Michael Walker: Yeah. All right. I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Natasha Brito. Natasha, let me give you a quick intro. She's a former MySpace artist turned Sony Music Creative Director. She leads the visual branding of the next generation of iconic musicians. As the Founder and CEO of Austere and Artist House, she's built viral campaigns and unforgettable identities for thousands of artists, many of whom you probably recognize.

She also has a course called The Iconic Artist Blueprint, empowering over 10,000 musicians to thrive with visuals-first branding and fan connection. Natasha, as a new parent, I know that time is especially precious, and I appreciate you creating a little bit of space in your schedule to hop on the podcast and share some of the lessons that you've learned in terms of visuals and branding to help our artist community.

Natasha Brito: Absolutely. So grateful to be here. Very excited to chat. This is my favorite topic. I could yap about it for hours. So, yeah.

Michael: Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing more about some of your insights. So to start with, maybe you could share a little bit more about your story of how you were able to grow from scratch to working with the artists that you have.

Natasha: Yeah. So I started in the early days—I'll age myself a little bit here—MySpace, obviously, was where I started as a teenager. Just kind of making music in my bedroom. Laptop first. MacBook—you know how it goes. That was a big thing back in the day, just making GarageBand music and just trying to figure it out.

It was a different world then in terms of socials. We didn’t have algorithms. We didn’t have true feeds in the way that we do now. But we did still have the opportunity to grow a fanbase, build an audience, and translate that into generating income and building something sustainable.

So I really learned very quickly that branding myself in a particular way and having an aesthetic was very important in order for me to be taken more seriously, in addition to growth hacking my socials, building a fanbase, getting as many friends—which would be followers today—as possible on MySpace so that my shows would pack out and I'd make money on ticket sales and merch and posters and all the things.

Ringtones were a big thing back then too. And so that was really important to me—to just figure that out. It was an obsession, not just making the music but then figuring out how to get it in front of people's eyes and ears.

That translated into an education at University of North Texas for advertising and marketing with a focus in art direction. It just made sense to me at the time that that was what I loved.

And I kind of set my music career aside and realized, I don't think I want to be the musician. I think I want to be on the other side. I want to photograph and film and direct and create and build for other people and other brands.

And so that kind of took me into a professional career in that sense, while also still supporting independent musicians.

Then eventually, after owning a magazine and doing some culture content, having some professional jobs at Pizza Hut and an ad agency, I eventually landed as a Creative Director at Sony Music to support developing artists all the way up to A-list, super well-known global artists.

Michael: Hmm. Awesome. Cool. So, I mean, it sounds like you had some roots in MySpace. I also grew up as a MySpace kid and remember hustling and booking our first tour from MySpace—similar bands.

So the roots of expressing yourself and your own music and understanding the value of marketing and how you present yourself—and then applying that and seeing how it's done in the big leagues with some of these A-list artists—gives a unique perspective on how to actually cut through the noise.

Especially—this would be my next question—with social media and how easy it is now to generate music and visuals, it feels like it's also gotten more saturated. There's just so much stuff.

So I'm curious how you would recommend an artist listening right now, especially an indie artist who’s trying to figure out what differentiates themselves or how to create a consistent brand—what are some of the biggest mistakes or roadblocks you see that they struggle with?

Natasha: Yeah, absolutely. Oh man, there's so many, unfortunately, and they really can weigh down an artist if they don't work through them carefully and kind of unknot the whole thing.

But oftentimes the big ones are consistency—struggling to maintain any form of consistency that allows them to scale up and grow.

Because at the end of the day, all musicians have to start somewhere when it comes to their digital presence journey. And if that is not being very good at posting content, but still posting it every other day or every three days and treating it as part of a habit, a part of your lifestyle—kind of like a workout routine—it’s hard to get into it. But once you're into it, you get motivated, you get better at it, you get more aggressive with it.

The struggle for most musicians is they struggle to start, and they struggle to maintain. You can’t get better at making content, understanding the algorithms, being good at hook writing, and copywriting, SEO, and all that stuff if you don’t start and maintain consistency and then review it like a scientist—where you're testing stuff, you're A/B testing, you're split testing, you're reviewing the data, and you're learning from the data and moving forward.

