Taylor Swift's Former Manager Rips Apart My Band's Instagram - feat. Rick Barker
Rick, if you only had one minute to give music artists the best music market advice you possibly could, what would you say?
Rick Barker:Fall in love with Instagram and utilize its tools the best way possible in order to engage the relationship. The one thing I love about Instagram is it gives you the ability to not only be on a very active platform, but you could share video, you could share audio, you could message people in audio form, which I think enhances the speed at which relationships can be built. And there's also some really cool automation tools to make sure that no one gets left behind. Too often, I think artists are really trying to build a massive following without learning how to speak to the audience they already have. So what I would say is, let's learn how to speak to who we have, get some automation system set up in place, and then go balls to the wall to try to grow that thing as fast as you possibly can.
Andrew Southworth:Nice, man. That's an awesome answer. Rick's gonna be, diving through my band's Instagram account. We've been active for a while. It's a little embarrassing, especially having Rick take a look at.
Andrew Southworth:He's probably gonna rip me a new one. But, also, we're gonna set up some of these automation things that Rick's talking about, basically using me as the guinea pig. But first, kinda one question before we dive into that. How what do you think about Instagram compared to TikTok nowadays? Like, how do you envision those fitting into an artist's, social media presence?
Rick Barker:Yeah. I think Instagram so the way I look at it is TikTok, less attention. Instagram, a little bit more attention. Facebook, a little bit more attention. YouTube, a lot of attention.
Rick Barker:So basically, what I mean by that is fast and furious is what TikTok's looking for. A little bit longer you're gonna get away with when it comes to Instagram. A little bit longer, a little bit more patient, that listener that goes to Facebook. They're really not going to Facebook to be in a hurry. And YouTube Right.
Rick Barker:Right now is where they're coming to learn. It's where they're like, look. You've got my full undivided attention, so you have the ability to expand on your content. But when it comes to TikTok, short and sweet and to the point, Instagram for me, I prefer over TikTok. One, it stole a lot of the features that TikTok offers when they saw the success that it was happening.
Rick Barker:But I think with Instagram, we could also share music. We could also share reels. We could also do duets. There's a lot of the same features that we can do, but the people that go to Instagram seem to be a little less in a hurry and are more apt to really try to go further exploring the artist. Where TikTok, there's a lot of sounds that we're familiar with, and we couldn't tell you who the artists are.
Rick Barker:So that's why I tend to focus a little bit more heavy on Instagram because, one, I can go back and run ads to anyone who's engaged with any of my post on Instagram. Very inexpensive, as you know, being an expert in running ads. So that's kind of why I'll have I'll be present on TikTok. I'm going to be present and active on Instagram because I can message somebody. Anybody who's engaged with anything with the touch of a button, I can have a verbal conversation or at least start that verbal conversation on Instagram that I don't have the capacity to do that on TikTok, at least not yet.
Rick Barker:At the taping at the taping of this, technology changes so fast, but at the taping of this, if you interact, I can vocally say thank you and start a conversation, which I'll show you how to do here in just a little bit as we go through your band to start the process of building that relationship towards getting an email, towards leading them to a place where you can ultimately sell something. There we are.
Andrew Southworth:Project. We haven't released a song in about a year now. K. Very inactive music for a bit. We were never too heavy on social before.
Andrew Southworth:We had a lot of ads, and we were doing releasing music regularly. But this year, we were getting more music ready so we can get back new existing pipeline. But with that, I think one thing we really lacked in was a strong social media presence. Sure. That's kinda backstory, but, yeah.
Rick Barker:Well, I think the first thing we need to understand is why social media was created in the first place. Social media in the first place was a way for friends to stay connected. And then, of course, the marketers got a hold of it and ruined it, for everyone. And then the record companies went to their artists and said, hey. I know you hate being on social media.
Rick Barker:We'll take it over for you. And then the labels just started promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting. So it kinda turned a lot of people off in the beginning. It also created what I thought was a bad habit for artists because they felt, well, I only need to go there when I need to promote because that's all they were seeing. And they were like, well, I don't have anything to promote right now, so I'm not really active and I'm not really posting.
