NICK RUFFALO - The Best Content Strategy For Artists In 2025

Nick Ruffalo is a music marketing expert who helps artists cut through the noise and build real, engaged audiences with his agency, Unleashd Creative Solutions. In this episode, we break down the biggest mistakes artists make when promoting their music, why simply posting content isn’t enough, and how to actually connect with fans in a way that drives long-term success.

We also talk about the platforms that matter most in 2024, the strategies that actually move the needle, and how to market your music without feeling like you’re selling out. If you want to grow your brand, increase your reach, and make a lasting impact, this episode is packed with game-changing insights.

Follow Nick and apply to work with Unleashd Creative here:
https://www.instagram.com/ruffmusicofficial
https://www.unleashdcreative.com

Follow Nik Cherwink here:
https://www.instagram.com/nikcherwink

And visit my site to join the mailing list or book a free coaching call:
https://www.nikcherwink.com

Transcript

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 0:00

when you're putting a message out into the world, the goal of that content is for it to be consumed by another person. So if you're making everything within that video, that post all about you, as if you're almost ignoring the person who's viewing it, they're not going to resonate. They're not going to feel like this was made for me.

Nik: 0:32

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Headliner Mindset Podcast. I have a really exciting episode for you guys today because I know a lot of you are trying to figure out What the hell do I do on social media? What is the right strategy that I should take? how do I even make content? What types of content should I be making? How often should I be posting? And obviously it's a really big part of building an audience. If you want to build a fan base, we got to be on social media and we got to be using it consistently. It's probably how you found out about this podcast in the first place. So in this episode, I got to sit down with the owner of a marketing agency that specializes specifically in helping artists create content, build their brand and build their audience. They're called Unleashed Creative, and this is their owner and founder, Nick Ruffalo. Welcome to the Headliner Mindset Podcast, bro. I am so stoked to have you here and really excited to dive in with you.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 1:22

Same here. Thanks for having me.

Nik: 1:24

I would love to really start. By just hearing a bit about your story, and kind of how you got to where you are now running this marketing agency, I know that you were an artist yourself and so you actually, you know, walked that path. And so tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 1:42

Yeah. So it all started when I was in high school. We're in, I want to say social studies class. My buddy was watching ultra live stream of the chain smokers, 2016 goaded set of all time. And I was like, Oh, that is sick. Like I want to do that so bad. So I downloaded logic, didn't really do much with it. And then as I got into college, I became our frat DJ. Through that process, you know, it was like, okay, now I want to learn how to make music. COVID came around my sophomore year of college. It was a perfect time for me to, you know, dedicate pretty much every hour of every day to learning production. Early 2021 jumped on TikTok, started putting out originals and remixes. Had some viral moments in late 2021. So I graduated college a semester early Was doing some djing and opening sets down in miami and in new york and had this kind of epiphany moment towards the end of the summer of 2022 where I just felt like for me I didn't want to be in the club and nightlife scene long term, you know for lack of a better term I had done so much partying in college that I was like, okay You know Production, working with pop artists, diversifying the genre. That's where I see my path, you know, leading down. So I took a step back from being an artist, rebrand all my social media to producer for other artists, moved out to LA in June of 2023. Pretty much first day I moved out here, just started running, you know, one, two, sometimes three sessions a day, a bunch of different artists and a bunch of different genres. Through that process, just being in all these sessions with all of these different artists and seeing the same complaint of social media content. I hate social media. I don't know what to post just constantly come up over and over and over again. I just started giving the artists I was working with, you know, ideas here and there in the middle of sessions and then things started to work for them. So I was like, okay, let me just post about this on my page. So very slowly I started posting Maybe like once every couple of weeks stuff in the social media marketing lane. Just here's what I told this artist, here's what happened. And that stuff just started to do really, really well, really fast. So early 2024, I kind of saw the handwriting on the wall, took a step back from production and really went all in on building this company, brought on our team all throughout 2024 and now we're, we're locked in and we're rocking and rolling.

Nik: 4:00

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's so cool because, you know, right before we started recording, I was just talking about how so many of my clients and so many of the listeners and just every artist out there I think is just trying to figure out like How the fuck do I grow my audience, right? I love making music, right? This is where my heart says where my passion is that I love making music. And then there's oftentimes a huge block when it's like, okay, well now I need to promote it and build a brand and build an audience. And for a lot of people, it just seems like this really Kind of complicated world that a lot of people are, struggling to figure out. So, I'd love to really just dig in with you and offer everybody some, some basic, you know, guidelines and some steps. And like, what are you seeing actually is working? Uh, obviously the, the landscape changes all the time. You know, what worked a year ago doesn't necessarily work today. Technology and trends are always evolving. So, um, let's start, let's start here. What would you say are. Some of the biggest mistakes. Where are people getting it wrong? What do you see there?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 5:03