That's the big one for me that I feel like is the source issue for most musicians. Beyond that, of course, it’s like—how are you differentiating yourself as an artist to be visually exciting? Camera quality, filming, editing, cinematography—what world are you creating for your fanbase to make it a little bit more interesting for them, rather than just you being another person with a guitar or whatever instrument, playing for them? Like, nobody cares, right?

You gotta add a twist. You gotta add an X-factor. So both of those things work very hand in hand. But this is very foundational—making sure that, you know, you can’t have a great presence and build this whole world if you won’t make the content for it long term.

Michael: Hmm. Good stuff. Yeah. So it sounds like one of the biggest root issues is just not really having a system or a plan or consistency to show up and figure out what's working and what's not. I'm curious, for someone who's starting out, what kind of habits would you recommend they install?

And you mentioned a few of them in terms of, first of all, just showing up and posting consistently. And then you also mentioned—I love where your brain is going with split testing and basically looking at the winners—what won and why. If someone has never done that for social media, how do they—what's a good rhythm or what's a good framework for them to follow in order to get the engine started?

Natasha: Great question. Best place to start is my belief system is batching and automating. I really believe that you can't expect yourself to spend every day doing everything—you have to do your day job, work out, eat, whatever—and then also have time to come up with an idea, film it, edit it, and post it. Like, that's unrealistic, right? And that is really what creates a lot of burnout for musicians. They think they have to do everything in real time and make time for that all the time. So the best systemization that I've come up with historically, and has worked for musicians that I've worked with, is:

Have an ideation day where you're coming up with all of your entire calendar, shot list, and briefs of what you need to make and what you need to do, and what that looks like from a production standpoint.

So literally a shot list of all your posts for the month. And if you have time that day, you can start filming some of it, or you can have separately a content day. So let's say it's a Saturday and a Sunday of every month where you're ideating and then you're executing.

And then once you have those, you can spend a third day of the month—maybe a few days later, take a break—and you can edit and schedule everything out. So really, you're spending 2, 3, 4 days tops per month where all the bulk work is being done. And then you're scheduling it out on a tool like later.com, which is either free for up to two weeks of scheduling, or $20 a month or something for unlimited.

Then you can use their push notification feature to be notified when it's time to post, because manual publishing is better for engagement. Anyone who has a following knows that that's true. But at least this creates the system where it's ideated, it's shot, it's edited, and it's scheduled out in a matter of a few days. And then you just have to worry about getting the notification on your phone when it's time, pressing yes—it does all the work for you—and then you publish it and you're good to go.

It's easier to systemize this way. This is how social media managers who have full-time jobs as social media managers do it. So why not learn from the people who have it as a career?

Michael: Awesome. So what I'm hearing you say is that one of the best ways to do it is not to try to every single day do all the different hats that you're wearing, but to kind of like put on a hat for a day every month where you're just coming up with all the ideas and the scripts and the shot list, and then have a day that's just kind of set aside for the batch recording of it, and then have a day that's set for the publishing and scheduling of it?

Natasha: Yeah, editing and scheduling.

Michael: Got it. And how about the review process? I have a feeling that based on what you shared before, the process of actually figuring out what happened when you posted and which ones are working well, and how that informs the next batch of content—is that something you'd normally do on the ideation day, or how do you kind of have the feedback loop?

Natasha: Yeah, you can do it on the ideation day. I typically like to look at data—and I recommend artists look at data—at the end of a month cycle, because that's how all the platforms are providing the data for you.

If you do sign up for something like later.com, once you plug in your accounts, it'll track all your data in real time all the time.

But I like to think of it from a calendar perspective. The first day of the month, we look back at the last month calendar-wise and say, “Okay, here's all the content for that month. How did it perform? What were the top three performing posts? Why? What did they have in common? What about them potentially made them do so well?”