Rick Barker:So the worst thing you can do with any social media platform, with any weight loss program, with any relationship is on again, off again, on again, off again, on again, off again. It just doesn't work. The most successful things in life, no matter what it is, come from consistency. So what I like to teach artists is how can we be as consistent as possible with not feeling like it's taken away from your creative space and the other things that you love and you enjoy doing. So when I look at an Instagram page, the very first thing I look at is the bio.
Rick Barker:Because for me, most people will only come to your Instagram page at discovery the first time. Then we have to hope that we show up in their feed. Well, if we're not posting, how are we going to show up in their feed? And if we're not consistently posting and getting engaged with, the algorithm's not going to show just because I follow every waking moment. If they haven't posted in a while, Instagram is not gonna waste my feed.
Rick Barker:They're gonna show one of my other 7,500 followers that I follow. They're going to show me their content. So when someone discovers you, I want them immediately to understand what you're about. So what I read right now is a hard rock alternative metal band for Massachusetts. So if I'm into hard rock and alternative metal, this is pretty much a a good landing spot for me.
Rick Barker:If I love folk music or polka or harp instrumentalist, then I'm probably not going to spend that much time doing things here. Then what we have is free T shirts and then listen. So when they go into their Koji go ahead and click on that for me.
Andrew Southworth:Well, this is extra embarrassing. KojI got acquired and shut down.
Rick Barker:How recently?
Andrew Southworth:At January 31.
Rick Barker:Okay. I haven't swapped it out yet. But yeah.
Andrew Southworth:So this won't work? So this KojI is dead. I need to migrate this over to a Got it.
Rick Barker:So just it's a good point to make because there's a lot of people with what I like to call dead links. So, basically, you're sending them to a store that's closed. So what does that say about the potential person that you want to follow you? Are you worth one of their 7,500 followers if the very first thing you asked them to do was didn't work? No.
Rick Barker:They're moving on because they can go type in the hashtag heavy metal, hard rock, alternative metal, and find plenty of bands that are there, find plenty of bands, which is another reason why I don't like using hashtags and bios because you worked so hard to get them, and now you're sending them someplace else. So Yeah. One, we'll get that fixed. But all in all, not bad. Not bad for a bio.
Rick Barker:So then the next thing we wanna do is we wanna scroll down to your very first post. So if you roll over the top of that post, go ahead. You've had a 95, likes and 12 comments. Go ahead and open that post up for me. So this was May fifteenth of twenty twenty three.
Rick Barker:So, basically, coming up on a year. Wow. I guess this band's not together anymore. Now I'm gone. You see what I'm saying?
Rick Barker:I'm absolutely gone at this point. Their new song is out now. Well, shit. It's March 2024 at the taping of this. This band doesn't put out music at all, so why should I follow this band?
Rick Barker:Why should I waste my time with that? So first thing I would do is make sure that anything that comes up back out of that again real quick. Just hit the x. These top three posts have the ability to be pinned. Post, p I n n e d.
Rick Barker:This means at discovery, the very first three options that they get are things that you've chosen. I suggest that's not a bad post to have pinned because you're singing. It's telling something about the band. But make sure that they have a chance to hear you within those three. Should be your best stuff, should be stuff even if you have to take something from the bottom of your feed that's got a lot of social proof, go ahead and put that one up there.
Rick Barker:Even though the date may be off, they'll notice that. Well, it's a pinned post, so they don't expect it to be within the last couple days. But whatever on your platform highlights your best stuff. Even if it's a piece of merch, don't let that be the first thing because we're saying, hello, stranger. Welcome to my restaurant.
Rick Barker:Here's your bill. Because we're acting ask actually asking them to buy something before they've even built that relationship. So make sure that you clean up the top part of your real estate. Also too is over here, it says messages. So click your messages for me real quick.
Andrew Southworth:Oh, boy. I haven't looked at this in a while.
Rick Barker:Okay. So, basically Your music is trash. I like that. That's okay. That was a year ago.
