Mista Vybe on using Social Media to take Soca to the world
Social media is made for networking, pushing your brand, and forming new connections. In the case of soca artiste, Mista Vybe, most popularly known for his hits “Ting 4 d Road”, and “Always on my Mind” with Michelle Sylvester, and 2010 song “Mad Again”, this rings true. When I posted a list of Caribbean celebrities on Twitter late one night (last year), I was quite surprised the next morning to see a pingback from Mista Vybe. When I clicked his link, I realized… this dude is pretty serious about social media, and more importantly, he seems to know what he’s doing.
Yesterday we finally met to discuss social media and how it plays a role in his entertainment career. Check it out.
1. For those who don’t know… Who is Mista Vybe?
A. “I’m a musician, entrepreneur, blogger, producer, and songwriter. Just a creative individual trying to find new ways to do things in the entertainment business.”
2. What are you up to these days?
A. “Well I’m back in Trini. I was in a Toronto for a few months; came in December. It’s Carnival in Trinidad, so the main this is promoting the Carnival material I have. There’s False Pretender on the Picture Frame Riddum, there’s the Oil Pan song, which is on the oil pan riddim, both produced by Mad Men Productions. There’s Jam in the Road, which is my groovy Soca tune produced by Hitt Lab, Sweetness on the Soft Tune Riddum, which is a kind of Chutney crossover song, and Mad Again. “
3. You’re a social media enthusiast, to put it mildly, how did you get hooked on social media?
A. “Honestly, I’ve been an Internet junkie/techie since I can remember. I took programming courses when I was younger. I’ve always been tech savvy, the guy who people ask ‘hey I want to do something with my computer, hook me up’. I was there since MSN and Yahoo started having messenger etc. I saw the evolution of social media with hi5 etc. I used to go real heavy on MySpace because it gave me basically a website. Then we moved from Myspace to Facebook, which took me to Twitter. One just went into the next one.
And then when we did the MistaVybeWorld.com website, management had me liaising with the website designer, Tenika Jones (of TheYoungFreshNew.com), and she was very instrumental in helping me up my game where social media was concerned. I already had over 3,800 friends on Facebook, another 3,600 MySpace friends, and then I had my Twitter followers… about 300. I had all this and wasn’t thinking about how I could use it to make difference in my business. So Tenika said ‘you can use your network to maximize on that’. So right now between myself, and the website team, we manage to maximize social media as much as humanly possible.
I realize that there are not a lot of Trini or Soca artists that go hard in the social media game. But for me, it’s kind of a case where what you naturally are or are interested in comes in handy and that’s what happened for me.”
4. Social media and the networking it brings seems made for entertainers. How has it helped your brand?
A. “The main thing is it’s two fold. It gives me control over what information is out there, what interaction there is between me and my fan base and future ones, and how I network. It gives me power to control how I want to be seen instead of just waiting for someone to give me a bligh. I can create buzz.
The other side is that like with Twitter it’s real time. Before with MySpace you wouldn’t update for a while, but with Twitter people expect regular updates, sometimes several times a day. Now it’s a conversation as opposed to me bombarding everybody with a stream of info. Now it’s a conversation and that creates more of a dedicated fan base, and they genuinely support me because we have that relationship. It’s much more of a community, which is powerful. People are on Facebook, on their Blackberry, and constantly networking. Everyone is literally plugged into social media now.”
5. Have you noticed other Caribbean entertainers who are successfully using it to push their brands to the next level?
A. “What I’ve noticed is that there are not too many Soca entertainers who go hard on their social media game, across the board. Carnival time some people go hard on Facebook or do up their MySpace page or update their website. There are some who will go on Twitter at a certain time. There are hardly people in Soca or the Trini scene who go hard across the board.
If you look at Reggaeton, Reggae, or Kompa, all the other various territories and genres have a heavy presence across the board. Like a Beenie Man, Busy Signal or Burning Spear, they have a Facebook presence, website, and update regularly and so far that hasn’t happened as much out here. It has forced us to look outside to observe, yuh know to see the direction we want to take ourselves in. Corporate mainstream artistes go hard in general. Right behind them are sub genres like Reggae, Reggaeton, and Kompa. In Europe artistes go hard in social media. I think here… I don’t know if it’s people not being tech savvy or don’t take time to invest…. We’ve been doing this for a while and it works. Old school works too but I’m a new age kinda dude.”