Take notes on that. And then the worst performing posts—why? What happened? Was it the day? Was it the content? Was it the first five seconds? Was it the hook? Kind of jot those down and use that as ongoing learning for the ideation that comes next. But that would be typically where you're really analyzing all the analytics, making informed mental decisions on what future content looks like.

Michael: Hmm. Sweet. So once a month, basically reviewing all the analytics. And that's something that later.com makes easy on a monthly basis?

Natasha: Yeah. You can do it natively in-app too, on all the platforms, but if you want it all in one place, a good platform that's cheap for musicians is later.com.

Michael: Okay. And so with each of the platforms, it lets you schedule it so that when you click on it with the push notification at the right time, you can go publish it, which helps with the engagement.

Okay, how about in terms of engagement—how does someone work in the habit of connecting with the people who are responding to the posts or building a community with them?

Natasha: Yeah. Realistically, every single person is at least spending an hour a day scrolling for fun on their own. So if you're going to already be scrolling on Instagram or TikTok or anything every day, you might as well check on your notifications, see if you have to respond to DMs, engage with people who commented on your posts. It's good to do that within 24 hours of any of those things happening, because it shows that you are active, it's relevant to them, they haven't forgotten about the message they shared or the comment they made.

And it's just good engagement for your fanbase. Plus, it can convert to getting fans to become buyers—buyers of your merch, of your shows, etc. Customers are important, and you have to remember that a portion of your fans will always be customers.

But yes, I mean, it's hard to say, “You have to be on social media to check your notifications 30 minutes a day every single day,” because realistically—will you? Or will you just bake it into your natural lifestyle of, “I'm already going to be scrolling, let me just do a quick five-minute check of everything?” That's realistic.

Once you start building a fanbase that's larger and you have a bigger audience, then you can consider hiring a community manager to help you with some of that—the DM management, having some templated responses to things, etc. But in the meantime, it's really important to bake it into your lifestyle and have that ongoing, real-time conversation.

Michael: Hmm. Got it. Okay, cool. So at the beginning, it's great to kind of, as much as possible, link it into your existing day-to-day routine if you're spending some time on socials.

Then as it starts to get overwhelming—because there's a lot of responses—you can start to build a team around it, a community manager.

In that initial phase where you're engaging with everything—and maybe this is relevant on a wider scale too, just in terms of where do you focus or where do you post—I'm curious if you have any recommendations for artists in terms of which platform they might want to choose, or should they go on all of them at once? If so, how do they manage the comment moderation? Is it the same way—that you should just spend a few days browsing those different platforms? Or what's your advice there?

Natasha: Yeah, yeah. Typically, you need to hit the trifecta, which is the most important platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. Those three are going to be the most impactful right now for musicians. So they have to happen. It's hard when I hear musicians being like, "Well, I'm not on TikTok, but I'm only on Instagram." I'm like, well, that's great, but you're missing out on so much more of an audience you could have, because you never know what post on Instagram could go viral on TikTok.

So you have to really take that into consideration. You can repost to Facebook if your audience is an older audience, or it's a more fitting audience for a particular genre you're in, like classical or jazz. That audience is on there at all ages. But yeah, the three are the most important. And then there's a lot of new platforms out there. I'm always telling musicians to keep an eye on them just in case — like Bluesky, Rednote — if TikTok does still get banned, because that's still a pending situation that we don't know.

So it's important to keep an eye, but those three platforms are important to post. We have been seeing a lot — because I also own an agency called Austere — so on the agency side, working with musicians, we have been seeing significant algorithmic updates on the TikTok and Instagram side in terms of reposting content. There's always been a challenge of: you can't post the same post on both sides and expect both of them to perform very well. Because all the algorithms have data crawlers out there right now, which can tell if you're posting an original piece of content or if it's a repost from another platform.

So the trick has always been: vary it a little bit, change — use in-app text tools to change the font or something different so that they're slightly varied. And then technically it's a different content ID. But the algorithms are getting smarter now, so now we have to do a staggered approach of posting. On top of that, posting on TikTok first, waiting about an hour, then posting on Instagram. Still doing a little bit of a variation on the video or the post itself. But we're seeing from a lot of A/B testing on our side that that is bypassing a bit of that problem too. It's getting more complicated. Is that annoying? Absolutely. But we have to play the game — or we have to outsmart the game, if that makes any sense.

