Creator Playbook - · PDF fileMUSICAL.LY CREATOR PLAYBOOK | V 1.0 P.2 Everyone can create on...

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Set yourself up for success on musical.ly V 1.0

Creator Playbook

P.2MUSICAL.LY CREATOR PLAYBOOK | V 1.0

Everyone can create on musical.ly.

We enable everyone to create entertaining videos and discover the creativity of the world. musical.ly is the first mobile-native, global video platform built around your interests.

Discovery on musical.ly is powered by personalization and quality; our platform rewards content that is created by both popular tastemakers as well as emerging talent.

Maybe you’re a musical.ly power user looking to engage your community, or maybe you’ve found success elsewhere and want to introduce your content to an entirely new audience.

Success on musical.ly comes via creativity.

This Playbook is for users ready to take the next step.

INTRO


Intro

01: Start 04 Establishing Your Identity OptimizingYourProfile Checklist:TheBasicsofPosting DefiningaContentStrategy

02: Grow 14 Building Your Fandom EngagingYourAudience MeasuringSuccess

03: Elevate 21 Taking Your Content To The Next Level

BoostTheQualityOfYourContent

04: Glossary 26 05: AdditionalFeaturedProfiles 28

Contents


Establishing Your IdentityYour profile should clearly communicate your identity as a creator while also attracting first-time visitors.

01: Start


Optimizing YourProfileWhat to do?

ESTABLISHING YOUR IDENTITY

1.ProfileName• Pick a name that is short, memorable,

and where possible, gives visitors an idea of the videos you make or who you are.

• When you set up your profile, keep your username consistent with your other social platforms.

Consistency across platforms is important so your followers can easily find you.

Consistency helps create your brand.


Now it’s time to post!

2. Update Description

Have a clear description that tells visits who you are and what kind of videos you make.

“ Live, love...but mostly LAUGH at my skits! Comment which of my videos you think is the funniest!”

“ Hi guys, I do extreme sports! Check out my videos and leave a comment.”

EXAMPLES

TIP3.UploadprofilepictureorvideoTo better showcase your personality and content, use an existing video from your camera roll instead of a picture.

4. Link Instagram and/or YouTube accounts

• You will be required to sign in to your Instagram & YouTube accounts to do this. This ensures that your followers know that the musical.ly account is actually yours.

• Linking to Instagram allows you to share your musical.ly videos on Instagram more easily, which will in turn fuel your growth across both platforms.

• As you grow on musical.ly, your fan base will want to check out more of your other content. We want you to grow as quickly as possible everywhere, so be sure to link your other social accounts.


If you already have amazing videos in your library, posting some of these on musical.ly can help jumpstart your account (don’t forget, musical.ly is a platform where vertical videos shine brightest).


Checklist: The Basics of Posting

Vertical VideoThe best videos are full vertical videos (aspect ratio of 1080 x 1920) shot in the musical.ly app. You can convert your videos in your library to vertical videos using editing apps or software.

Hashtags & DescriptionsIncluding relevant hashtags and descriptions (metadata) allows musical.ly to better surface your content to the right audience.

ThumbnailAfter you have shot or uploaded your video, give the musical.ly community a reason to watch your video by selecting the most captivating and intriguing thumbnail.

Category SelectionAfter posting your video, select the most relevant category for your content. This helps surface your content to a wider audience.

SharingAfter you post your video, be sure to share it to your accounts on other social networks and encourage your audience to follow you on musical.ly.



Why is this important?Your content plan will guide you in deciding what content to post and when to post it. These are some good steps to take to build out your content strategy and pipeline on musical.ly:

Defininga Content Strategy

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

3 steps to create your musical.ly content strategy:


Find your main creative focus

FREQUENCY:

At least 3 per week

Upload unique “slice of life” content

FREQUENCY:

Sporadic, no set schedule

Use cool musical.ly features to engage with fans

FREQUENCY:

No set schedule


Step 1: Find your main creative focusInterest:

Define your “interest area”: pick a content topic or area that is unique, meaningful to you, has a group of people who would be interested in it, and where you can add your own flavor. Stay away from “general” interest areas. The more you focus, the more likely you are to find a community of enthusiastic and passionate fans.

