7 Ways to Weaponize Comment Sections to Grow Your Music for FREE

If you're an indie artist on a budget, there's a 99.999 repeating percent chance that you're not using social media comment sections to their fullest extent, baby. Okay, tell me more. They are insanely powerful. They're way more than just little engagement metrics. They're more than fire emoji containers. They're not just your little personal compliment boxes. All right. They can give us priceless, priceless information. What else can we use them for, Henry? I'm so glad you asked. Let's go. We have seven unique ways that we're gonna tell you about how you can use them. And all of them fall into one of three primary goals that we want you guys to be thinking about as we go through them. They're gonna be signals, okay? They're gonna give you signals that tell you what's working and what's not working. They're gonna help with your distribution. This is getting your message, your content, your music in front of brand new audiences, and then they're going to convert the conversion. We're turning the new audiences into our most diehard fans, right? This is how if you're thinking about it with that framework, you're gonna get the most out of this episode.

By the way, this is all how much does this cost? It's absolutely fucking free. Let's go. Zero dollars. No budget necessary. I have never paid to leave a comment. So this is if you're on a budget, like this is one way you can absolutely maximize. So I think Let's get into it. without any further ado. Let's go. Number one, using comments as a performance dashboard. Okay, tell me more. You ready for this? I'm I'm on the edge of my seat, Henry. I can tell. So we're not just looking at how many comments we got on a post, we're judging the quality of the comments. So wait, not all comments are created equal. Not all comments are created equal. That is correct. Hey, wow. A fire emoji is a low quality comment. This is hard. Uh, nice job. I'm just trying to think of like low quality, you know what I mean? Nice job.

We've seen them all. We have. I mean? Uh, send me this post. I fucking hate that one. Okay. That's just the bots, spam. That like should be counted as a negative comment. So can you maybe use your imagination and think of some high quality comments that we might be looking for here. Yeah, I mean, I just think anything as far as like this song changed my life, or I love this specific lyric of the song. Changed my life. Very high quality comments. I listened to this, I listened to this song after I broke up with my girlfriend, that bitch. Like, I don't know, right? No, those are high quality for sure. Just some More detailed, like something that actually made an impact on them. Like it sparks some sort of actual emotion. Like for me, music's all about creating feelings, right? So if they're gonna tell you what they felt when they heard a song, right? Or you know, they pick a part of the song that obviously meant something to them, like that is the high quality comment. Quoting a lyric. If they say a lyric from the song, like that part, I love this line, or if it's the whole comment is literally just the lyric, that's huge information that that part of the song, you know, could be something valuable, or that they're like paying attention and really listening through the whole thing. Another one, like tagging friends, right?

That's one of my favorites. If someone just tags their buddy in a comment, like they went out of their way to make sure that their friend also saw this post, high quality comments. So, content that gets more of these high quality comments, these are better posts. You can have 50 fire emojis, it's not as good as three of these high quality examples that we said. So, yeah, and and I feel like something that music marketers talk a lot about is like velocity of engagement, right? Like how quickly is the engagement happening. So it's not our first. Yeah, like it's not just a matter of like the quality of the comments, that's huge for sure, but it is something to consider as far as like how quickly are we getting comments per number of views, right? Like, so some of those engagement ratios, I feel like are also a good metrics, you know, to look at. Again, we don't want to just be looking at the comment section as this whole episode is gonna dive into. It's not just a metric type of, you know, uh uh equation, but these are types of things to look for, right? It's like how many comments are we getting per number of views, per number of likes, et cetera, right?

10 comments in 10 minutes beats 30 comments in two days. Absolutely, you know what I mean? Another one is thread depth, like how deep are these threads in your comment sections going. You've all seen like viral posts will have a comment and then someone replies, and then someone else replies, and then the original guy replies, and these whole like conversations are starting. Sometimes they're arguments, sometimes that everyone agrees on a point, sometimes people are sharing stories. There's whole sub conversations happening. That's when you know you're winning. That's a sign of a quality post. When you got people, I mean, I always go back to Lil Man Jay, bro. Like he's one of the most controversial figures on the internet still. Yes, right. At first, he was being criticized and loved and hated for he's the white little baby, yeah, right? Now he makes country music. People are of course, of course, hating on the fact that he code switched and like all sorts. Code switched is crazy. All sorts of accusations, right? The dude's from South Carolina.