Michael: Wild. That is really cool. I mean, I love that you're doing that level of analysis to be able to see like, yeah — post at the same time — if you wait like an hour on one. And I'm assuming that just switching like a day later on one platform might not be ideal, 'cause you still want the post to be on the same day.

Natasha: It doesn't have to be. I mean, it can be unless it's something that is timely for any particular reason. But we're noticing that the TikTok going up first and then delaying the Instagram by at least the hour is important and is showing to not create conflict. YouTube Shorts — it's like they're in their own little world. They can still tell if it's original content or not, so there's a monetization issue there. But YouTube Shorts is like the wild, wild west. You know, there's a great tagging strategy for it. They can get you a million subscribers very quickly if you post enough content — but it does come down to quantity over quality over there.

Michael: Super interesting.

Natasha: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Some of the stuff you're talking about — I'm both selfishly thinking about this for Modern Musician, and I'm thinking about it on behalf of our artists as well. We have a software as a service called Street Team that is sort of like a mixture between a social media platform and something like Patreon, where they might have more of a dedicated connection with the artists and the fans.

But when I'm thinking about Modern Musician — yeah, I've been a little bit more of like a hermit as it relates to organic social. I was a weird kid in high school. I liked math. So when it comes to running ads, that's a world that we've basically focused on, and that's our primary channel through how we've grown to 160,000 artists on our email list.

Natasha: Yeah.

Michael: Social media has been almost like we're an underground secret, because we've been running all these email campaigns. But social — I've avoided, in part because I'm one of the weird people that generally doesn't spend an hour a day scrolling. I've kind of — I lock my phone in a box at night. I try to avoid it. I'm also recognizing that this is limiting in some ways. It's both something that I think can be good, but is also limiting in the fact that we want to change the world, and we want to reach artists and people on a much bigger scale.

Social media is an important part of that. Same thing for our artists. Whether they love it, or hate it, or have mixed feelings about it — they need to figure out the game of organic social and not just paid. So I'm here to hear your perspective. As this reflects both on us and on our community of artists.

We hyper-focus on running ad campaigns and building funnels and profitable systems, which is cool. But there's a whole world of organic virality and organic growth that I think can tie in nicely. So how do you think about organic social as it relates to paid social? And do you have personal experience kind of mapping the two together? And how would you recommend that someone like me, or an artist who might feel a little bit like a hermit — but they know they want to get into this world — think about it?

Natasha: Yeah, great questions. Oh my goodness. Man, there's so much beauty in paid and the strategies around it that can be helpful to scale an audience — especially if you have the budget and you can flip it around to turn it into something profitable by selling something through a funnel. Of course, very valuable.

But a lot of social proof also comes from the organic side of things, right? Because you can spring and build an audience that is fully, you know, from dark post ads and all this stuff, or taking people directly to streaming and email and all of that stuff — which is great. But then you have to use the re-engagement of organic socials to have them still care long term.

I think there's only so much I care about an artist when they're just emailing me or I'm just seeing ads from them. They're kind of out of sight, out of mind. Getting socials has to play some piece of a role here to support that continued support, love, excitement, engagement, etc.

Running ads is great in terms of using it for passive follower growth and fan growth, of course. But on the organic side, it's nice to use it also as an opportunity to see: okay, I made a promo asset for this new song coming out, and it's doing really, really well. Now I know — I have free data — that this was a really, really good piece of content. I can run ads on that.

So there's that other flip side of the equation where it can be helpful for your advertising too — because what works organically will absolutely work paid. And then, I just feel like if you don't have an organic strategy to pair with your paid, it really is limiting on how you can build a fan base. 'Cause again, we want to allow musicians to have personality on the internet — and most of that is coming from organic socials.

