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Musical.ly launches Creator Playbook to help musers build their audiences

Musical.ly launches Creator Playbook to help musers build their audiences

Social app Musical.ly has followed YouTube's example by launching a 'Creator Playbook' to teach its community of video uploaders how to make best use of its service.

Version 1.0 of the Musical.ly Creator Playbook covers basic tips on setting up a channel and posting videos, through to more advanced strategies for building an audience and interacting with fans.

The app, which was recently acquired by Chinese tech firm Bytedance for more than $800m, started as a way for people to share videos of themselves miming and dancing to popular songs.

In 2018, it sees itself as something bigger, as one of the playbook's tips makes clear: "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."

The playbook advises musers to post at least three videos a week around their 'main creative focus', as well as more sporadic "slice of life" videos, which it specifies aren't vlogs, but rather "select, funny, organic moments you capture" and share with fans.

There is also advice for new musers not to expect massive success immediately on the app.

"It can take some users a while to get distribution 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 yourself," advises the playbook.

"Over time, new users start to get more distribution in our recommendation algorithm the more high quality content they create - which includes many data points beyond just Hearts and Comments that we collect behind the scenes."

Comedians Brent Rivera, DeVore Ledridge and Lauren Godwin; time-lapse specialist Danny O Foto; beatboxer Vincent Marcus and boy-band Next Town Down are among the case studies offered of musers doing all this well.


Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)