Like, what do we really think was gonna happen? All roads led to country eventually. Exactly. And he makes fire ass country music. I fucking love Lil Man Jay. He's a great artist. And so, but there's just a lot of people going back and forth in the comment section. Um, and so yeah, man, if you can have that, like if you see a comment that has like 50 replies or something, get involved, by the way. Like get involved in that and try and you know put some fuel on that thread fire, you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. And a quick bonus tip to wrap up number one. Oh, bonus tip. We got bonus tips. This early? This early. Oh man, this is a this is a gem. You guys can be screenshotting all of these high quality comments. I don't recommend screenshotting the fire emojis. Screenshot them, put them in a folder. Now you have a database that you can research. This can help dictate, you know, how you can make better quality content that's performing better. That's what this is all about. For sure. I just think, again, there's a lot of different ways that we can just use basic organization, you know, like to help us further our to help us further our careers. Uh, this is an easy one for sure.

Screenshots. All right. Well, moving on to number two. We're talking about you guys are always trying to figure out ideas of what type of content to make. The fuck am I supposed to post, Henry? What do I post to promote my music? Hello, like, there's a bunch of ideas in your comment section. The comment section is a gold mine. Gold mine when it comes to ideation around what to post next. For so many reasons. Right. So, like, number one is just a comment comes in, you look at it, and you then try and come up with a video based around whatever's being said in the comment section, right? Whether it's again how that song made them feel, maybe use the you know, feeling or emotion that someone commented about as an on-screen title text hook for the next video that you post. Maybe they asked, you know, what inspired this, or like who hurt you or something. You can kind of get into telling a story about the song that way, you know. what I mean? Because they obviously have interest in whatever it is that they're asking about. There it is. Uh, but then the most basic one is just use the fucking in-app tools that leverage the comment section where you can literally reply to a comment with a video. Oh, reply to comment with video is so undervalued.

We've all seen those those types of videos, right? It's a Hack. The comment is on the screen in the in the person's video. And what does the brain do? It immediately reads the comment. So you want to know why the comment is the what's the context. Yes. Why is this person talking about whatever it is that they're talking about? What are they responding to? What motivated or fueled this video to be made in the first place, right? And then the bonus tip of this is they go back and look at the fucking original video. Go back to the original. They want to know the whole context at that point. They're they're intrigued. They're curious about like how did this all come to be? And you can reply to a comment on that video and reply to a comment on that video, and then you have a whole chain where people can just go back in time and keep clicking the comments. Oh, the rabbit holes I've gone down on TikTok of like video with a comment was actually just another video with a comment. That was another video. It felt like inception, like a dream within a dream within a dream. Like it was fucking insane.

I do not see artists using that enough, especially the reply to comment with a video. We haven't done it. for shit. We suck. And we're sorry, and we're gonna do better. But guys, by the way, I I hope you guys know at this point. Anyone that's watched any of our content up to this point, you know that we make this type of content, especially these types of episodes, for reminders for ourselves. This is all very we're secretly very selfish people. We bring you free value all day that we hope benefits you, but it's secretly all for us. We rewatch these episodes just to start doing the things that we say need to be done. Continue. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much number two. Like, I would recommend that you guys, you know, try and pick like five to ten of these a day, you know, especially if you're seeing like some of the same comments repeated. That's a huge signal that you need to be probably making some content around that thing. Yeah, for sure. Again, I just think like using the information that's presented in there to not only like this is it's number one for sure for like content ideation, but I mean, going back to the whole like, you know, screenshotting shit, like it can also just fuel your like identity as an artist, right? Like there might be comments that say, like, this reminds me of XYZ artist, you know, from back in 2015, whatever, right?

Like, so you can pull from some of that shit to then again, maybe use on-screen title text of like if XYZ artist, you know, made a country song in 2026 or whatever, right? So you can really like just think deep about this thing. Like, you know, use your creativity. Like, y'all are so fucking creative with the music. Like, use it with the content or the uh comment section mining, bro. Like it just there's so much free information that we just are ignoring every day. Absolutely. So moving on to number three, we're talking about finding the moments. Oh, all right, all right. In our songs, we've all heard the advice that you know there's maybe a line that stands out as like the hook of your song and that works the best to start your posts off with that line of the song. Maybe it's the third line of the second verse, maybe it's the last line of the chorus. We don't know what it is. So we end up making a piece of content starting with every single piece, right? To figure that out. Sometimes they just tell you what the best part is in the comments. Bro, the amount of times that I've like, you know, watched a video from one of my favorite artists, go in the comment section, people are quoting a certain lyric, right?