People want to follow the storyline. They want to root for the underdog. You gotta take 'em along that journey with you — whether you're doing it super high-concept and super artistic, like an artist like a Lady Gaga or a Chappell Roan, or you're being very authentic and organic and just talking to camera and sharing — spewing your emotions out at them, which also works very, very well. Just depends on who you want to be. But you wouldn't show that anywhere but the organic social side of things, which is where virality comes into play.

Again, being able to be structured well in the organic side of things will benefit you elsewhere, because that's where you're doing free A/B testing for your ads. It's where you're getting better at making content, which is good for everything. And it's a very forgiving place. You can always delete a post. If you need to take a hiatus, you can — and you can always rebuild. I don't recommend it, but you can. And yeah, it's so valuable for musicians in terms of building true community.

Michael: Good stuff. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that there are some unique benefits that come from organic social, especially as it relates to nurturing a community and building relationships.

And in addition to that, you also can have valuable free A/B tests essentially, where you test out and see if this works organically. Then you can bet that that's also gonna work through paid traffic as well. At least it's gonna give you some free A/B testing to figure out what does work.

Okay, cool. And in terms of that, the process of—because at some point, the organic social, you're gonna want to also get them from organic social to your shop or your email list or something—a place where you own more of the data. What are your recommendations for artists in terms of that process?

Like, what are some of the most effective ways for them to leverage this audience that they've built now through the strategies that you've helped them with?

Natasha: Yeah, I mean, there's no better initiative or incentive than doing giveaways of some kind. People love free stuff. People love the opportunity to win free stuff. It can be literally money or something that has nothing to do with your music. It can be a bundle package of different merch and stickers and tchotchkes that you made, handmade, whatever, that people might want to sign up for. But using lead-generating tools like that to get people into your more owned platforms is, in a very straightforward way, always going to be a successful format.

And doing them often is important too—like once a month or once every other month—to get that recurring translation of what you've gotten from organic over to your email list or some sort of Discord channel or Patreon or what you guys have, where there's an owned audience, audience team.

So I think that's number one, and that you can always make posts about it, just like promoting it. But again, incentives are really important.

Leaving it available everywhere—like a call to action is a call to action for a reason. So having a call to action anywhere and everywhere where it makes sense is important. So reviewing all your bios, your profiles, your links, your link trees—all the places where you want to make sure people have access to the places you want them to go to. It needs to be very clear what it is, why they need to go there, and create some form of urgency. Because if you don’t link it—you build it and they will come—that's not true. You have to make sure it's visible, not just built.

Michael: Mm, smart. Yeah. I mean, the metaphor that just came to me as you were describing that—like having a pipe or having traffic kind of going through it—but if it's just blocked, there's no way, no link between that to that, then people can't—they'll have to somehow divert this traffic around the earth instead of just having a clear line that links them together.

Natasha: Yeah. I'm a big believer of: don't make it hard for people to know what you want them to do. Not that people are dumb, it's just that people want to be told what to do.

And if they are given instructions in very, very clear paths, you are ten times more likely to grow your numbers in the places that you want to grow your numbers, whether that be sales or lists or whatever.

Michael: Hmm. That's so smart. And it seems like common sense, but often we don't—we kind of skirt around the thing. Especially as it relates to making an offer or asking someone to purchase something.

Natasha: Yes.

Michael: Like saying, "I want you to purchase this." Like, "I'm asking you to purchase this if it's valuable for you."

Natasha: Yes. Musicians are so scared of asking for that, which I understand because it's very emotional to be a musician, and what you do is very emotional. But understanding that more people than you think want to support your project—they just don't know how.

And so when you give them these options and opportunities—whether it be membership payments or merch or even just the "buy me a coffee" monthly subscription—people want to pay for that kind of stuff. At least starting out, friends and family—let them build that base for you, and then you can expand to the fans who are interested.

But yeah, call to action in the bio, call to action in your links, call to action in your story highlights on Instagram, a pinned post on your feed that changes out based on what either you're promoting or selling—whatever that’s pushing people to go to one of those things. Posting on your story every so often about it. You just have to think about all the touchpoints—"Where is someone exploring my profile?" Make sure that it's available at every spot, that there's some sort of call to action.