Easily number one is making it about me, not about them. In the content, in the branding and the messaging, when you're putting a message out into the world, you know, regardless of being an artist or not, just anybody who's creating content, the goal of that content is for it to be consumed by another person. So if you're making everything within that video, that post all about you, as almost you're as almost as if you're almost ignoring the person who's viewing it, they're not going to resonate. They're not going to feel like this was made for me. And it's the same kind of, you know, mindset when you are making music, yes, it's for you, but you're also saying, okay, other people are going to listen to this, whether you're doing it consciously or subconsciously, you are pulling inspiration from, songs that you know, you love and that other people love. So when it comes from a content perspective, you always have to keep that viewer in mind and flip that message to how does this relate to them? Because when it's all about me, my new song is out now, or the worst is. Run the numbers up on this one. Why? To serve you, the artist? I don't even know you. So why am I taking my time to run up your numbers when you've done nothing for me as the viewer, as the consumer? Tell me about why this is a fit in my life. If I'm going through XYZ problems, and this song comes from a place that's going to also talk about XYZ problems and provide a solution, tell Then as the viewer, I'm going to be more compelled to listen. But if you're just telling me it's out, run it up, pre save it. Why do I care?

Nik: 6:41

yeah, yeah. Something I like to point out is like, there's a hundred thousand songs being uploaded to Spotify every single day. When I found out that statistic, my fucking head exploded. I was like, that's insane, right? Not to mention, I've already got, like, countless artists and songs and bands and things that I enjoy listening to. So, like, what's the point? Why am I going to listen to you? Most likely there's already something out there that I love listening to, you know, just saying, Hey, yeah, this is, this is out. Listen to it. It's like, all right, I'm probably not going to become a fan just because of that. All right. So making it not just about you and my song that I have out and listen to it and run up the numbers, um, great great first step. What else, where else do you see people getting it wrong?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 7:26

Just not being themselves. I mean, when we onboard a new artist onto our roster, we have, you know, multiple questionnaires and still my favorite question across all of them is if you woke up tomorrow with a hundred million followers and a guaranteed 1 million people are going to see every single thing that you post. What kind of content would you make? And the answers that we get, even from the biggest artists we work with is always, you know, they're putting something in that answer. That's not what they're posting right now. So it's like, okay, so you're waiting for, you're waiting for this like vanity metric to hit a certain place to where now you feel like you can post this type of content. You can say these types of things. You can show this side of yourself. But if you're going to wait and say, okay, When I know that like success quote unquote in the vanity metrics of views, which really doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, if I'm just going to wait for a specific view number to be who I actually want to be online, people see right through that. So like holding back certain things until you know, or feel like, Oh, this is when I can be this, or this is when I can say that. You're never going to come across as who you know, you want to come across as in your content and in your branding online.

Nik: 8:40

Yeah, I, I get that. I've seen that a lot where a lot of people have this sort of dream and desire to make an impact. And there's this like, well, once I'm at this certain level, like, then I can really make an impact. and I like to point them back to like, no, you start just becoming an impactful person now. Right. And if there's five people that you can impact, like, then that's how you start. And that five grows into 10. And that 10 grows into 100. But that starts with just, yeah. Being authentic, right? Being that person that you want to be now saying those things that you want to say now, not at some later stage, right? It doesn't necessarily work that way. So I want to, you know, I actually totally skipped over where I really wanted to start this conversation was talking about the agency, and what you guys do unleashed creative. I'd love to hear like, what is it specifically that you guys do over there? And what's your, what's your process for how you work with people?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 9:31

Yeah, so we are a content branding, digital marketing, A& R, a little bit of everything at this point. And our process, you know, is very fluid depending on who we're working with. I mean, at the core of what we do, we're meeting weekly and we're talking through, okay, over the next seven days, what is going on? Cause we don't want to live in this bubble of like, Oh, I've got a, you know, a tour that launches in August. Oh, I've got a album that drops in June. Like we're in February. So over the next seven days, what's going on? Let's hone in on that. And let's build out for the next seven days. This is what's going to go out on social media. This is going to be your post Monday, Tuesday, et cetera. Then either we're filming and editing that content for the artists, or if they're not here in LA, They got their team, you know, or themselves to film and edit. We'll approve everything. Make sure it looks good. Goes out, meet again the next week, continue to tweak our strategies in the content lane. And then in the background, you know, we're also continuing to build their visual identity, their branding, and we'll create, you know, an established creative direction deck over 90 days to ensure that, okay, like this from an online perspective. Who you are, who you represent, who you will be and continue to be for, you know, the foreseeable future. And then we put those two together and we're, we're, in biz.