And I just thought about this recently, and you know, we were talking about it. It's like oftentimes that lyric is not at the beginning of the video, right? So what we're basically suggesting, like an easy way to implement this, is if people are consistently commenting a certain lyric or a certain part even of the song, like sonically, even try to start the video with it. Start the video with that. Because if that's what connected and resonated with people the most. Make 10 more pieces of content starting with that moment. Yes, because obviously your super fans are people that like gave the video enough of a chance to get to that part of the video. Great, right? They commented, it was on it was later on in the video, awesome. But what if it was at the beginning, bro? Think of the discovery. The new people we can reach and connect with. That's sweet, sweet retention. Yeah, because we started with something that immediately was the thing that was gonna resonate with the most amount of people. You got them on the hook. Yeah, for sure. Something I like to do, you know, as far as you know, using the um comment section is I like the comment section to be the A and R, bro.

I like for people to use it as like decision making, A/B testing uh unreleased music, bro. Which of these should I release next? Yeah, which version even. Let's say you want to test like different production styles for one song. Do you like this one with the clap or this one with the snare? I mean, maybe not that granular, but maybe I mean um just get get them in it. Also, gets them engaged, it makes them feel a part of the creative process, dude. So it's like which cover art should I do you like win, win, win, bro. Like, there's so many different benefits to doing this. Um, it's gonna like guarantee that when you do finally release, you know, said piece of art, it's probably going to do better. It made your community feel a part of the equation, and it drove engagement. Yes, it drove comments, like it was an automatic like cheat code to just getting more comments, which we know is what the algorithms look for, at least to some degree, to push your shit out to more people. How many wins do you need in one single tip? If you guys haven't liked the video and commented and subscribed to the channel by now, I don't know how to help you.

Oh my god, I love how you're gonna sneak that into everything. Gotta try it. Um, but yeah, all right. So, so yeah, what about finding the moment? Anything else? Going back to what you said before about like finding information that can relate to you know your brand and your identity, yeah. How you could be thinking about yourself and your artistry as a whole. People will, you know, point out the parts of the song they like or the moments or the vibes or the feelings, you know, whether it is heartbreak or turn up or just goofy or whatever it is. Yeah. And you you can still be finding out, you know, the emotions and the vibes that are driving your music, and you can use this in all of your future stuff to really like lock in, you know. What is your story here? It's all about we haven't said self-awareness this episode yet. Um put it up there. I'm going to put it somewhere on the screen right here. Put it on Henry's side. It's secretly always up here in the corner. You just don't know until our editor zooms out. We've told our editor to include it in every edit just in case he needs to slide it down. It's in the template at this point. So yeah, there's so many ways we can uh use comment sections, Ben, but these have all been the signals.

I didn't think about it. I didn't think about it for just like what other music should I make. Yeah. What's the vibe of my whole shit that I got going on? Yeah, because again, clearly you need to make music for yourself. We get it. This is therapy for you guys. This is you getting, you know, your you know, artistry out to the world the way you want it to be. But you can get inspired by your fans. Like there's nothing, there's no rules against like, wow, I got an idea for you know the next album from a comment, right? Like, let's they might also just make you realize something that was right in front of you all along, you just didn't notice it because we're so close to the art sometimes. That's like the biggest theme I think I want to drive home with this whole comment section concept that we're that we're you know hitting at. Standing too close to the elephant? Yeah, what standing too when you're standing right next to an elephant, you don't see the the big picture. You gotta back away from the elephant Oh yeah. Of course, yeah. You haven't heard that. you guys have dropped a comment if you've heard of the phrase like standing too close to the elephant. Drop elephant emojis in the comments, no. Elephant emojis would make me feel way better.