• General interest area: sports

• Focused interest area: trick shots extreme biking fitness training

• General interest area: beauty

• Focused interest area: recreating famous looks 15-second makeup tips hair styling tricks


TIP

Having an interest area is critical for standing out. The evolution of musical.ly from a lip sync app to an entertainment social network has given rise to creators who make a diverse range of content.


Entertain:

Give viewers a reason to follow your page and watch more of your videos. Create content that makes people feel something and want to share with their friends. You might incorporate one of the below elements to your videos:

Show viewers something they haven’t seen before and would want to share with friends.

Surprises and delights throughout your videos will keep viewers engaged and increase watch time.

The age-old phrase is true— people “come for your content but stay for your personality”.


AWE SURPRISE HUMOR


• Segments: Help move the story along by playing with the camera, mood, and lighting

• Intros/outros: Every video is a story, and every great story has a beginning and an end

• Voice and style: At the end of the day, your fans keeping coming back for YOU

Format:

Having a consistent format / style helps your viewers build a connection to your content. Some elements in your format to develop for each video:


TIP

Note on Timing & Frequency of Posting: All top musers agree that consistency of posting is critical for your continued growth or success on musical.ly.

TIP

When is the best time to post? This is something you’ll want to determine as you figure out your followers and their viewing habits. A good way to begin is to experiment with posting at different times to gauge engagement from your followers.


Step 2: Upload unique “slice of life” contentThese are not the everyday, “video diary” moments, but rather the select, funny, organic moments you capture - and these can get real distribution on musical.ly. This type of content, with the right description and hashtags, can help drive discovery of your profile, and engage and entertain your fans.

Epic street performers Unique cute animals Jaw-dropping scenery


EXAMPLES


Step 3: Use cool musical.ly features to engage with fansYour fans love to see your personality, and musical.ly’s fun native formats allow you to connect and engage with your fans even deeper.

These formats are great for engaging with your existing fans and friends. While they do not receive as much distribution for reaching new fans (although if it’s re-ally special sometimes it can!), it is always important to focus on both Growth and Engagement. These formats fall more in the engagement bucket, and can be used now and then to keep your fans engaged.

Use some of the tools / formats described below whenever you’re inspired to do so:

• live.ly: musical.ly’s integrated livestreaming app allows you to go live and talk to your fans. You can host Q&A sessions, video call some fans (aka “guesting”), and co-broadcast with other creators.

• Duet: You can pick a lucky fan and duet to one of their videos. They’ll feel special and become a part of your fan-dom. More on building your fandom in the next section.

Another fun way to engage with your fans is to add funny sounds or songs to your videos. You can find plenty of sounds in our extensive sound library.


TIP

We do recommend, however, that you post this type of content no more frequently than creative focus point #1 above. So, for example, if you are posting 2 videos per week based on your creative focus, then we would recommend no more than 2 videos per week for these fan engagement formats as well. (Of course, if Danc-ing or Live Streaming IS your creative focus and talent, then of course, you would do those more often).


02: GrowBuilding Your FandomPromoting your videos on social media and collaborating with other creatives are two tools to growing your community.


Why is this important?While you continue to work on producing great content on musical.ly, it’s equally important to focus on how to grow your audience.

Having a solid audience development strategy allows you to benefit from the power of our social network.

BUILDING YOUR FANDOM

Engaging Your Audience

TIP

The most important way to grow your audience is to keep the quality high. High quality content leads to better engagement, which in turn leads to wider distribution of those videos.

＊ Participate in Trending Hastags


• Identify them

There are tons of creators on musical.ly. Many creators collaborate with others in order to reach current and new fanbases. It’s important to take a look and see who you are similar to. Some factors to keep your eye on when looking for good collaborators:

What to do?There are a few easy steps to growing your audience.

Similar categories or genresSimilar video formatsSimilar audience sizesLeaderboards


• Questions You Should Be Asking:

Who are my followers?Who are my most faithful fans?Who are my top commenters?What do they want to see from me?