Nik: 10:49

Yeah, yeah. So the question I want to ask is, which I think everybody is kind of asking themselves is, how do I know what to post? Right. I'm looking at my calendar and I'm like, I don't, what the fuck do I post over the next seven days? What do I post over the next 30 days? so how do you go about helping somebody figure out like what they quote unquote should be posting?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 11:12

We take it in phases. So, you know, again, we have, artists with millions and millions of followers and they're still obviously coming to us for a reason. And it's they don't feel like. You know what they're doing on social media, who they are and their content is what they want to be. That's why they're working with us. So no matter how big the artist is, we're always going to go through a test phase of like, we need to just test a lot of formats. We need to test a lot of things because no two artists, no two people on social media are going to have the exact same formula. There is no formula to this. Posting times do not matter. Hashtags do not matter. None of trending audio does that. None of this matters. I promise you. The only thing that matters is finding your formats and keeping your brand consistent and being you. It's okay. What are your formats? Is it B roll wall of text? Cause for some people they could just literally walk down the street in an aesthetic, look, put a wall of text over it with their song behind it. And that's the thing for some people that does work for many others. It does not. So we need to test. A bunch of different formats over month one to figure out. Okay. From a format perspective, regardless of song, these are your buckets to pull from. Now we're into, you know, our second phase, which is okay. What does your content funnel look like? What is your top of funnel? What is your middle of funnel? What is your bottom of funnel? Top of funnel is discovery content. How are, how are new people going to discover you? It's not going to be through your music. And the example I always give is whether it was intentional or not, Taylor Swift is. currently living this funnel in real time because the shared interest that she's connecting herself to is the NFL. So if you've never heard of Taylor Swift in your life, but you're a fan of the NFL and you watch the super bowl and you see her on screen, you've now discovered Taylor Swift. Now, if you want to go deeper and you say, who is this? Let me Google Taylor Swift and interviews pop up. Now you're connecting with her. Now you feel connected to her. Now you're like, oh, okay. So she makes music. Here's parts of her personality. I like her vibe. I like her. Let me check out the music. Now you go to her music video. You watch that and you're like, I love this. I'm a fan. And you've now been converted. top of funnel discovery, middle of funnel connection, bottom of funnel conversion and all content needs to serve a purpose within one of those buckets. So now we're into phase two and we're figuring out what are your formats for these different sections of your funnel? What's the ideal frequency for you? in terms of segmenting top, middle, and bottom across a week schedule. And then we implement,

Nik: 13:42

Yeah, that's huge. I think even for myself, it's great because I've been really lazy on social media and I'm like, okay, I know I can grow my account and my brand way bigger, but I think that piece that you just said about, you know, The intention behind each piece of content. Is this a discovery piece? Is this going out to people that have never heard of me? And I'm trying to just, you know, have that top of funnel first introduction. What am I saying? Right? I'm going to speak differently to that audience than I would to people that are already following me. Right? So that's just so huge right there that that top of funnel. and tell me what what you said. Those those three are. This is the top of funnel kind of discovery. Then there's the connection and

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 14:21

which is middle of funnel.

Nik: 14:23

Yeah. So like now that, that, that middle place, I'm like, I'm just putting stuff out to get you to know me, to connect with me, see what kind of like, do we, do we vibe on the same frequency? Do we have the same interest? And then there's that conversion where I'm really converting you over to being a fan of, the music and the art like that right there. That's huge. I don't think a lot of people are doing that. So I hope that everybody's taking notes right now. Right? Like really think about what is the actual intention of, yeah. Behind what you're doing, because yeah, I think a lot of people are in this phase of just like, Oh, I have a new song. Let me just jump, really jump straight to marketing. And this is where we get to have a branding conversation, but it's like, okay, I have a new song. Let me put it out there, new song out, check it out, listen to it, you know, or here's me in the studio just playing my song or whatever it may be. And, um, We're not really thinking about like, what, what's the experience of the person on the other side going to be? All right. We're just thinking about ourselves. I have a song, I have a thing that I want people to hear. So let me just push it out there, shove it down their throats. Maybe I'm even running an ad to like push it in front of their face, but like. If that person has never heard of you, like, what's, what's going to be the thing that actually hooks them in and gets them to be interested in you in the first place, right? There's a lot of psychology around this that I think people are missing out on, myself included. I'm going to take this and run with it and like really sit down and think about what are my three, types of content I could be creating in those funnels or in those buckets.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 15:45

a hundred percent and top of funnel is never going to be about your music. That's the big misconception.

Nik: 15:50

Hmm. Yeah.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 15:52

you

Nik: 15:52

What would, what would an example. what would an example of a good, like, top of funnel piece of content be?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 15:58

Okay. So let's say, let's say an artist has a song called, I hate my ex. Okay, so if we want to segment this, I hate my ex concept. Okay. So you wrote this song because you quite literally hate your ex and they were the worst, you know, worst boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. ever. So it would compel you enough in your life to write this vicious song about them. Okay. Well, you're top of funnel content. We're not even going to put the song in the video at all. We're not going to talk about it. You're literally just go sit in your car, put the phone on the dashboard, start the video off saying anybody else have that one X who blank go into listing off everything terrible that that X did. Now you're creating conversation around the concept of the song without even mentioning the song. So now you're attracting everybody who's bought it and be like, Oh my God, me too. My ex is the worst. My ex did that. I hate my ex too. So now you're literally getting people who are bought into the conceptual concept of the song into your world before they've even heard the song. Cause it's a lot easier to sell a concept than a product, especially when it's an emotionally rooted, you know, experience. Okay. Now they're in, now they've discovered you and they've created, you've got a conversation going on around this topic. Alright, let's connect them to the music. So now let's do a video where you quite literally just put the phone down on the ground, step back, lip sync your song into the camera, text on screen, when my ex did blank, so I wrote this. Okay, now we've connected that same exact thing from the discovery of like, this is the thing your ex did that made you hate them and why you wrote the song, but now we're actually are going to connect it to the song. And then conversion content, let's just do high quality, you know, many music video performance pieces to really just show, okay, this is a legitimate artist. Like they are doing it at a high level. They're clearly putting budget into this. It's not all just iPhone in their car. So now you've kind of also within the conversion content and planted on the viewer that like you are a legitimate artist. You're not in your bedroom trying to be a tick tocker, which is so dumb, but some people still think that. So let's play out of that. And now, you know, We've created this cohesive ecosystem.