6. A lot of what you do seems very professional and well-made, videos, podcasts, website etc? Who’s responsible for the online look of all things Mista Vybe?
A. “At the end of the day honestly Tenika is responsible for showing us how to improve our social media game. Both my manager Joanne and I were strong on social media. Joanne encouraged me to start the blog, and use other tools to push traffic to the blog then to me. How everything ends up looking is as a result of Jo and I. That’s our vision that we share. We have that in common. We spend a lot of time on it. At a point I was in Trini, and Joanne was in Toronto, so we spent countless hours on Skype going over what we wanted with Tenika or Michelle. Big up Fuzion Movement. They’ll give you horror stories of us saying ‘yeah we like this, but can you change this?’ We have a specific vision of what we want, how it has to look and sound. Of late I edit and co-edit videos. So it’s kind of very much me and management having a clear vision of what we want and that’s why everything is how it is.”
7. What is the potential for social media to generate further interest in the genre?
A. “I think the potential is unlimited already just from our own experiment that we undertook just to promote the blog. It ended up being so much more for us. The networking opened up stuff. Meeting people, and other things came out of it. As far as ideas go, Twitter is a way to throw out an idea, someone says something and it triggers something else. A lot of important alliances came about. Someone emails you and says I like what you’re doing. The same way I met you. Once you keep doing what you doing and there’s value to it people will align themselves with you. Especially in our case, outside of Trini. Yes a lot of opportunities happen in Trini. There’s also a good amount of things that happened outside of Trini for me, e.g. being in Germany and Toronto etc and other things that have nothing to do with Carnival per se have come out of this. That to me is the most striking thing. It gives you a sense of how small the world is.”
8. What advice would you give to up and coming artistes who want to get their name out there?
A. “The first and most important thing that people try to skip over is good product. Make sure your craft is on point. It doesn’t matter how much you Facebook or Twitter, if your stuff sucks, it sucks. Get a good producer with the budget you can afford, or learn to produce like I do. In our era technology makes it easy to do things, but you’ve got to start with a good polished product.
Pay attention to your image. A lot of Caribbean entertainers doh take their image seriously, and think: ‘We’ll wait until we get big’. Do a good photo shoot; you don’t want to be out there with a fuzzy image and ol’ shirt. Have a good product, have a focus as to where you want to go, and if you’re doing things right things will happen, people will align with you. You have to start with a good base… most importantly. A lot of young entertainers want to come out, have a tune, have someone featured on it and come out big. People forget product is key. It’s not just Facebooking. All of the people who you see making it big off social media also have a good product. Before anybody signed them, there were thousands or a million people saying this kid is good. Go hard. Do it like a job… like it’s your 9-5. If product is good, everything else will fall into place. The momentum will build.”
9. What’s next?
A. “As I said the focus is Carnival. We still have some surprises up our sleeve so stay tuned. After Carnival there’s gonna be more…. Our new slogan is “It’s NOT just Soca”; there are gonna be a lot more styles and tunes. I’m gonna be releasing more things for other carnivals. I work with other producers who do stuff for other carnivals as well as Caribana and Labour Day. We have a few projects coming up that are not just Soca-related. We’re working on the solo Mista Vybe album. That again will be Soca and other things I do like hip hop, R&B, Reggae/Dancehall, electro etc.”
10. Any shout outs?
A. “The Marcano Management Group - my management out of Toronto, Sandhya Khanna – our media consultant who really works hard, Michelle Williams and Fuzion Movement who help us with online marketing, Tenika of www.YoungFreshNew.com, Jester of ThisIsJester.com who I did the “Soca Certified Smash” mixtape with, Doc Jones HD, De La Vega, DJ Naughty V, Madmen Productions, the HiTTLab, the Great Zeee, Fryktion… and all who support Mista Vybe.”
You can stay up-to-date with all things Mista Vybe at www.MistaVybeWorld.com.
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