Michael: Mm. Got it. Totally makes sense. So I'd love to hear your perspective on kind of zooming out and looking a little bit more macro.

I feel like this is amazing. Even just on a personal front, we're just approaching—we have this studio with a nice content production studio now. I'm just starting to record these hooks and vertical reels and things, and this is very timely for me. So on a personal front, I'm grateful.
 And I also think that all of these things totally apply so well to all of our artists who are gonna be watching this.

And I also love to zoom out and look at these trends—where things are headed. If we imagine that we're like surfers in the ocean and maybe new waves are coming. I'm curious, from your perspective—having probably surfed a lot of these different waves and seen like, "Oh, this thing works now," and it's like, "Oh, it turns out now the platform's gotten smart, but we're gonna play the game. We're gonna go to this wave and this wave." So you probably appreciate that it's a game. There are different waves. Catching this wave is nice, but if you miss it, the next one's coming.

I'm curious, from your perspective: are there any big waves at the time of recording this that you kind of feel like—either tidal waves or things that are coming—that you're like, "If I was an artist right now, I wouldn't sleep on this one. I would probably start trying to swim along with this, even though it's kind of early—it’s nascent in the way that it’s coming"? Any perspective there?

Natasha: I love this metaphor, mostly because I am a surfer and I love all things waves and ocean. So good, good metaphor here.

In terms of what I'm seeing right now—it's funny. We historically have always had interesting waves going on that I’m like, "Oh my God, this is exciting, and people aren’t jumping on this, and we need to make sure people are aware—we need to shout it out." But we’re in a weird time on the internet right now. I’ve been saying this lately when I talk to people—I feel like we’re in late-stage social media.

And maybe it’s just economic and cultural—something’s happening where we’re not seeing a lot of unique, new trends and changes and opportunities come about that can really kill it. Anything new, right? There's the standard, normal stuff that definitely works and is a priority in terms of content. But it’s a weird time. There’s just not anything truly new going on—unless it’s a new platform that’s going to take over, that people need to get on immediately. And I don’t think we’ve found that winner yet—that’s going to succeed TikTok or Instagram or anything.

But the most important thing I’ve seen lately really is just making culture content. Not necessarily tricking people into discovering you, but a lot of content that we’ve been working on with our artist clients on the agency side that has been going viral—it’s just not even the most exciting stuff that we come up with, but it’s working like crazy. So we’re making everyone do it.

It’s these videos or carousel posts of like, “Yeah, I discovered Sabrina Carpenter when I was 21.” Scroll. “I discovered Chap Rome when I was 22.” Scroll. Blah, blah, blah. And then the last one’s like, “You are your age discovering me at this age. What do you think?” And the whole time, you’ve been seeing images of famous people that you recognize. The audio is an official audio from this artist that’s actually making this post. So you’re kind of being duped into discovering them.

It seems so simple, right? So basic in terms of content—but it is going viral for every single artist that we work with. And it is just so easy because I think what we’re doing is we’re leveraging meme culture, culture content, and recognizable faces. And everyone loves to have an opinion about music discovery or the artists that they love. And using adjacent artists that already sound like you—you’re already whittling down into a super segmented audience finding these posts. And now you’re getting a lot of new followers because of it, because it’s truly translating for them.

So it seems simple, but it’s very, very effective. And I’m telling every musician to do it because it just makes sense. And while it’s not, like I said, exciting mini movies or a replacement for music videos—because the music video is dead, and that is a hot, hot take I do stand by—this is low-hanging fruit every musician should do, because it’s just easy and does translate.

Michael: Hmm. That's super smart. I love that, that strategy. So, I mean, and I can, I can see why it would work on multiple fronts. Like one is the familiarity and, like you said, the meme culture of like recognizing your favorite artist. You're specifically calling out like your people too, 'cause if someone's a fan of this person, this person, this person, then they're the most likely person to like your music too.

Natasha: Yes.