Rick Barker:Yeah. You know what? That's funny. So you could even go back to this person. Go ahead.
Rick Barker:Click on him. Where can I listen to your music? You can find links to our music here. Well, I would think you were trash too. The mental hospital?
Rick Barker:Because they probably may have clicked on that. Well, it probably worked in twenty twenty two. Okay.
Andrew Southworth:The link was active then.
Rick Barker:So the last time so think about this for a second. The last time this person, he left the message, he got an automated response. Right?
Andrew Southworth:No. This was, I think, manual.
Rick Barker:I think I Okay. So then he comes back, the mental hospital, not sure why. This would have been a great way to start a conversation with this person. You know? To say, hey, Road to Mill.
Rick Barker:Thanks for checking out thanks for asking. Did you have a chance to check out my music? Most of the time, if you ask that question, they're gonna go, yeah. I thought your music was trash. I think something happened here because they because your music's not trash.
Rick Barker:I've heard it. So I think there might have been something that happened here, or they're just a dick. That happens too. Okay. So go to hospital and but Go to Rafael Vito Rufus.
Rick Barker:Let's go here. Rafael Vito. Nice work so far. It felt like listening to Lacuna Coil, and I miss old days from LC. Hey.
Rick Barker:Thank you so much. So you're a fan of Lacuna Coil? I am as well. Would you be interested to hearing some unreleased demos from our band? Why, yes.
Rick Barker:I would. Awesome. What's the best email so I can send them to make sure that you get them? And without hesitation, because you're talking to someone, you now are engaged in a conversation, they're going to give you their email. Now when you do this in voice, you see this little microphone button over here?
Rick Barker:That's how I do it. I do it because so go up and click Rafael's, profile real quick. Go up and view his profile. Okay. So, this account is private.
Rick Barker:Okay. A lot of times with bands, there's a follow back. So you could go ahead. You don't have to do this now, but you can go ahead and you can give them a follow back.
Andrew Southworth:Right.
Rick Barker:Because that's the most that's the easiest thing that you can do is this guy has said, hey. I would like to start this relationship with you. And on 12/17/2022, you were like, hey. Thank you so much. But you know what?
Rick Barker:Screw you. I don't need to follow you back. I'm the artist. That's a don't and that's where a lot of artists think. Well, I don't wanna follow everybody.
Rick Barker:No. You're getting the opportunity, Bert, courtesy of Instagram, to build relationships with 7,500 people. You don't have to keep following them. If they don't engage or they're not active, unfollow them. And if they ever ask, like, dude, you unfollowed me?
Rick Barker:Say, great. Yeah. I noticed you never share my post. You never comment. You know, the stuff that you share, I'm not a fan and I don't need them because you don't need everyone.
Andrew Southworth:There's a lot of artists who, they'll still you know, they'll they'll kinda get concerned if the ratio of followers to people they follow looks That
Rick Barker:was in the old days of Twitter. That was back a long time ago where it was like, you're the artist. You need to be up here, and the audience need to be down here. And it's like, alright. So you're up here, and people can hear your music for free, but you want the person that's down here to buy your shit.
Rick Barker:Come on. You know what I mean? It's like no. I'm gonna take as many followers as they're gonna let me have. But the mistake I don't make is thinking the followers equal fans because they don't.
Rick Barker:Right. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find 7,500 people that I enjoy their content that comes across my feed, that I want the ability to I you know, for for me and you as we coach artists, I like to follow my artists that are in my world so that I can keep up with what's happening. I like to follow people that make me smile. I like to follow people that make me laugh. I like to follow golf instructors.
Rick Barker:You know? I like to follow people that do cool stuff because then I can share that across my platform with my followers and not always be the person that has to create the content. That's another tool that not a lot of artists realize is that you don't always have to be the creator of the content for this to work. You can actually share other people's content, put your own thoughts on it, which I call remixing someone else's content. So there's, like, reshare is a great post to be able to do that.
Rick Barker:You give the person credits that, you know, hey. Thank you, Andrew Southworth. Great stuff. Share it with your audience. Why?