• Where You Can Find These Answers:

Looking at the fans through your profile page

Reading through your fans’ comments

Replying and liking comments that speak to you

Taking notice of your top contributors

1. Understand your Audience Base

2. Collaborate with Other Creators

TIP

Shoot multiple videos at the same time together. You can always save those videos for public publishing at a later date, depending on your schedule.


• Connect with them

There are many different ways you can reach out to other creators in the community:

Following & BFFing each otherCommenting and engaging on

their contentIn-person at conferences or

other creator-focused eventsThough agencies or creator networksDirect messaging within musical.ly

Duet functionalityAppearances or cameos in

each other’s contentTagging each other in the captionGuesting in through live.ly

• Create with them

Once you’ve had a chance to connect with other creators, get talking about what you want to create! Many creators use the following tools or tricks on our platform already:


＊ Collaborate with Other Creators

TIP

The duet feature stitches together two distinct videos into a single video, either as a montage (which flips between the two videos every 2 seconds) or as a side-by-side (in which each video plays simultaneously). Duet functionality is not dependent on using music. In fact, we’ve seen many duet videos that have not used music as their audio.


• Asking fans directly to follow, engage, etc.• Posting on other social media accounts mentioning that you’re on musical.ly• Linking out your musical.ly videos to your other social media• Reacting to comments from fans

• Call your fanclub a specific name (for example, @fifthharmonyfanclub’s name is “Harmonizers” and @YoJessicaFlores fanclub’s name is “Flower Fam”)• Listen to your fanbase (BFF and shoutout to them)• Encourage mutual following• Guest star fans on live.ly• Duet with fans on musical.ly


3. Participate in Trending Hashtag Challenges

4. Encourage Viewers to Watch More

5. Build a Sense of Community

If you need some inspiration, trending hashtags are a creative way to find new topics that will get your content exposed to a new viewer base. Participating in challenges helps you as a creator join— and lead— the community.

Many of the top creators encourage viewership through a variety of ways, including:

TIP

Do not abuse hashtags (for example, don’t place captions on videos with specific hashtags that aren’t relevant to the content). The most relevant tagged videos will be favored for discovery.

TIP

Use many different engagement features such as live streaming and Q&A in order to reach your fanbase.


Why is this important?It is important to look at your key metrics in order to see what is per-forming best. Engagement metrics like hearts and comments can be tracked across individual videos

Follower growth of course is key to growing your overall audience and distribution. We will continue to update this section as more metrics get released!


MeasuringSuccess

TIP

Track your metrics daily to best understand what works for you. Each creator is different!


What to do?


2. Being PatientDo not get discouraged if your likes or followers are not as high as others. Some users may have been on the platform for much longer, or may be connected to other users they are using for cross-promo-tion. There are many factors at play here.

It can take some users a while to get distri-bution beyond their initial friends and fans, as much as a year or more. They key is to keep producing high quality content you love and that you would love to watch your-self. Over time, new users start to get more distribution in our recommendation algo-rithm the more high quality content they create - which includes many data points beyond just Hearts and Comments that we collect behind the scenes. So be patient, keep at it, and keep checking this Playbook as we will always update it with new ver-sions as the platform updates too.

• musical.ly:

HeartsCommentsFollows

• live.ly:

Concurrent ViewersTotal ViewersEmoji-love (hearts on the live stream)Coins

1. Metrics to Monitor

TIP

Follows across musical.ly and other platforms, especially when you link your Instagram or YouTube handles to your profile

TIP

To gain traction on your videos, stay focused on making content consis-tently and engaging with your fans as much as possible. Sometimes it just takes a while to find your family!


03: ElevateTaking Your Content to the Next LevelOnce you’ve established your presence on musical.ly, it’s important to keep improving the quality of your content.


Before you press the record buttonPlan: It is important to plan your storyline / scenes (depending on your type of content) to help you produce quality content.

Some points to think about:• Script

Storyline: Is your content scripted (e.g. comedy sketch) or do you just need an outline of the type of shots you want to capture (e.g. travel vlog, Q&A, visual arts etc)?