Nik: 18:01

Hmm. Got it. Got it. So, there's a term that I've heard used before, which is, either playing the man or playing the brand. And, uh, We have, there's artists that have more of the personal brand where it is like, Hey, it's, it's me. It's like, for me, my brand is like Nick Trewink, right? And so I'm going to be real. I'm going to be raw. I'm going to talk about my, my actual stuff. Uh, but there are those brands that are also more about. sort of creating a universe in a world, you know, where it's like, not necessarily about the person, uh, as much as it is about the, the brand, like, like an excision or a seven lions or something where they've sort of created these worlds and these universes, how do you see for someone that's like kind of taking that path, which I do think is kind of a harder path to take because it's, uh, you can't, It's not that you can't, but it's like, it's, it feels like it's a little bit less about pulling up the phone and talking directly to the fans. You know, how do you advise somebody that's trying to take that path, in this strategy? How would that work for them?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 19:01

Very hard. You know, the biggest, biggest thing I'll always say is you're not allowed to pull an artist from pre 2021, almost pre 2022. You can't pull them as an example for anything.

Nik: 19:17

Hmm.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 19:17

Like if they had, if they blew up, you know, and became, you know, household name, what have you pre 2022, you're not allowed to use them as an example.

Nik: 19:27

Hmm. Yeah. The

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 19:28

well, a lot of you didn't have to do any of this. Yes, because that was 10 years ago. That was almost 15 years ago.

Nik: 19:35

Good point. They were playing. They were playing with a completely different set of rules, right? And again, two years from now, three years from now, the landscape is going to look totally fucking different and we're going to be having a different conversation, right? So yeah, what's happening right now? I think this is a really good point. A lot of a lot of artists are comparing themselves to their favorite artists. And I've had multiple artists that have come on the podcast that are like, yeah, dude, when we came up, like we didn't have to deal with this shit. Like, we weren't like obsessed with posting on social media every day. We were just making bangers and putting them on SoundCloud and getting fucking tours off of it. Like, that was all it took. You know, it was totally different game. So that's, that's, that's a really good, I think, kind of gut punch reality check is to, you know, Really be present with, like, what's working right now, and, and, yeah, not comparing yourself to, like, what worked five years ago, or ten years ago for somebody. Heh.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 20:25

totally different time. And it's the same. Same kind of mindset of like, you know, with Netflix and all like the streaming services, cable companies and, shows that thrived on like cable. Now they're not allowed to say, Oh, well, Seinfeld, you know, had this run on NBC. That was the nineties. So now we're talking like the way that people are creating television has changed because of the medium. So in the same fashion that like the way you're building your brand as an artist has to change because of the medium. It's not whoever has the coolest album art. On SoundCloud anymore. It's about you. And the biggest, you know, if we're talking EDM dance lane, like really the only artist who's breaking through to a borderline Calvin Harris, chain smokers, like that period of 2014 to 2016, where EDM was the mainstream, the only real person to wear, like, if you don't really care about dance music, but you're just like on social media, you would know is probably John summit.

Nik: 21:23

Yeah, yeah, and

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 21:24

the one.

Nik: 21:25

and he's a personal brand where it's like it's straight up. It's it's him, right? It's it's him doing his thing and his antics and his message and his voice and all of that is very, very connected to his fans. There's no big degree of separation there. Now, I do think that it definitely still is possible to. Have a big brand in that sense. in terms of it not being like a personal brand, it's just one, I think it's either gotta be mystery. Like I think of one of my favorite bands is this band called sleep token. If you're familiar with like the, the, they're in the metal world, but they've completely taken over and they've blown up specifically in the last like two years.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 22:05

Yup, they're, they get cherry picked all the time in my comment section.