Rick Barker:Because you know your audience is going to enjoy it. I would get a ton of DMs, and it would I I felt bad because when someone starts a conversation with you, that's them starting a conversation with you. And if I went up to Andrew and I'm like, dude, I love your hoodie, And you don't say anything. How awkward was that?
Andrew Southworth:Yeah.
Rick Barker:So you want to acknowledge, hey, Rick. Thanks so much. You know what? Your DM's important to me. I get a ton of them, but I'll get back to you on that.
Rick Barker:And then you come back, but whatever your question is, go ahead and type it. They understand you're not there, but you could do it in a way that's not weird. So if you wanna go ahead and open up, your Instachamp account, I'm gonna walk you through how to set up what's called this automated DM. It's the very first thing people see when they DM you. And it is going to be repetitive, but it serves its purpose very well because it's, one, it's gonna allow you to acknowledge them, but it's also going to allow you to get them to your music in a real quick way.
Rick Barker:So inside is to champ, you have a couple different options. You've got DM keywords, a DM greeting, post comments, and a catch all. What I like to use is the DM greeting. That's the first thing that I set up. So go ahead and click the arrow button.
Rick Barker:That's continue. You could do this both for Facebook and Instagram. Cool. Go ahead and click out real quick.
Andrew Southworth:Oh, click out?
Rick Barker:Yeah. That's okay. Click out. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the DM greeting. So click the arrow button.
Rick Barker:Double click on save time when answering services. Double click.
Andrew Southworth:It's not
Rick Barker:do you
Andrew Southworth:have to click this add button here?
Rick Barker:Go to add, but what we're gonna see real quick, go ahead and hit add. Yeah. Go ahead and hit continue. All we're gonna put here is, say thanks.
Andrew Southworth:Okay.
Rick Barker:K? So it starts with one that they've created already. It says, thanks so much for reaching out, Little emoji. I get a lot of DMs, but yours is important to me, and I wanna get back to you ASAP. Okay?
Rick Barker:So that's the one that they came up with. What I want what I did in mine is mine says, hey. It's automated Rick. I even say that in mine. So mine reads as follows.
Rick Barker:Let me just open mine up real quick, and I'll read it to you. It says, hey. It's automated Rick. I get a lot of DMs, but yours is important to me. I will get back to you ASAP.
Rick Barker:If you have a question, you can go ahead and ask. Mhmm. So then I let them, if they want to, go ahead and ask a question. So thanks so much for reaching out. We're a band, so you're gonna put we.
Rick Barker:We get a lot of DMs, but yours is important to us. No. Instead of it saying I, we're gonna put we. Oh, that's great. Of I get a lot of DMs, gonna replace the I with we.
Rick Barker:But, we get a lot of DMs, but yours is important too. Instead of the word me, use us. And we will get back to you ASAP. And go ahead and add a message. That's the first one.
Rick Barker:Go ahead and add a message. Then the next message will read, in the meantime, if you haven't had a chance to check out our new song, whatever your new song is.
Andrew Southworth:I'm gonna say Claustrophobic. That's what I'm gonna say.
Rick Barker:Our news on Claustrophobic, click the button right below this and let us and let us know what you think. Now you're gonna stop there. So you're gonna go over here where it says send text on the left. Up here. Okay.
Rick Barker:Yeah. Send text. Click that. You're gonna put, link list. Go down and send a link
Andrew Southworth:list. Oh, okay.
Rick Barker:K? So now you're gonna go edit this link button, and then you're gonna listen here, and I do all caps. Okay. Yep. Listen here.
Rick Barker:Here. K. And then you're gonna just wherever the link is, you wanna send them, whether you wanna send them to a smart URL, a feature FM, whatever link you ultimately wanna send them. So go ahead and just put in a random link just so you'll see how it's gonna work for them.
Andrew Southworth:Tool for now as an example.
Rick Barker:Correct. Okay. So go ahead off to the side. Just okay. Now if you look over here on the right in the phone, this is how it's gonna look for them.