But yes, uh, I think we were too close to it sometimes. Yeah. Um, and again, that goes for any business owner, really. And like you guys are business owners, so sometimes you're just too close to the product, especially in art, man. Yeah, because it's very emotional, personal. Pouring your heart out. And then when it comes time to introduce the business to the art, we need to be thinking about it, you know, and it's kind of a different mindset. And I have complete empathy for you for having to try and like switch brains and how do I package this now and market this in a way that's digestible to a consumer. I just think the the disclaimer is like don't don't do something for the sake of that if it doesn't sit right with you, though. Yes. I think people hear us sometimes and hear other like you know, podcasters or you know, whatever talking heads uh speak on these types of things, and it's like I want to make sure y'all know where we're at with it. And uh hopefully, you know, I'm I'm speaking for both of us. It's like think about these things and do them if you fucking want to do them. You know, it's like don't just make an a song about heartbreak because you saw the comment if you didn't want to make a fucking song about heartbreak. But if you ever thought about making a song about heartbreak, and the comment section is saying how much they like, you know, are going through a you know breakup right now and how this just be open.

Yeah, you know what I mean? Just think about it a little bit. And yeah, the more, you know, don't compromise your art. We're never saying to do that, but the more you can listen to your fans and what they want, as long as you're still happy with it fitting in your artistic vision, give the people what they want to some degree. They're guaranteed to like it because they asked for it. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's just gonna do better. So yeah, all of these, you know, first three have been signals, right? We're getting signals about what's working, what's not working. I love the signals, by the way. Signals. God, because we we always gotta try and figure out what's fucking working, man. We just need What do we do next? Like, we don't know what we're supposed to do. Smoke signals. This is Somebody give me a sign. So hopefully you're taking all these signals and you're making better content that is getting distributed to more people, right? We're reaching new audiences, discovery, growth is happening. But our next tip is also related to distribution. We're gonna flip the personal comment section on its head, and we're gonna go to some other comment sections. So we're going into other comment sections for artists similar to you, but not just artists, you know, producers, um, label people, but not just even anyone in the music industry, culture pages, theme pages.

We need to be always thinking about what are our interests outside of music? What kind of scenes does our music fit into? And we need to be going to these pages and we need to be leaving comments that people can stumble upon you, see that you're an artist. Maybe you have your music pinned at the top, they hear a song, they fall in love. It's all very natural. We know the best way for people to find new artists. They don't want to be sold to, right? They want to feel like they discovered you on their own. Yeah. So if you're putting your music and your face and your profile in places where your potential listeners are, you're giving yourself the best chance for those people to find you. Let's let's all be honest with ourselves. I mean, the amount of times where someone replies to one of our comments, what do you do? You click on their fucking profile, you check them out. You're gonna check them out. You're gonna be a little curious. You're gonna creep a little bit, right? What's the vibe of this guy? I mean, seems tapped in. Yeah, like that comment was so great. I have to check this out. Yes. Or it was so weird. I gotta go check it out. Yes.

Um, so that's that's what we're shooting for here, right? Is like be a part of the conversation. You know what people are doing on social media. They're creeping around, right? If your comment hit in any sort of type of way, um, and maybe we can get into like psychology. I was gonna say, like, what kind of comments should we be leaving, right? To get the most ROI on this uh activity, right? Um, but yeah, they're gonna go check you out. And to your point, that's where having your own content that's good and your own social media profiles that are set up properly with good bios and making sure everyone understands very quickly you're a fucking artist and it's the kind of music you make, and this is your vibe, right? Having your portfolio and resume all all crystal clear on on your profiles. Um, yeah, that that's where I think it can really start to work. So what kinds of comments? Let me get into some advanced tactics here. We need the we need the like what is it? The the 301 level course, maybe the 401 is this is high level. This is master's degree. What we're gonna do. I'm giving y'all homework right now. Fine. why'd you have to well some people like homework?

Okay, this is some people don't, some people don't. This is supposed to change their lives. Okay, well, maybe phrase it a little different. If homework's gonna change your life, would you do homework? I'd I'd I liked homework as a kid. I was a fucking nerd. Now you're weird, you're the weird one. Anyway, check this out. We're gonna find at least at least 10 pages. Okay. We're gonna turn on post notifications, hit that bell icon, hit the bell icon, and make one more time podcast, by the way. Uh one of the one more time.fm, one of those pages that you turn the post notifications on. Let's go. Just because we're bringing you guys free value all the time. So let's go. We uh wanna be early, right? We all know that the highest comments and comment sections typically come pretty early. Yep, or the good ones. As soon as you can, as soon as you get the notification on your phone that one of these pages has posted something, we're gonna go to it and we're gonna leave one of three different types of comments. These are the types of comments that I've noticed always get the most likes and are the highest up. And hey, I'll give us the best discovery. I'm gonna just say it. Henry is known to be a top comment. I do the witty one, so I'll say witty comments. Well, okay, just get just get into three.