Characters: How many people will be in the video? The quality of comedy sketches often increases as you add in different characters.

Boost The Quality of Your Content

TAKE YOUR CONTENT TO THE NEXT LEVEL


Frame: Now that you have your script and storyline together, you should find your location / set and set up your shots:

• Vertical video:

Be sure to film in 1080 x 1920 px. Vertical videos outperform all other video dimensions on musical.ly.

Make sure your subject is in the vertical frame.


• Storyboard

Scenes: Do you know what all the scenes will look like? Either draw them out or find images that represent your ideal shots.

Length: How long do you want the produced video to be?

TIP

You can use music from our library to elevate your content. If a video is interesting already, keeping the original audio (and not layering in music) makes the video seem more authentic.


Post-shoot: editing your videosIn-app editing:

• While shooting, use the stop motion technology to get the best segment. If you are not happy with a segment, you can delete the last segment and reshoot.

• The “story” feature allows you to compile up to 4 clips together.

Lighting: Your viewers need to see you and everything in the scene, so be sure to think about your lighting source. Some ideas:• Basic:

Use natural light - it’s free, balanced, and easy to work with. If outside, be sure to face the direction of the sun. If inside, you can use the light coming in from a window.

• Intermediate:Invest in somesimple lighting equipment, like ring lights, LED light, etc.

• Advanced:Invest in a lighting course - e.g. 3 point lighting. Vloggers, beauty gurus, prank-sters etc. can really elevate their content with a more intricate lighting setup.


Sound: Your viewers want to hear you so make sure the sound is clear. Some ideas:• Use your device’s headphone for

up close shots.• Invest in a plug-in condenser mic

for your iOS or Android device.• If shooting on another camera

(e.g. DSLR), use a condenser mic.

TIP

How to use story feature:

1. Shoot video in-app, save to private. 2. Go to private videos. 3. Select “Compile Story”. 4. Select the 4 clips you want to compile. 5. Reorder clips as desired. 6. Preview story. 7. Publish.


Editing software: You can use your own editing software to add further effects. Some important steps:• 1080x1920px:

Vertical video outperforms other video types on musical.ly. Be sure to set up your projects in the vertical dimension ratio that fills the vertical screen.

• Logos, intro cards, end cards: To elevate the branding of your content, you can add in vertical intro and end cards, your logo, etc.


TIP

Editing is the secret weapon that top musers use to elevate their content. Taking the time to perfect your video can make all the difference.


04: Glossary


• Badge: creators who make content for a specific category within musical.ly (for example, “comedian” or “athlete”); badges sit on a creator’s profile• BFF: known as best fan forever, this can only be given out from you to a user who follows you; a good way to encourage your closest fans to follow you • Categories: types of content genres (for example, “comedy” or “sports”); creators have the ability to self-tag the category for each video they upload• Coins: monetary rewards for viewers to share with live.ly broadcasters during their livestream; users purchase coins to give to creators during livestream sessions• Collab: collaborating with another creator to make musical.lys• Direct.ly: in-app message functionality between musers• Duet: a stitching together of two videos into one video; the format of a duet can be either montage (flips back and forth between videos every 2 seconds) or split-screen (videos play simultaneously side by side)• Emoji-Love: metric measuring hearts given within a livestream on live.ly• Face.ly: entertaining feature that alters features on your face; sits within the creation suite in musical.ly• Feature/Featured Feed: videos that get pushed to more than just a creator’s followers; featured videos appear on the Featured tab of the homepage and are distributed to users across the globe

GLOSSARY

• Follow: subscription to another muser’s content; videos from creators you’ve followed will show up on your Follow feed• “For You”: tailored feed of musical.lys that incorporate a muser’s interests; these videos appear on the Discover Page• Hashtags: trends that happen on musical.ly; hashtags are searchable and display on the Discover Page, and are a great way to find inspiration for new content (to participate in hashtags, write them in your video caption)• Hearts: fan-love for a musical.ly video• Leaderboard: top creators on musical.ly; most likely displayed globally, by country, or by category• Lenses: entertaining feature that overlays or alters your face; sits within the creation suite in musical.ly (lenses are added and changed every few days)• Live Moment: format of video content that is short (about 1 second), reserved, and repeated• Live.ly: live-streaming app within musical.ly; fans who follow you on musical.ly are automatically following you on live.ly• Muser: a musical.ly user


05: Addtional FeaturedProfiles


05: Addtional FeaturedProfiles Naming:

His username (@brentrivera) is drawn from his actual name (Brent Rivera) and consistent across other platforms, which allows musers to find him easily in search.

