, I've been talkingabout this more and more on the
podcast, but you know, reallystepping into that business
owner mindset.
If you want to scale yourbusiness, there is going to be a
(47:02):
point in time where you got tostart hiring.
Other people, right?
You got to start actually likebuilding out your business.
You can only take it so faryourself.
So if people were interested inworking with you, how would they
go about that?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (47:14):
Yeah, we got a wonderful website in my
Instagram bio with all the infoyou need to apply.
Nik (47:20):
Perfect.
Perfect.
What's, what's the Instagram?
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (47:23):
Rough Music Official.
Nik (47:25):
Ruff.
R U F F music official.
I'll put the link in the shownotes.
If you guys want to work withUnleashed Creative and Nick and
the team and have some peoplecreate some awesome content for
you, provide some strategy,they, they obviously know what
they're doing.
So, Nick, thanks so much fortaking the time to hop on, bro.
Really appreciate you.
Peeling back the curtain andshowing us, some of these like
(47:47):
deeper strategies that I thinkare so important for us all to
be aware of.
Nick Ruffalo (Ruff) (47:51):
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
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