Rick Barker:Instead of a really long ass message, we broke it up. So if it's gonna be a long message, you could break it up. It's like, thanks thanks so much for reaching out. We get a lot of DMs. You're as important.
Rick Barker:In the meantime, then when you say listen here, that's actually gonna show up as a button. And when you click on it, it's gonna go to whatever that link is. They won't see the link. They'll just see the listen here, and now you've started this conversation with them. So then you're going to be notified inside your messages, and it's gonna say something like responded to.
Rick Barker:It'll say Rick Barker responded to comment. So whatever comment, if you go in later, we do deal it'll show you these are people that are responding to this. So then you had to go ahead to go there. So then you go back, and you're in your Messenger where I showed you earlier. So if we're back inside of Instagram, now you're gonna be able to go in and go ahead, go ahead and, just go ahead let's see.
Rick Barker:That's gonna I'm gonna go into I'm gonna do I'm gonna in I'm gonna message you right now real quick in real time. So then they're asking you, you just gave me in that message, it gave me a link to how do I hey. I wanna listen. You gave me three choices of things that I could say. So we wanna get rid of that.
Rick Barker:But here's so check out the voice. Click the voice. Yep. And it's like, hey. It's Rick.
Rick Barker:You know? Whatever I just said. So then you're gonna say, thanks so much for reaching out. We get a lot of DMs, but yours is important to us, and we'll get back to you ASAP. So, actually, what happened is you never, hit that save part.
Rick Barker:That's okay. Go ahead and click get updates.
Andrew Southworth:Get updates?
Rick Barker:Yep. And that would be you click get updates right below on that button. Mhmm. Okay. Because we're on mobile or because we're on desktop, it won't work.
Rick Barker:It only works on mobile. When I click that get updates, then what's gonna head, it's going to give me the opportunity to, at that point, listen here. So the way that it showed up on my phone was like this. Thanks for reaching out. We get a lot of DMs.
Rick Barker:In the meantime, if you haven't heard, and it says listen here, so then I would just click it. And it's obviously going to Google because that what you put in, but it would go right to wherever. So you just made it real easy for me to get to your music and hear your music off of our first date, off of our first relationship. So that's what's cool about having a DM catchall in there. So we go back to your DM greeting.
Rick Barker:Now we do comp post comments.
Andrew Southworth:Post comments.
Rick Barker:Yeah. Add. So we're gonna add, and we are going to, do if you want to do this for any post. So if you if you have a specific post that you would like to do this for, but it's only on Instagram, then you could only you would actually click just Instagram, and you could go pick the actual post you wanted. But we're gonna do all posts on Facebook and Instagram.
Rick Barker:We're gonna enter the keyword free.
Andrew Southworth:I see what you mean. Yeah. So if I were to do this, then I could
Rick Barker:Then it's gonna give you a specific Instagram post or I'll post whatever you want. So we're gonna do comment the keyword free. Enter your keyword. And a keyword free. Yeah.
Rick Barker:And it's a broad keyword by default. So if they put freed or freeze or whatever, it would catch it. So go ahead and hit continue. And then we're gonna go send links. Send links.
Rick Barker:And thanks for the comment. Here is the link. So we're you're over here. You just go edit. Thanks for the comment.
Rick Barker:Here is the link
Andrew Southworth:Oh, here is the link.
Rick Barker:To my music. I or you could say I mentioned in my poster, here's the link to whatever it is that you sent them to for the discount on my merch for the free music. So here's here's the link to my music. Now go down below where it says my website and Instagram. Just get rid of one of them.
Andrew Southworth:Gotcha.
Rick Barker:You can x out one of them. Got rid of it. Good. Now go to my website
Andrew Southworth:Mhmm.
Rick Barker:And put click here to listen. And then you would have the link to wherever it is, and immediately, they would be able to go in and get your music. Right. You can also use it as a way to send people to a specific landing page. So for example, we're utilizing this as a keyword right now.
Rick Barker:If you open up another chatbot and go into, if you go into in if you go into Instagram, just go to Instagram Mhmm. And go search Jordana Bryant or or just go to mine. Okay. Go ahead. Go go to mine real quick.