Michael: But it's almost like casting for a vision or like an imprint. It's pretty bold to say. That reminds me of my dad—he had these three pictures in front of his computer desk. One of them was Muhammad Ali, and it was like the Apple logo—"Think Different." And then one was the Albert Einstein photo, and it was Albert Einstein looking deep, and it was like, "Think Different." And the third one was a picture of my grandpa riding this little tiny moped that was way too small for him, and it was like, "Think Different."

Natasha: Did he make that?

Michael: He made it. Yeah. It was pretty clever. Like, nice one, Dad. I love it. But it's kind of, it's in a similar vein. That’s what it reminds me of—what you're describing with these artists—in that there's this certain momentum or there's a certain, that meme that you're kind of like creating through the momentum, the recognition, and just like the awesomeness of those people. And it's sort of like a Babe Ruth-style calling it out. You know, and then there you are. I can see how that would create some serious momentum towards helping at least that be in the same conversation.

Natasha Brito: Yes. I think of it as like, in marketing terms, like it's perceived value, right? You are psychologically relating yourself to these big artists that are super successful. And again, there's natural SEO and metadata happening in the background that's working in your favor through those names. But then people are like, “Oh yeah, wow. So maybe this person's on the come-up. Oh my God, I need to discover them. Maybe I really will like them. I gotta go check out their profile. What are they all about? Did they already go viral?” You start asking yourself all these questions as the viewer. And I love that. It creates curiosity. That's so fun. And I think that's why it works so well. There's so many ways to do this type of content, but it's like you're leveling up. You're telling them, “This is who I'm about to be. I'm about to be big, and you definitely should check it out. Or haha, that's funny, but okay, I did listen and I did like it—so you got me.” However people react. So far, it's been very positive.

Michael: Nice. So are you saying that last part is that sometimes you can use the name as like a joke? Or you can like compare yourself to someone that's like—when they listen, you're like, “Oh...” Kind of like my grandpa with the head.

Natasha: Yeah, you can. I think it seems to work in all ways. It's really just more so like you're hooking them in properly without your face in it at the beginning. But in general, culture content is something that more musicians are needing to lean into, and the ones that are, are doing very well for themselves in terms of virality and growth. Because they're understanding that they're allowed to be a part of the memes. They can make a meme. They don't have to just do a trend video. They can make a culture piece of content that they're using their song as the sound bed for. Or they're doing more cinematic footage—again, doesn't have to have their face in it—but it's telling a visual story, and their song is the sound bed for it. So it's more relatable stuff.

Oh, here's one. Maybe this is a really, really solid one that I don't see a lot of people do, but it's very successful. Every musician, for every release, should make a CapCut template using their song. I don't see this enough. When we do it, organically, before it's even promoted, there are hundreds of people already using the template because it shows up in the trending template section of the CapCut app. And if it's something really easy, like a template that you made that's very relatable and it's like a POV: “blah blah blah blah blah,” based on the topic of the song, and it's something that you know people will have photos or videos of in their camera roll—you have struck gold. And you will create a potential viral trend for yourself. Because it's easy to do, people can just upload their content through the template. It's already using your music. It fits. And if you use your own template when you're posting it on your TikToks, the button at the bottom will show like, “Use this template on CapCut.” You're basically getting free promotion through the CapCut app. Brilliant. Works every time. Very successful. But really thinking about—it’s not about you the musician. It's about the experience this song relates to in other people's lives. It's never about the musician. It's always about the fan and their personal experience that they're imprinting onto the song. So if you can turn that into a CapCut template—amazing. Done.

Michael: Super smart. When you're running a campaign like that, especially on TikTok—we’ve explored this a little bit with Instagram and Facebook—is having organic posts that you then can link to directly when you're running the ads, so that you can benefit from the social proof of the organic post as well.

I know, surprisingly, you'd think that all these platforms would want to make that as easy as possible so that more people would want to spend money on ads. But some of them—it feels like surprisingly hard to actually link to the organic posts that you want to boost from the Ads Manager. I'm curious—for TikTok or for some other platforms—do you usually, when you're doing a release campaign, think about a certain amount of ad spend, and are you able to link that to the organic post? Or do you usually kind of put those in different buckets and repost a winning post later?