I just want to give you props. Thank you. You're known to be pinned comment guy, top liked comment guy. I mean, it's like I'll just stumble on a random page and Henry will just be there somehow. I'm like, when the fuck did he even see this? I get lucky sometimes. Oh yeah, yeah. No, come on. But so yeah, the the three times. If you think about it in this framework, the three types of comments, they're either going to be witty, like I said, something funny or clever that people get a chuckle out of and they think is you know cool. They're going to be helpful, something that maybe adds some context, adds something additional that is helpful, or they're gonna be relatable. Yeah, the relatable ones are big too. They say something that everyone's like, oh yeah, me too. You know what I mean? Those obviously. Yeah, yeah. Uh I can't. I was thinking that's what I just thought. You thought that too. I said that to Henry yesterday. There's people like me out there. Oh my god, I feel so seen. So anytime you see these pages post, we're gonna try and leave a helpful, a witty, or a relatable comment. Yes.

And like, as much as you guys are doom scrolling all day, just imagine if you took 15 minutes a day to do this instead of scrolling mindlessly for an hour for something that might change your life. Absolutely. I think it's such an easy exercise. Yeah, for sure. Don't kill yourself over this, right? Like, and and don't be afraid, like it's really tough to quantify this. It is, you know, it's gonna be hard to see exactly. Yeah, but just no, it's just one of those that You gotta have faith, okay? Like, I promise, some things you just gotta understand are going to work to your benefit, right? The algorithms are gonna, or the the platforms are gonna like that you're engaging. That's facts. You're going to find someone eventually who's going to convert to a fan. And that one fan could change the whole trajectory of shit, right? So, like, just think about it in really small bites. Like, don't think that this is gonna have some massive influx of of you know, fans and customers immediately. Like, it's a I mean, we need to be thinking one fan at a time, regardless. Yes, you know what I mean?

Absolutely. Because that really is what it is. Yeah, for sure. So, what else? Anything else on that one? We've distributed. Yeah, you're feeling good. It's time to start converting. Oh, hold on. One thing I want to make sure. Sure. Don't fucking spam your song. Don't like, don't be fucking annoying. Check out my song never works. No, just don't do it. Just don't do it. Just don't. Sorry. I just like want to make sure, like, clearly, that doesn't fit in any of the three. I want to make just that blatantly obvious. That's a blanket statement. Yeah, like promoting your song is not helpful, relatable, or witty. Just dropping my new single. No one gives a fuck. Yeah. Let me take a moment to interrupt this episode and tell you about our friends over at DistroKid. DistroKid is easily the best DIY distributor on the marketplace. Let me tell you why. It's only $23 a year. That's less than two bucks a month for you to upload unlimited music to all of your favorite streaming platforms on the planet. It's so easy that it takes me like five minutes per upload, and that's when I'm multitasking dealing with my two year old son. Hands down, my favorite part about DistroKid is how easy it is to add credits to an upload.

I don't know what distributor you're using, but with DistroKid, it's super easy. You can put the artist, the producer, the songwriter. I'm pretty sure you could put like the junior associate engineer of a song. And me, I I wanna know who's on the record. And if you sign up using this link, you're gonna get 30% off an already insanely low price, and you can finally start adding your collaborators because they are checking. They will notice when their name's there and they will thank you for doing it. Let's get back to the episode. What do you think? Okay. We need to start converting these, all these new people that we're we've now reached. So many people now. How do we turn them into fans? Let's get it. So number five is exchanging value for comments. Okay. So I think you know what I'm talking about. We've used like a tool called ManyChat. Yep. but this can also be done manually as well. Yeah, because we did kind of start off with like this is all free. And maybe like probably even put it in the thumbnail. I'm not sure yet. So sorry, ManyChat's not free. Surprise. Actually, I think it is free up to like a thousand contacts. Okay, maybe it is.