Rick Barker:Go back to me. Okay. Okay. So in this post, let's go to the one that says AI.
Andrew Southworth:Alright.
Rick Barker:K. Here he is. So this says it's a video. It's a great thing. It says, I'm hosting a free workshop on Tuesday.
Rick Barker:Comment the word tools for details and to reserve your spot. So comment the word tools. You would do it, but it won't open because, like I said, it's desktop. But once you do tools, it sends them to an actual landing page. So if you were building a community and it says on your website, you said, hey.
Rick Barker:Listen. I created this cool community. So search the artist Jordana, j o r d a n a.
Andrew Southworth:J o r d a n n a?
Rick Barker:And one at one end. Yeah. Jordana Bryant. B r y. Yeah.
Rick Barker:B r y. There we go. She should pop up. There you go. You hit her.
Rick Barker:Go ahead and touch on her real quick. Okay. So she has the Jordy's. So what she's able to do is if you play this, go to this video, this first one with her. Open it up, let's see if she's got it.
Rick Barker:When you become a member of the Jordi's today for free, you get a bunch of goodies. My journey, click the link in my bio to join now. Okay. Go out of the next one. Go to the next one and see what's there's another one where she's inviting people.
Rick Barker:Let's see. What she does is she tells them to go to the word Jordy, and it's sent to a landing page where we collect their email, their phone number, they create their YouTube. You could also do it for free music. If you're promoting, if you, you know, just launched a brand new YouTube, you could say comment the word YouTube. Now the reason that we're asking people to do these comments is because that shows engagement with the platform.
Rick Barker:Instead of just saying, here's a link to my YouTube, just comment the word YouTube, and I'll send you the video. You're seeing a lot more people do this now because they know that that we don't get as much engagement when we send them to your link as we do when a conversation takes place in the comments. Does that make sense? The the way
Andrew Southworth:I can imagine instantly that this would be useful is if you want them to go listen to your song, or let's say you wanted to join your mailing list. You wanna give them a free download to join your mailing list or something. You have to tell them to go to your link in bio. That shows first, they have to go to your profile, click your link, look at your list of links, click on the right link, and then now they're on the website. But if you were to just say, type the word free in the comments, then now they get a DM that has the link.
Andrew Southworth:So they don't have to go to your profile, click your link in bio, search for the link.
Rick Barker:And what's even better about that is it now doesn't have the same restrictions as, like, a ManyChat or another bot platform because you've engaged with them through Messenger. You don't have to wait for the same rules, and the same rules don't apply because it's gonna sit in your message feed because they physically messaged you through a comment. It wasn't that it came through an ad and they went into ManyChat and started the conversation, which says, hey. If they didn't engage with you in twenty four hours, you'd have to run another ad to try to get them to engage. It sits in your feed.
Rick Barker:You're able to go back up and follow-up. And then that's where the magic happens, in my opinion, because you see that I requested your music. You're then able to send a quick voice message. Hey, Rick. Real quick.
Rick Barker:Did you ever get a chance to hear the song? Just curious. That's two seconds. And now you've said my name. They've heard your voice.
Rick Barker:So now we're not automated anymore. Now all of a sudden we're having a conversation. Dude, I absolutely loved your music. Hey. Would you be interested in a private playlist that I have with some unreleased material?
Rick Barker:Now that we're having a conversation, you're you're gonna say, of course. Now that you've just given me permission, say, awesome. What's your best email so I know that you get it? And now without even thinking about it, because I'm having a conversation with a person now and not a bot, I'm actually handing you my email. And now you're going to physically have to put that into your email provider and start your nurture sequence, which delivers what you said and then goes down the the process.
Rick Barker:And that's a lot of what I teach and I'm big on is that follow-up, that nurturing sequence. But this now gave them permission to have a conversation with you. We're not asking them to listen yet. We're not asking them to buy anything. We're not asking them to go follow us on Spotify or pre save nothing.