Social media accounts: Brent links his other accounts so that his followers know it’s really him when they want to follow him on musical.ly.

Profilepicture: A clear profile picture that showcases the main subject of Brent’s content; In this case Brent’s comedy sketches feature mostly himself.

BrentRivera@brentrivera

What does he make?

On musical.ly, Brent makes comedy videos: relatable comedy sketches focusing on teen culture. He generally plays himself and will occasionally incorporate characters.

What can you learn from Brent?

ADDITIONAL FEATURED PROFILES

Content topic & format: After selecting a few videos, it is very clear to anyone who visits Brent’s profile that he makes comedy sketch videos using a specific format (stop & go character-based sketches).

TIP

if your account featured interesting cats from around the world, you should showcase cats rather than yourself.


Understands her audience: DeVore uses live.ly almost every day to connect with her fanbase. Reaching out to her fans helps her better understand the content her fans want to see.

Collaborates with other accounts: Many of her videos are filmed with other creators, including @officialbrycexavier and @raeganbeast. Similarly, Devore’s colllaborators also post their joint musical.lys on their own accounts.

DeVore Ledridge@devorelol

What does she make?

Devore uses musical.ly to perform comedy sketches and film personality-driven vlogs. She uses musical.ly as a platform to talk directly to her fandom and show them slices of her daily life.

What can you learn from DeVore?

Participates in hashtag challenges: DeVore uses the trending hashtags for inspiration to create content for the community.

Shares her musical.ly videos to social media: DeVore cross-promotes her musical.ly content on other social media platforms and transfers that following to her musical.ly account.



Planning: Lauren creates comedy sketches using original audio and characters. Her story is thoroughly planned out well in advance. She invests in quality lighting and costumes for her characters.

LaurenGodwin@laurengodwin

What does she make?

Lauren Godwin is the Queen of the One-Woman Show on musical.ly. She creates original sketches built around a set of characters and caricatures all played by herself.

What can you learn from Lauren?

Editing: Lauren creates an audio script and uses that separately before stitching together the video and audio. She carefully reviews her content before publishing it publically. This helps her create simplified, yet complete, short stories for fans.



Specificinterestarea: Danny has a very clear content interest area and this shows instantly when you look at his profile. Nature and cityscape enthusiasts will be drawn to his page, which allows him to more easily nurture a fan base on musical.ly.

Thumbnails: Danny chooses his thumbnails very strategi-cally. Instead of instantly posting his videos, he takes the time to choose a thumbnail that will be intriguing enough to draw a viewer into his video.

Danny O Foto@realdannyo

What does he make?

On musical.ly, Danny shoots videos of scenic nature scenes and interesting cityscapes. He uses the time lapse effect to give his videos an atmospheric feeling.

What can you learn from Danny?

Consistency: Danny has a very consistent posting schedule for his high quality videos. He posts approximately 1 - 3 times a week.



Originality: Vincent showcases his unique talent of beatboxing and impersonating characters within comedy sketches. This originality ensures that he stands out when people come across his content while browsing through the app.

Vincent Marcus@vincentmarcus

What does he make?

Vincent makes comedy sketches and beatbox videos. His comedy videos vary between impersonations of pop culture characters and sketches based on relatable life moments.

What can you learn from Vincent?

Production quality: Vincent takes his time to create quality content. At times he will even use editing software to add effects and that elevate his video content.



Lead with talent: The focus of Next Town Down’s account is to showcase their great singing skills. They do this by alternating between impromptu performances and posting more produced singing content that they convert to vertical video.