We're gonna run with it. Yeah. Um, fact check us if that's not true. But to his point, you can do this manually. So just so for everyone who's unclear, if you haven't heard of ManyChat, I feel like a lot of people have by now, but that's what you see when someone's like, comment OMT and we'll send you the link to the episode, right? So it's that like take an action in the comment section, and then you're going to DM them some uh level of value. And how does what does that value look like for an artist? I mean, I think it could be a few different things, right? I think number one obviously is like unreleased music, right? Or release music. You know, you post a piece of content, and it's just a matter of like making it a little bit easier on them to get sent the exact link because maybe like you have a link tree, and then they have to click that and they have to click another link, right? So maybe it's just making the whole process simpler. Uh so yeah, comment, you know, song and I'll DM you, you know, a link to my unreleased or you know, my newest song, right? I think there's ways to do this from like a getting them more like engaged in the creative process, like, you know, comment cover art, and I'll DM you, you know, three different cover arts that I'm you know thinking about for my new song, whatever.

Behind the scenes footage, like vlogs, um, and it be honest with yourselves and ask what you know, you know you should should know your audience best. Like, what do you think they want? What can we give them? You know, yeah, is it like early music? Is it access, you know, comment, da-da-da, and I'll I'll just fucking DM you and talk to you, you know, and say what I'll I'll video message you, whatever. Like, I'll, you know, just offering uh something that's low lift, you know, you don't have to like spend all day doing this. I think you'd be surprised. And it encourages comments, it gets people involved, deepens relationships, and it can be done manually if you don't want the likes of a ManyChat. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, also think outside the box, like you know you better than we do, right? So like think about what's something cool that you can offer, yeah, right? Like maybe it's a meetup at a bar in your local city. Yeah. Like, I'll DM you the you know, location and the time that we're gonna meet up. I I don't know, right?

Like, whatever it is that you want to do and that you're comfortable, um, you know, it's the value that you're comfortable exchanging, like do it, right? Because I mean, again, even if it starts off as fucking one person, five people, a lot of people get so caught up in the oh god, what if a thousand people don't want my fucking new unreleased song? So be it. Like, we gotta build. This is like the music game that I'm realizing, bro. Like the biggest thing I'm learning after 250 plus episodes is like this is a momentum game. Absolutely. You guys have to be like capturing attention and then building momentum off of it, right? Um, because we've all seen it where someone like builds a ton of momentum and then they fall off, and it's because they got stagnant and because they didn't ghost. They didn't just like keep trying to build off of what they had, you know, the foundation that they laid. So to some degree, you gotta restart. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, it sucks, to be honest. So don't be don't be in that in that fucking boat. Yep. So that was bribery. Sorry, uh comment for value.

Moving on to number six. Number six. How do you think of that shit? Number six is we're gonna control the narrative of our content via things like starter comments, like commenting on your own post, right when you post, and pinning comments, pinning your own comments, maybe pinning fan comments. Do you know? what I'm talking about? are we talking like are we trying to engineer psychology basically around psychology engineering? Okay, kind of. Okay, so like again, so there's a few ways like you're saying to do it. Yes. You can do it yourself. Yes, right. So it's literally to your point, pin comment. If you have a heartbreak song, maybe you pin a comment like, who's the name of the person that broke your heart? You know, and people automatically understand the vibe of this song, right? Okay, so so you can do it. What other ways can we accomplish this? We hopefully, you know, if you have fans that are tapped in and someone leaves like one of those golden comments, as Nic D called it, you know, that that is right in line with the narrative that you're trying to push, then you can pin a fan's comment. Yeah.

Um, and it gets darker than that, even I mean the Stafford episode. Okay, yeah. You know where I'm going with this. Oh my God. He talked about, you know, making alt accounts um and even like getting the conversation started from an alt account, so it even looks like it was someone else. He took it kind of ethically, I don't know how I feel about it. It's a little I feel great about it. It's a little gray. no, we're out here doing whatever the fuck we have to do, Henry, to build our music careers. Fuck that. There's no, you know, there's no line I won't cross. to help you guys build a successful career in music. You guys can start Instagram. I don't think it's illegal. You can start like, you know, a pages. Is it actually? I don't know. We're not lawyers. We didn't talk to our lawyer before this episode. We should have. Labels are doing this though. Like other people are doing this. They're making these pages and they're getting in comment sections intentionally and um leaving comments that are just in the vibe, and they get people. You ever seen like a top comment? And maybe if it's not even exactly in line with what your first reaction was to the post, it kind of like re-it reframes your you kind of like are convinced, like, oh, dude, brainwashed. That's actually kind of is what it is about.