Nik: 22:09

yeah, it's a, um, It's a, but it's a mask thing, you know, and there's like the allure and the mystery and there's a story, you know, there's a story behind it, but I think in general, really what it, it just requires a really high level creative assets. So it's like, it's a lot easier and cheaper for me to flip on the phone and I can, I can spit to my fans all day and I can build an audience that way based off of my personality and my energy and I don't require a high budget, but if you want to create a, a, you know, Right, that's going to be a bit separated from you. That's going to require graphic design. That's going to require video animation. It's just going to require more of a heavy lift. I think if you have the budget you can do it, but um, if you're just trying to do it yourself, like, good luck. I don't know, this is going to be pretty hard.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 22:56

Yeah, no, 100%. It's also like, again, think about the viewer, like, Why would I care about your, you know, highly edited graphic design, just like, visualizer on my feed? I have multiple, multiple, many, many, many fake accounts on Instagram, where I put that account into the You know, into a certain persona of like, okay, this is Noah Mint. He's 33. What kind of content is he consuming? This is Ashley. She's 24. What kind of content? And I curate, you know, the For You pages on those accounts based around like that demographic. And you start to think in this mindset of like, what would stand out like a sore thumb on this feed? And it's like 99 percent of 99 percent of the music content you see that isn't performing well would stick out like a sore thumb on this feed because it people aren't going on social media to find your music and watch your like even 5, 000 visualizer like it's stuff they could send to their friends something they could comment on something they can save something that can make them feel something

Nik: 24:01

Yeah, and I think to feel something, for people to feel something, you have to be feeling something on the other end of it. What actually lights you up? What are you passionate about? What are you emotional about? Right? I think the way that you create content because you can also read scripts all day, you can do tick tock dances all day or whatever, but it's like it's when you actually see somebody sharing something from the fucking heart. That that energy is transmuted through the phone and it lands in your heart, you know, I think that that's an important piece of it because I can, I can get on and I can, you know, I, even with myself, I noticed like if I, I could show up and maybe post something that's more of just like mental energy, like, Hey, here's a good thought and here's a good perspective, but if I show up and I like say some real shit from the heart and it's like, it's actually coming from here and I'm, I, I care about it. that's going to land so much more. You know, there's, there's like an energy that gets transmuted through what we're creating. What's the energy that you're actually putting into, into the content itself, I think plays a big role.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 25:03

Yeah, 100%

Nik: 25:04

Yeah. Now a big part of this, and I talk about this a lot is, uh, I think the big missing piece for a lot of people when it comes to marketing is they're jumping straight from I'm making music. I, I, I made just, we'll call it the product. If we want to just think about it strictly from a business perspective, you know, from that sort of assembly line of I've created a product and now I'm going to go market it, bring it to the marketplace. But a lot of people are skipping this really important step, which is like building your brand and figuring out your brand, right? A lot of people are like, cool, I made the music. Now let me go put it out. And again, just put it in front of people, but that's why it's not fucking landing, right? Because a lot of people haven't actually figured out what their brand is. So it sounds like that's a big part of your guys's process as well, is really helping people figure out what's their, what's their brand. Who are they? What are they trying to say? What are some of the questions that you walk people through and get them to answer to like, really get clear on what their brand is before you start putting everything out?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 26:05

Well, the first thing I always like to do is figure out the person. So who is like that one singular person, you know, and this obviously works much better with our artists who tour and we, can ask them to really sit, like, sit and think about, who's that person from the meet and greets that, you know, they stand out like immediately. And there's always someone and it's like, okay, let's describe them. Sarah, she's 34. She's from here. She likes this and now we're starting to like build this persona of like, this is who your biggest fan is. So what are they going through and what are the demographics of your fan base? Are they 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44? Because what people are going through at different stages of their life, they're going to resonate with content and brands and messages. at a much different, level, like if you're 18 to 24, a breakup is happening much more frequently than 35 to 44, like 35 to 44, you're probably married. So like, yeah, you can get divorced. Yeah. You can still be dating, but you're not going to be breaking up with people at the frequency that you are where you're 18 like, okay, most of your music is about breakups. And we know most of your target audience is 18 to 24. Then we've got to start to guide the brand to speak to them because we can't start talking about Like this is for your grandkids and it's like yeah, your your target audience are the grandkids like

Nik: 27:39

yeah, you can't be,

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 27:40

who?

Nik: 27:41

you can't be good at marketing if you don't know who you, who your market is.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 27:45

Exactly so we got to figure out the who first then we've got to figure out the why so like Why do you make music? Why did you start making music? And why is You the message of your music important. So we've got the who, we've got the why. Now we need the how, how are we going to communicate that message of your why to the, who these people or this singular person, this group. And then from there we started to boil it down to, okay, what are, what are your brand pillars? What are these four things that represent you, you know, outside of the music? And we've got, you know, a million questions. We asked people around that, like, you know, what is the impact that you want to leave? Outside of music, what are personality traits that you had at 12 years old that you still have today? What are things that your friends and family would say first were to describe you where versus romantic relationships? Versus how you think strangers on the internet would describe you in one word and just asking You know as many questions as we need to from like a we call it like brand therapy standpoint to walk away You know from that first call knowing like This is how we've kind of interpreted who you are. This is what you've told us. This is how you've kind of started to change your thinking. And then we'll lay the brand foundation and then continue to build it, you know, messaging wise, but also visually from there, over the next three months, staying in line with that first conversation of like, this is the core foundation from a messaging perspective. This is who, We're talking to now everything has to you know stay on point stay on message stay on brand But also like past the gate of this You know group of people or that singular person to where like it should resonate with that