Rick Barker:We're starting a quick conversation. The reason I like to do it in voice is because it's different. I'll mix it up a little bit, but I so I type for shit. So I spend more time going in and having to fix it and autocorrect it, and no one can if you say my name and your voice, we feel like we have a much better relationship, deeper relationship. Yeah.
Rick Barker:So then we go back in, and they come back and they go, oh, we're into these bands. Awesome. You know, they inspired us to do what we do. Hey. Quick question.
Rick Barker:Are you ever into hearing unreleased music from indie artists like my band? Oh my god. Yes, we are. Great. What's your best email?
Rick Barker:I have some I would like to send you. Once again, we go right back to the email. And we've got artists right now picking up a hundred to 200 emails a week when they were maybe getting one to five a month through subscribe to my newsletter, subscribe to my mailing list, join my community. No. This is taking people that have already shown interest in what it is that you do instead of us having to go find strangers.
Rick Barker:So these 94 people may not have all followed you back, but they took some type of action. I wanna go learn how to love on them before I get millions of other people coming into my house. I wanna learn how to cook for the 30 people in the restaurant before I get 300 that walk in, and I've I've just opened up my restaurant. So I'm always trying to use ways to do that. And then what happens is you could have a post The other way that's great to use a platform like InstaChimp, and you could go ahead and close this right now, is Jordana and I, she was out on the road.
Rick Barker:She was on stage. So what we did is we opened we created a keyword called GIFTS, g I f t s. So from the stage, she said, alright. I've seen you guys with your phones. While you have them out, go ahead.
Rick Barker:Open up your Instagram. And she took her phone out. Okay. Follow me on Instagram. Great.
Rick Barker:I'll I'll follow you back later, but do me a favor. While you're there, message me the word gifts. So they DM'd her the word gifts, and that went to a landing page with a video. It says, hey. It's Jordana.
Rick Barker:Thank you so much. Love being out on the road with Alexandra Kaye, and I made a promise that I wanted to send you some really cool stuff. So I've got some unreleased videos, a couple unreleased songs, and all you need to do is just tell me exactly where you want me to send it. So they entered in their email. She was picking up two to 300 emails a night from the stage instead of, here's my QR code.
Rick Barker:Shoot my QR code from the stage. No. She was interacting with the audience, and now she has a way to follow-up with those people. You could also do it if you wanna break it up even better is you could have them just DM the word Miami, whatever city you happen to be in. So now you've got a whole bunch of people that have been segmented so that when they go to that landing page, you can tag them in your email marketing system as Miami.
Rick Barker:So the next time you're ready to go to Miami, you can send them an email and let them know the tickets are on sale. So there's all kinds of different ways that we can do this. Most people are just teaching you how to have robotic conversations, but you could go in and put it in your own voice. I tell them right away, hey. It's automated Rick.
Rick Barker:I'm not trying to pretend to be anyone. Hey. I get a ton of DMs. Yours is important to me. You know?
Rick Barker:I'm not lying. I wanna be able to get back to them. You know? But the problem is you then have to follow-up, and that's what makes artists who could have careers versus artists who are just wanting to be famous is they wanna get to know their fans as much as they can. That's how Taylor won.
Rick Barker:Love her or hate her. That's how she won. They all felt like she knew them. When we only had Myspace, she got on and talked to them all the time. I mean, hell, she did such a great job.
Rick Barker:She turned her Tumblr account over to them, and it's one of the most active Tumblr accounts, and she's never written a post. Wait a minute.
Andrew Southworth:When when it comes to the the manual replying and reaching out aspect of it for for, like, let's say, a relatively new artist, what kind of time commitment do you recommend people
Rick Barker:to do? What I do. So inside creator studio. So if you go business.facebook.com/creatorstudio, you're going to get an inbox, and it's gonna say you have nine comments or messages on Instagram, five comments or Instagrams on Facebook. I go in.
Rick Barker:I open them up. They're usually manager manager manager manager, which was one of my keywords. I go in and check those off. Fans, fans, fans, fans, I go ahead and check those off. So I've seen what's there.
