Stop Blaming the Algorithm! Make More Art!

The biggest frustration I hear from musicians, artists, and honestly creative people in general is the idea that you need to make art for the algorithm rather than art you want to make in order to be successful. And as much as I am a strong believer in the power of social media, I don’t think this take could be more wrong.

I don’t want to start this article by discrediting anybody’s work or efforts making content - making content can be incredibly tough and often times very unfulfilling when it doesn’t get the level of engagement you are hoping for. You create and create, hoping for something to go viral but nothing you post ever does. This creates a negative feedback loop where instead of gratification and a dopamine hit, you get frustrated more and more until ultimately you burn out and want nothing to do with social media at all and lament the time before instagram where you could be a successful artist without needing to be online at all!

This pattern is really tough and very common for artists to fall into, but there is a very easy fix: stop worrying about the “algorithm” and start worrying about your “audience”.

Algorithms vs Audience: What’s the difference?

When you stop worrying about the algorithm and start worrying about the audience you make a very powerful change in your approach: no longer are you worried about the vanity metrics like views, number of followers, etc and you start thinking about how you can engage with people who care about what you do specifically on a deeper level. Some art has wide mass appeal - such as Taylor Swift - and other art is more niche. But whatever you do, there is an audience for it and there is a strategy to connect the algorithm TO your audience and really start seeing wins.

The Algorithm is Your Biggest Fan

If you want to start thinking more about the audience, perhaps consider the algorithm to be your biggest fan. Anything you do, the algorithm is going to amplify and tell everybody they think will be interested in you and your work about you. Like a crazed super fan, the algorithm will not shut up about you and it is on your side. The only problem? It wants to tell EVERYONE about you, and it doesn’t really know who your target audience even is.

This is where content strategy and CONSISTENCY comes in. As an artist, you want to make content people care about and do it over and over again as you build your audience. Make things that those people want to see, and hammer it over and over again. So we are talking consistency both in terms of material but also in terms of effort. Every time you make a post, the algorithm learns a little bit more about you and the people who might be interested in you. The more consistent you are in your particular type of content, (ie, your “niche”) the more accurate the algorithm will be in identifying your audience. This is why you often see artists separating their personal (their friends and family account) from their art account - it allows them the opportunity to use social media socially while also not confusing the algorithm on their intended audience for their art account.

A lot of artists give up after 5-10 reels when in reality you probably need to do something at LEAST 100 times on social media before you can get any practical data from it (that is the standard long form video advice, and I’d be willing to bet it’s even higher for short form). But think of it as an opportunity - each reel you make, every tik tok - look at it afterwards and ask what one small change can I do to make the next one 1% better? Can you edit it tighter? Can you have a better hook? Was it a cool idea but horribly executed? Every time you make a reel is not only an opportunity to get better, but also another swing at the bat. The more swings you take, the more likely you are to hit a home run!

So who is your audience, anyway?

Once you identify your audience, you can research other reels and topics that are related to you and what your audience is into. The idea is to become familiar with them. Some marketers even recommend creating personifications: give each “niche” of your audience a name and an identity and ask yourself before posting, “Will Linda like this?” (obviously, substitute in whatever name you come up with!). This can help you start identifying what to post, and whether or not your post will be effective. And Linda is a whole person, so don’t forget that people often have interests related to their main passion!

For example, if you were an artist that focuses on paintings of baseball you might have a bunch of topics under the baseball umbrella: The New York Yankees & other teams, specific stadiums, hot dogs, Little League, the movie the Sand Lot, etc. Already you can see how a fan of baseball might have a lot of opportunities to discover your content, but imagine for a second you crossed over into “people who love NY” or “Basketball fans”. Your goal is to not cross too far out of your niche and who you are as an artist, but to find ways to make your funnel wider and wider at the top for people to discover you and then go down the rabbit hole into your more and more niche baseball paintings.

As a songwriter, producer, or composer this may take the form of doing cover songs of artists in adjacent genres but in your style. Or it could be writing a song about a specific topic. The sky is the limit on what you can do and at the end of the day we are no different today than of artists past: we need to build an audience and build a following in order to make this a sustainable career, but social media grants us a power to reach far more people than our ancestors ever dreamed of. The algorithm shouldn’t be feared, it should be embraced and your audience will thank you for it.

My Personal Anecdote

As I started focusing more on connecting with filmmakers on instagram specifically, my career started getting better and better. For example, I post stories about movies I've seen, I share my monthly letterboxd recap, I even share posts from AMC or take pix when I am at the theater or a film related event. Almost without fail, every single time someone will slide in my DM's and we start a conversation about it. It could be anything from chatting about a movie I saw, giving recommendations, or starting to share each others work with one another. At the end of the day, I am using instagram not to become "famous" but to build deep and lasting relationships with people that often leads to paid work - and I am not even taking full advantage of the platform or my content strategy yet!

Key takeaways:

• Think of the algorithm as your audience and design content specifically for them as people not for maximum virality

• consistency in terms of material (niche) as well as effort is the best practice you can adopt

• Get 1% better every time you post, post often, and do it AT LEAST 100 times before quitting

• Personify your audience and identify what adjacent interests they may have, make content for your audience but don’t be afraid to experiment just outside your niche

ScoringTech.Net is operated by Joe Chris as a means of trying to give back to the composer community. Consider joining the monthly mailing list to have these articles sent to your inbox on the first of every month as well as gaining access to the Composer Resource Library! Follow me on instagram @Joe_Chris_ , youtube, or Join our free discord community where we host composition challenges!