Nik: 29:32

Yeah, and so Once you have all of that figured out. It's really just creating those three types of content then the that top of funnel Connection content conversion content. Can we go a little bit deeper? I'd love to hear some examples. I think a lot of times people are just kind of a little stuck on like, you know, what types of content should I be making? Let's go a little bit deeper into that and give everyone some some ideas. I'd love to hear like, what's what do you see working as you're working with clients and people on your roster? Like, what What kind of shit are you seeing that actually is working right now for people in terms of specific formats of content?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 30:14

It always comes down to the demographic, like where are they based? How old are they? What is your gender split? Because the way, all of those different factors play into what content works is going to be wildly different. Like we've got artists with very big Southeast Asia and Asia fan bases, and they just love. High quality performance videos, people in the U S do not, those read as ads.

Nik: 30:41

Yeah.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 30:41

if you're just, you know, mini music video, high quality performance, every single post to the U S add, add, add, but to the Southeast Asia market, like what we've seen is they love that they love it. So it's like, okay, what is your demographics? Let's like decide at least what our initial test phase formats are going to look like based off the demographic. It's always going to come down to talking to camera though. Not that every video is going to be you talking to camera, but when that door's open for you to talk to camera, the amount of content that can be made is so much more vast than like, everything's got to be silent, every message has to be communicated through text on screen, like,

Nik: 31:26

Yeah. And this is where this is where it comes back to figuring out who the fuck you are and what you're all about. Right? Like, yes, your brand, but it's even deeper than that. It's like really you knowing who you are as a person, as an artist, like what is your message? I think this is hard for a lot of electronic music artists, which are most of the artists that are listening to this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of them are just making bleeps and bloops and you're putting shit out and it's like, okay, cool Here's my you know, my like You know instrumental electronic music It's different when you're a rapper And you're actually writing lyrics about shit. It's different when you're a pop artist and you're actually writing lyrics about songs. If you're not songwriting, then, you know, there's sometimes as a disconnect about what are you actually fucking saying, right? Besides just putting out a bunch of bleeps, bleeps and bloops, right? And so that's just an important thing. Like, what do you care about? What are you trying to say? What is your message? Cause I think this is where a lot of people struggle in with their marketing is they just. They don't necessarily stand for anything or they haven't taken the time to really figure out what it is that they stand for. What do you believe in? What do you care about? Because once you've got that clear, yeah, like you said, I'll make content all day. I can pop open the phone and talk to my audience. But, for anyone that's struggling to come up with content ideas, it's probably because you haven't actually figured out who you are, what you stand for and what you believe in. Yeah.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 32:55

initial brand message that we, came up with together early stage was if you love, if you love music for the feeling, not the genre, this is your new home. And then that spoke really well to his audience because. as somebody who wants to, you know, put out music in a lot of different lanes of the dance genre as a whole, you're now honing in and standing for like, I'm not just going to make the same super soft future bass drop over and over and over again. So if you are a fan of dance music, but more just for the feeling, not like you're, I only listened to rhythm and I'm like, you're not, you're not one of those people. Come on down. And like just finding your ways of communicating what you stand for is everything.

Nik: 33:42

Yeah. There's something that you said earlier and you kind of touched on it again, talking about like the testing, the content, right? Like you said, when that first month of working with people, a lot of it is testing, like let's figure out what works, let's figure out what format works. Let's figure out, you know, what's actually going to land and resonate. I think that that's a huge, important point to make is, It takes a lot of experimentation and I see a lot of artists that are like Focusing so hard on trying to do it right and it's like You also got to just do it wrong a bunch to then figure out what is right, right? I remember seeing Gary V talk about this before where he was like, yo, it's like a lot of you are just so focused on making like one or two pieces of content and making them the best pieces of content possible. And, and it's like, maybe those work, maybe they don't. He's like, I'd rather see you make 20 pieces of content and fucking 16 of them don't work, but four of them do. And now, you know, What's actually starting to work. So I think for especially a lot of, younger artists that are, and, and not only, not only younger, we all need to be experimenting, but, but yeah, I think, especially in the beginning, it's like, fuck around and find out, go make a bunch of different things, a bunch of different formats, like actually see what works. Cause you don't know, unless you really put that quantity out.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 35:05

Yep, Exactly. Exactly. And you know, for me and my, content, like I've tried it all too. There was a minute where just reels of tweets that were like four seconds long with trending audio were like a format I was seeing quite a bit. So I tried it. You know, and I always always say you cannot give up on anything until five five posts I was trying that it wasn't working for me. It just didn't it just wasn't a fit and then you know carousels I'm like, okay, let me start doing some carousels First four carousels I posted did nothing like only a couple hundred likes and i'm like, oh my god, like I'm done with carousels like these do nothing for me, but let me hold myself to that five number And then the fifth carousel I posted got like, as a carousel, like went to reels, it got like 450, 000 views. I'm like, okay Carousels are my thing. So I rode that carousel train so hard and then they just like dwindled off And then I fell onto the green screen thing. Now these green screen videos have like Took me from maybe 15k to almost 70k in like a month and a half, two months But like, it's just testing every format, the tweets, the carousels, the high quality. I got the Sony camera, the mic. Now it's just me talking to my phone. Now it's me talking to my phone with a green screen in the back. I'm like never being comfortable and just testing as many different formats. It's the same message. I'm reusing the same exact concepts from the carousels in my green screen videos, but the format and the medium is presented has changed. And that's, you know, altered the success level, quote unquote of, of a specific video.