Natasha: Yeah, I mean, it depends, right? 'Cause like you can always spark add your own post technically, and you can essentially professionally boost it on the Ads Manager side of things. But it will—like there's only so much customization from there that you can do. I typically, if we're running an ad campaign for a musician's project or something, we usually probably just duplicate it into a dark post. It would be run as an ad through their account. But the sparking and scaling those already-on-the-feed posts are good mostly for like low-hanging fruit engagement, potentially helping a post further go viral and then use it as more of a brand awareness play. You can link it out to something, but it won't have the same—like, as you know, 'cause you run ads—it won't have the same customization features as you would if you did like a proper new ad set, dark post on the account.

But I agree, I mean they definitely overcomplicate it. I wish it was a little bit more customizable because of that. But yeah, you can spark anything.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Okay. Last kind of like technical geeky question: do you think that there's a correlation between, if you show that you're willing to spend money on ads, are they going to give you the same amount of boost organically in your social posts?

Natasha: Don't even have to finish the question. Yes. This is a really interesting topic, which I hate because it is so grimy of the platforms to do this. But for example, we're about to start working with a really, really large DJ from Europe on the agency side, and he is really struggling to understand why his posts aren't doing nearly as well as they were when they were running ads and organically, right?

And immediately I was like, well, did you stop running ads? Did you disconnect your Business Manager? What did you do? And they were like, "Yeah, we stopped running ads like five months ago." And then our organic views tanked, even though we weren't running ads on all of our posts. And that's it, right?

The platforms reward you for running ads—not just on the post that you're doing ads for—but also on the organic ones because it's kind of like playing the game again. But if you disconnect your ad account or you stop running ads after spending money on it, you will see a drop in engagement organically. And it's not fair and I don't like it. But it is one of those things that has a very clear correlation. It sucks.

So my recommendation is: if you don't have the budget to be running legitimate ads—you know, minimum recommendation is usually like $1,000 per month on a campaign of some kind at minimum—then at least have one post per month that you are running an ad on. And it can be like a cheap $5 a day or something like that, just so that you're appeasing the algorithm gods and you're saying, "I spend money with you guys, take care of me." That, we have seen, has helped organic go back up and just show that we're spending a little bit with you guys, so be nice to us.

I've also seen the difference of—from a personal account switching into a business account—that also has a drop unless you start spending money. So if you have a personal account as a musician, you are going to get natural organic views, like in a good way. As soon as you switch into a business account, there is the backend expectation that you're a business now. So you have to spend money if you want to get views.

It's just like when Facebook, several, several years ago, was like, "Oh, Facebook fan pages, you're only going to start getting 10% of your visibility unless you spend money on ads." And everyone was pissed, right? Because it's super unfair. Everyone worked so hard to get all these likes, and now 10% of your audience gets to see it. So that's just—it’s frustrating. But yes, it's a huge correlation.

Michael: Good to know. That is very helpful. Well, Natasha, this has been very helpful—both, like I mentioned, on a personal front and for our artists. So thank you for taking the time and space to share a little bit about what's working right now and about some of these waves that you're noticing. And for anyone here who is interested in connecting more or learning a little bit more about if they might be a good fit for the agency work, what's the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Natasha: Yeah. So, byaustere.com — B-Y-A-U-S-T-E-R-E.com — that's our website, Austere. We're also just @austere on Instagram if you want to find us. You can book a call directly through there. We also have our courses, ebooks, resources, and a coaching program called Artist House, which is artisthousekey.com — that's our other business for kind of allowing musicians to have resources at a much smaller fraction of the cost of what an agency service looks like.

So we serve both sides. But yeah, you can find us on both sides. And I really appreciate you having me on here. This was super fun.

Michael: Yeah, it absolutely was. And like always, we'll put out the links in the show notes for easy access. And Natasha, thanks for being awesome.

Natasha: Awesome. Take care.

Michael: Yeah.

Natasha: Alright.