Participate in hashtag challenges: To connect to the musical.ly community and show their fun personalities, Next Town Down participates in trending hashtags and challenges. This is a great way for them to be discovered and obtain more fans as well as an easy way to diversify the content they post.

Next Town Down@nexttowndown

What do they make?

Next Town Down is a 5-piece boy band that uses musical.ly to share their singing talent, engage with their fanbase and communicate info around music releases.

What can you learn from Next Town Down?

Consistent posting schedule: The band posts approximately 1 - 3 videos per week. Having a steady stream of content helps their fans stay active and engage with their videos.



Depth of content: As a subject matters expert on all things frisbee-related, Brodie continues to surprise fans by showcasing different types of frisbee-related content. This not only ensures that his existing audience is excited each time he posts a new video, but is also a great way for him to attract a new audience who may only like a certain type of sports video.

Brodie Smith@brodiesmith

What does he make?

Brodie is a professional Ultimate Frisbee player and he posts videos of his trick shots, tutorial videos, and other frisbee-related highlights.

What can you learn from Brodie?

Diversity of content: Brodie also includes lifestyle content amidst his frisbee video. This lifestyle content includes fun “slice of life” moments and vlogs from his adventures. Lifestyle content allows your fans to see your personality and gives them another reason to follow your journey on musical.ly.



Fresh perspective for each video: To keep his fans entertained and engaged, Luka performs his parkour tricks in various locations or wears costumes to take on characters while doing his tricks. Eye-catching locations entice his viewers to see what tricks lurks behind the thumbnail. It is important to evolve and give your core fanbase a reason to stay on your profile.

Luka Kutsia@lukakutsia

What does he make?

Luka specializes in parkour and gymnastics. On musical.ly, he posts stunt-filled videos that he performs in interesting locations and scenes around the world.

What can you learn from Luka?

Engaging thumbnails: As someone whose talent is performing intricate tricks, Luka makes sure to incor-porate moments from his impressive flip in his thumbnail. Having a jaw dropping moment in your thumbnail encourages musical.ly users to select your video to watch.



Pick a simple name: Lucy’s username (@lucymaguire) allows her fans to easily find her on musical.ly.

Leverage native formats: Lucy leverages many different formats and tools for her comedy work, including duets. This format allows her to connect on a more intimate level with memebers of her fanbase.

Lucy Maguire@lucymaguire

What does she make?

On musical.ly Lucy shoots various comedy sketches, often including various native musical.ly formats to engage her audience.

What can you learn from Lucy?

Collabs: Lucy does a good job incorporating other musical.ly creators in her work. Often she collaborates with @ameliagething.



Leverage hashtags: These creators participate in many trending hashtag challenges, but in a way that seems natural and funny. Participating in these challenges improves their ability to be discovered by new fans.

Use musical.ly creator tools: Spencer and George use some of the creator tools available on the platform, including face.ly, which alters their faces when they are on camera, as well as duets.

@paranormal.live

What do they make?

Spencer and George are brothers who shoot comedy sketches on musical.ly. They also leverage live.ly as a format to reach fans.

What can you learn from Spencer & George?

Completeprofile: Their profile is complete with links out to other social networks (as well as linking back to musical.ly on the other networks as well), and they ask their fans to follow and hit the “bell” for notifications of new posts.

Paranormal.Live (Spencer & George)



High quality produced content: At first glance of the Out The Box profile, you can see that his content looks elevated—glossy, eye-catching thumbnails indicate content that is more produced than the general video. His travel vlogs feature content created using editing software which make his content look epic.

Tom Weasley (Out The Box)@outthebox

What does he make?

Tom is a travel presenter and circus performer. On musical.ly, he posts epic travel vlogs, life hacks, and unique “slice of life” moments from his travels.

What can you learn from Tom?

Use of title cards as thumbnails: When editing, Tom inserts premade graphics like titles cards which he then ses as the thumbnail section. This ensures that his videos are intriguing to anyone who passes by his video.


Date post:	07-Feb-2018
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