Nik: 36:44

yeah. Yeah, I saw someone showed me an account of this guy who was literally just sitting in his car like listening to his song off of his laptop filming himself just sitting in the driver's seat and He basically posted the same exact video like ten times and I'm seeing more and more people do this where a lot of times It's like okay. Well, well, you know Do our one idea and we'll just post it once and that's like, okay if it works it does and if not, whatever But I've been seeing this more where people are posting the same thing It's not literally the same exact video But it was like he just re recorded pretty much the same thing him sitting there in his car listening to it and it was like if you write like Skrillex and whoever like you're gonna fuck with this, you know that kind of a video and it was like the first video was like 500 views. You know, the second video was a thousand views. The third video was 1100 views. And then the fourth video was like 150, 000 views. And it just, it just eventually worked. And I don't know that, the science behind that, but I don't know if it's just being in the right place at the right time. But like you said, you're literally saying the same message sometimes, but just in a bunch of different formats. I'm seeing that more and more where it's like, you know, Taking that one idea and maybe posting a handful of different versions of it to really give it the actual Time and space that it deserves to see if it really works because it might not be that it's not a bad idea It might just be the fucking wrong day in the wrong time, or I don't know.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 38:10

Well, day and time, doesn't matter. Remember dick?

Nik: 38:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why do

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 38:15

just, it is me. It's

Nik: 38:16

hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah Tell me about, I, I, I noticed in browsing through your Instagram, you had a couple cool posts. one of them was this idea of the 15 by six method. Tell me what that is.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 38:35

Yes. So I've now changed it to five, five by five, but similar, uh, similar mindset. So what we do when we have an in-person shoot and we're go, we're going into this in-person, shoot solely to get conversion content. So mini music videos, we'll get some iPhone stuff, but we'll get like. All of the high quality performance videos if you guys check out fly by midnight on Instagram We've been doing their content for the last six months and pretty much all conversion content. They're an anomaly They're a unicorn like they're the ones with the Southeast Asia fan base where you know We just do a lot of high quality videos and it just grows and grows and grows them We'll go. Okay What are the five songs over the course of the next 30 days? We'll hit the feed at some point. You know, if it's the most recent release, we might allocate like 60 percent of the shoot to that, but there's old catalog songs. We'll throw two, three videos in the mix with got those five songs mapped out five locations, five different, you know, it could be the same. Like we just did a shoot fly by midnight Monday at UCLA, but that we consider three different locations because we did. The grass field, we did in front of a building, and then we did on the steps. And then we went to the football field, and then we went in the parking lot. So we got five different looks, five different locations. Bring five different outfits with you. Change the outfit at each new location. So now, you're getting, even if you do one song at each location, right there you've got, you know, 25 videos.

Nik: 40:04

Yeah. That's awesome. Content batching.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 40:06

Exactly.

Nik: 40:07

Yeah, cool. Um, I love that. So that's what, so you guys will go out and actually produce all of that, film that and stuff with your LA based clients.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 40:17

Correct, yes. Or we'll have people fly into and we'll, we'll structure it. You know, we're not just gonna say stand there and lip sync. We still start to do like discovery, connection, conversion within that shoot. But all, you know, with DSLR all high quality.'cause the iPhone stuff like, you know, we can, we can guide you through that. We'll get some iPhone stuff, but we really wanna hone in, make the use of our time with our videographer, Julian. Name is Julian York on IG if you guys want to check him out as well He's the goat, but you got to go through us to get him, but he's the man. He kills it,

Nik: 40:50

another. Big question I think a lot of people have is, should I post the same stuff on TikTok that I am on Instagram? There are obviously different platforms, they function differently. You could just post the same things, maybe you do sometimes. I don't know, what are your thoughts around Instagram strategy versus TikTok? Those are kind of the two big platforms that people are focusing on.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 41:14