Rick Barker:If a question gets asked, I answer it right there. I usually spend the first thirty minutes of my day in the morning with a cup of coffee answering those questions and those emails. Other than that, my automation is handling it. They've gone to a webinar. They've gone to a training.
Rick Barker:They're now tagged, so they're getting an email nurture sequence. It's gonna take care of them for the next eight days, you know, if they didn't Yeah. Take me up on my offer, which is a whole another thing that I teach is, okay, now that this has started, what next? You know? Great.
Rick Barker:You did all this work to get them there, but then you had no follow-up system in place. So let's now build up a follow-up system. So it's just a series of next. But, yeah, if you can spend fifteen, twenty minutes a day, I call it on the customer service part of your business. If you could spend more, great.
Rick Barker:But I would rather you spend fifteen minutes making sure everybody who needs to be commented back, thanked, is thanked, then spend another half hour creating a couple pieces of content, and then go about your day.
Andrew Southworth:Right. And and, like, for you to spend thirty minutes in the morning with a cup of coffee, replying to everyone, like, you have 50,000 followers. So it's like a a a lot of the artists here in here maybe only have, you know, a couple hundred, a couple thousand.
Rick Barker:Well, here's the cool part.
Andrew Southworth:Time commitment's gonna be Yeah. Probably less than what it is for you.
Rick Barker:So here's yes. Exactly. But, also, here's the cool part, is that I may have 50,000 followers, but I may only get 400 people that engage with a post and 30 people who comment. I'm just like everyone else. If they if they want me to show my stuff, they want me to pay for it just like everyone else.
Rick Barker:So well, my thing is is I love the fact that I still have a manageable audience. You should love the fact that you have a manageable audience because it means you get a better chance to know them. And as they grow with you, the more you communicate, the more you keep seeing them share things. You may reach out to one of them and go, man, every day I come in, Andrew Southworth has either liked throwing up some emojis. I need to message Andrew and just say, hey.
Rick Barker:Hey, Andrew. It's Rick. Just wanna say thanks, man. I always appreciate everything that you do. Oh my god.
Rick Barker:Rick reached out. Hey, Rick. Yeah, man. I love your stuff.
Andrew Southworth:My reaction when you first sent me that I think you sent me a video message, actually, the first time. And I was like, did I just get a video message from Rick Barker? I was like, oh, kind of like like, what the fuck? Because, like, you're Well,
Rick Barker:because I could I could shoot a video and upload the video in the message. It's like you get to do more in Messenger than you get to do in comments sometimes. But, yeah, I'm just all about making people feel good. You know what I mean? It's like and I'm also a a lot about thank you.
Rick Barker:You know, Gary Vaynerchuk had that book, The Thank You Economy, is there's too many people that ignore folks that are trying to have conversations with them and, at some point, get a beg to spend money with you, and we just ignore them because we weren't taught. But now we've been taught. Now we know what it is that we have to do, so there are no more excuses.
Andrew Southworth:Yeah. Where's that sign you have no more excuses? I think it's over to your
Rick Barker:Yeah. So if we go in this direction, it says no excuses. Someone didn't wake up today.
Andrew Southworth:Yep. Nailed it.
Rick Barker:And then my other one says to do list. Get shit done. Execution. It's a noun. Stop talking and put in the work.
Rick Barker:I have another one that says nobody cares. Work harder. Work harder. Work harder. Work harder.
Rick Barker:Work harder. Yeah. So that's that's my world that I live in.
Andrew Southworth:Absolutely, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on and
Rick Barker:working on
Andrew Southworth:my Instagram part, but also showing me how to use Instachamp and the best ways that you use it. Is there anything you wanna leave my audience with for what they should go?
Rick Barker:Just take action. Yeah. Just take action. Don't be afraid to love on people. Don't ever think that you're bigger than them, and don't be surprised when people start giving you their email so much easier because you asked for it personally instead of through a subscriber list on your website or something like that.
Rick Barker:If people wanna give it to you, let's make it easy as possible for them to do that and then follow-up on these relationships. They will change your life.
Andrew Southworth:Brilliant. Thanks, man.