Now I now I get the vibe of the post. You're setting the tone of the post. For sure. No, I I think again, music, like artistry is all about storyline. Yes. Like what you're doing with the music and with your own content, is it should be at least all storytelling, right? Like, what is the message? Like, what the fuck should anyone think when they hear your music, when they see your video, right? So this is just in the comment. Oh, this is all about comments section. This is just how do we accomplish this storytelling narrative that we're trying to get across? How do we do it within the framework of the comment section? Right. Because it is another touch point. You know, you can do it in the caption, you can do it in the video, you can do it in the lyrics, you can do it in all the different other places. But like, don't sleep on the fucking comment section. That's why I was so excited to do this episode. Because I was like, holy shit. It's a hack. The comment section is a fucking gold mine of like just ways to crack the code of this music shit, man. I want to shout out KELS too.

Like, she every time she posts, just go to any post. Like, you can even turn on post notifications and see as soon as she posts, she's already commented on her own post like four times. Yeah. So she's giving herself like four chances, even for any of those. A narrative to work to be the most, yeah. Yeah, they're all in line with the song. They all make sense. One might be helpful, one might be relatable, one might be witty. I don't know. And then each one has a chance to, you know, for the someone's gonna read all of them, probably, but one might be the most liked, and then even start a you know, a thread that gets deep, and now there's conversations started. So like I think ego's getting in the way of a lot of people, you know. I mean, we've posted something and no one commented anything, and I've commented twice, some hashtags, and like what do y'all think about dinner? And no one gives a fuck and no one says anything. But we move on, you know? Yeah, we move on. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we we have to be honest about this. It's embarrassing to say that that's what's happened, but uh we're at least we're testing, we're trying, we're moving forward. That's true. We're not just doing nothing. All right, cool. So we're controlling the narrative. Yes.

That's huge, man. I think that's massive. And bro, the alt accounts you can literally get like real, you can go like real fun with it, man. Dude, the labels have interns making tons of them. Yeah, like I mean, you know, you can make them hot girls, you can make them go to whatever university you want, you can say um, you know, Jesus love whatever it is that you want. You could put your artist name's biggest fan. Could be the username. It's a little more obvious that you're uh, you know, seeding this. I don't know. But my point being is like, dude, I mean, the shit could work, man. Shit runs deep. Like Stafford said it was crushing. Yeah, it was working. He said it was really working. So I would I trust hey, in Stafford we trust. That's all I'm gonna say. Who else is keeping it as real with you guys? As the one more time podcast. That's true. Guys, if you haven't liked this video, left a comment in our comment section so that we can engineer. Bro, if we don't have the most comments we've ever had on this YouTube video, I'll be pissed. Please leave a comment.

Dude. we can get our signals. I'm creating 3,000 alt accounts and spamming our YouTube comments. I'm only doing elephant emojis to back up my point from earlier. Oh, that's funny. Moving on to number seven. Okay. This is super underrated. Something I think a lot of people don't think about. Let's go. Actually, just turning commenters into not only community, but sometimes collaborators as well. So ending up in the DMs a lot, right? We're taking we're we're replying, first of all, reply to every comment. Yeah. Until you literally don't have the time to do that. Yeah. Like there's no reason not to. Unless it's maybe a fire emoji. You don't have to, you know. Yeah. And every genuine, you know, maybe you should respond with an elephant. Medium quality. Just spam elephants everywhere. Respond to every comment. But taking this into the DMs, yeah. And deepening. Let's start getting these relationships going. I just I just think like we all know the top five, 10 usernames that we see the most in our comment section. I think like hopefully you do.