It all comes down to a time perspective like how much time do you have to allocate because everything should go everywhere That's a given everything that you post on Instagram should go on tik tok But you can double up on tik tok with things that don't hit Instagram Cause TikTok, you have more capability. And I think this is more of a mental roadblock that people find themselves in than anything rooted in like facts or data. But people just feel like, because when you pull up your Instagram homepage, you're going to see people that you know, personally, you can go two hours scrolling on TikTok and not see a soul that you know in real life. So now people have less of a mental barrier of like. Oh, I can't post that because you know, my ex's friend who, from college who still follows me, if he sees that I'm shitting on him in this new song, but it's like, oh, but on TikTok, I could do that because nobody I know might not see it. So people feel a little more free on TikTok to like be a little more real, a little more authentic. So like doubling up on TikTok, if there's a time to do it and posting everything that's going to be posted on Instagram, also on TikTok. Is the best cross pollination strategy. And if you really want to hone in on YouTube shorts demographically, YouTube shorts is a young demographic, young, like 10 17. So they love brain rot. So like, if you really want to like tailor a strategy platform by platform, whatever your onscreen lyrics look like, make them the most brain rot possible for YouTube shorts. So if you're gonna do small little white text lyrics for Instagram, make them the big one word at a time yellow for YouTube shorts. Cause it's just, that's that generation. That's what they grew up on the Mr. Beast

Nik: 43:04

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. That's wild. That's wild. Okay. So definitely post everything you're posting on Instagram, post it on Tik Tok and, and more on Tik Tok. In addition, add even more to that if you have the time and energy to it.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 43:19

Exactly. Like if, if you're literally cooking chili and you spill the chili everywhere, you can literally take a video and be like, Oh my God. I was just making chili and now I spilled it everywhere. My life is a mess. Tick tock. That's not going to go on Instagram, but like, exactly,

Nik: 43:40

You can, you can just turn that, you could just post that on the tick tock. Like I look at stories as like, that's people that are already following me. my 500 people that view my stories every day or however many, are the ones that, yeah, they're, they're following me a little bit more closer to my journey. yeah, you could just do the same shit.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 43:58

exactly. Or even like your, your Finsta

Nik: 44:02

Mm

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 44:02

the Finsta mindset for tech doc.

Nik: 44:05

Mm hmm. Cool. Cool. Yeah, alright. What else, what else should we cover, dude? Like, I feel like we have covered a lot. What else have we, what else have we not covered yet?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 44:17

Hmm. I mean, I'm an open book, so ask me anything.

Nik: 44:20

what else besides content creation and strategy do you guys do at the agency?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 44:26

So On a, as much as I can say level, we're starting to consult for labels and management companies on their content strategy internally and start to build out, their teams, their processes, their systems, so that they don't have to hire us. They can just keep it internal. So that's where we're starting to move a little more B2B still working with artists, but also building that side of what we do because everyone wants to keep it internal. I mean, no one wants to be beholden to an agency. That's also working with their competition. You know, for

Nik: 44:57

hmm. Yeah,

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 44:58

we're starting to, I guess, for, for lack of a better term, like pioneer that lane of like kind of going against what would benefit us in the long term of like, yeah, you can just hopefully hire us forever. Or we could just come in and build franchise ourselves out to you.

Nik: 45:14

Yeah. Uh, who's an example of a client that you've really seen skyrocket during their time with you?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 45:23

Chanel Yates for sure. She actually was a EDM vocalist that I had on quite a few of my songs when I was an artist. Then she came to me just as a friend cause we're very good friends saying like, Hey, I think I'm going to go down this country lane. So we worked for a while on just, you know, figuring out what that rebrand was going to look like. How could things shift over, from basically dance pop vocalist to now country artists based in London too. So he made her being from the UK and being a country artist, a very kind of key identifier for her brand. Cause that's unique in and of itself. Not a lot of country artists are coming out of the UK. And then we just really honed in on formats and her formats have pretty much stayed the same regardless of song and things have grown, you know, pretty rapidly for her about 4, 000 followers to now over 30, 000 and the new song is crushing. So we're, we're super stoked on her, but it took a while because we had to completely find her new identity.

Nik: 46:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That, and that's again, back to that foundation of the brand, like figuring out who you are, what you're all about, getting your story and your message really dialed in and like, yeah, then you know what to actually create, right? All of that is going to influence and inspire like what the content's all about. So yeah, back to that, I just see it more and more. Like it's such a, it's such a, a missing piece for a lot of people. So if people are interested in working with you, I think that that is the dream perhaps for, a lot of artists that are like, man, how rad would it be to have help and support? And, you know, I've been talking about this more and more on the podcast, but you know, really stepping into that business owner mindset. If you want to scale your business, there is going to be a point in time where you got to start hiring. Other people, right? You got to start actually like building out your business. You can only take it so far yourself. So if people were interested in working with you, how would they go about that?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 47:14

Yeah, we got a wonderful website in my Instagram bio with all the info you need to apply.

Nik: 47:20

Perfect. Perfect. What's, what's the Instagram?

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 47:23

Rough Music Official.

Nik: 47:25

Ruff. R U F F music official. I'll put the link in the show notes. If you guys want to work with Unleashed Creative and Nick and the team and have some people create some awesome content for you, provide some strategy, they, they obviously know what they're doing. So, Nick, thanks so much for taking the time to hop on, bro. Really appreciate you. Peeling back the curtain and showing us, some of these like deeper strategies that I think are so important for us all to be aware of.

Nick Ruffalo (Ruff): 47:51

Absolutely, thanks for having me.