Yeah, hopefully you do. If you don't, you know, go find out who those people are. And you know, we talked about like the folder of like screenshots of comments. Like build a fucking Excel sheet or a Google sheet, whatever you have, right? Use an iPhone note. I don't give a fuck. And make a list. Make a Instagram group with everyone. Yeah, talk to your close friends. There's so many things Exactly. I would just say like identify them. First of all, first step, identify them. Who the hell are they? Yes. Second step, the one on one, you know, the one on one communication with them, right? Send them a DM, just thanking them for always, you know, engaging with your content and supporting you and like ask them questions, like be genuinely curious in like who they are. Because at the end of the day, guys, these people are the ones that are literally going to fund your career. These are the people who are going to tell other people about you and your artistry. They're the ones that are gonna be the foundation of it all, right? Like, there's a reason why artists, when they get to a certain level, thank their day ones and they always refer to their day ones. Like that's not like a cliche thing.

Like that's a legitimate, like artists that make it do remember their day ones. And it's because they took this approach. And they treated them well. Exactly. It's not because they're just saying it to say it. It's like I know artists that have, you know, they've got hundreds of thousands of monthlies, hundreds of thousands of followers across socials. And I've talked to them about like, hey, who are your first like five real fans? Like they know it. John, Sally, Susan, whatever the fuck, right? Like not people that are their friends, no, their managers or you know the ones that people just legitimately became fans because they discovered their music. Exactly. People, man, you gotta nurture these relationships. It's so easy to do by just being a human. Take five minutes out of your day. Seriously, this stuff doesn't even take long. No. And it's free. Yeah. Don't worry about paid ads right now. Like eventually you probably will need to if you're getting serious. Check the episode on uh paid ads. We've got you'll throw a card up here. Throw a card up over there. Of one of many. I don't know, have to pick one.

We got several paid ads that we're talking about some really dope shit. Yeah. Uh but no it's so I think like you know it's the one to one thing. And then you know you kind of hinted at like the community aspect right you can put those people into a super group chat on on Instagram. You can add them to close friends. You can you know invite them into an exclusive Discord channel. Backstage passes if you're touring you can do local meetups with some of them if there's free shit. Yeah like any sort of you know the buzzword community building like it's getting overplayed but it's real. There's a reason it's overplayed it's real because it's the it's the world that we're living in now where you know artists can make a living off of a core community. They don't have to have you know fans and the tens and hundreds of thousands, right? Like they can really build with a smaller group of people, but you can only do that if you have a really like tight-knit community where the fans are also like building community amongst each other as well. Like there's nothing better than like finding another person that loves the same artist as you, bro. Isn't that just some like magical shit?

Yeah, like what's your favorite album? He said that. Yeah. I know that one's hard, but that's what I'm saying. What do you think he meant by no? Yeah, that was a metaphor for socialism. You know what I mean? Okay, I don't know what artists you're listening to. Anyways, yeah. I want to touch on the top of the collabs too, though. Oh, that's right. We can literally find collaborators this way as well. I mean, you guys have seen a viral post and you see some huge names, some big creators, uh, could be artists, could just be content creators, could be producers, could be label people. Um, anyone that you might want to like develop a relationship with, if they're leaving comments, you know, we also need to take those to the DMs to potentially turn them into something greater. We've all seen the like big artists' comments on smaller artist thing like fire, and the little smaller artist is like, oh my god, like I can't believe you. You know, we need we need to- I would love to or the fans will do it for you. And they'll be like, you guys gotta we so need a XYZ artist and ABC artist collab, and then boom. We've seen it where where people are doing this, they actually make the fucking collab happen.

Cause and if well, and then you you make a you respond to the comment with a video, you got more content. Yes, hey, look, I'm with that artist. Yes, yeah, and like that's again back to the the storyline. It's this the narrative, right? Like what what pieces are are in play here? Um, and yeah, I think it's huge. If you guys haven't learned anything, uh, man, you know, you're probably on the wrong channel. We're bringing you quality content. So just to recap, real quick, we have signals. We're getting all these signals from the comment section that we can use to tell us what's working. We're turning that into distribution, we're finding brand new audiences, we're growing, we're being discovered, and then we're turning these new audiences into our biggest fans. We're converting them into the people that are gonna fund our careers and help us achieve our wildest dreams, Ben. I just love how great the comment section is. I'm I'm so happy we did this episode. Go crazy in the comment section on this video. And until next time, we out of here. Bye-bye. Peace, y'all.