By: Kieran Tonks

  Hello there! My name is Kieran Tonks, I’m a 23-year-old drummer from the most easterly point of the UK, Suffolk, and I’m a proud endorser of Collision Drumsticks. I’ve been drumming since I was 7 years old and what a journey it has been so far. I started out with drum lessons in a music studio in my hometown which was fantastic and really did kick-start my love and passion for not only drums, but for music itself. After a while, I decided to stop taking lessons and get creative with my playing and really build my ‘own style’ of how I wanted to play the drums, hoping that one day people would recognise me for that. My love for drums has grown massively over the past 3-4 years after joining my first ever band ‘A Thousand Voices’. I am very lucky to be a founding member of the band, and have been there from the very start to help build a strong recognition and fan base for a still very ‘new’ metalcore band. Having a plan and a vision/direction in mind that leads to an end goal is critical whilst being in the creative industry. When you don’t have a plan, it can sometimes take a toll on your mindset and you can quite easily fall into bad habits and eventually fall out of love with what you’re doing because you’re not getting the results that you want. In this blog post, I’m going to be walking you through my thoughts, actions, and processes for all of my previous, current & future content/projects. I’ll be talking about my content process from start to finish, my practice routine, my branding, and also my release strategy. Hopefully, you can take something out of this and apply it to your own content or projects. Let’s get started on ways to FINE-TUNING YOUR CONTENT !

Direction

The first step is laying down a foundation on what it is that you want out of your drumming journey. If you’ve already made it to this section whilst reading this blog post ,then I would say you are ready to take it to the next level and really begin building a solid ground for your content and getting as much content out into the world whilst maintaining consistent quality and brand. Firstly, decide on the kind of content you want to create, the visual aesthetics of your content, and also your social tone of voice. This is all part of your branding, without this there is no consistency with what you do. Secondly, figure out who your target audience is, whether that be a specific genre of music, a broad range of genres, or no specific areas at all. Carry out some research and see what other people are doing, don’t worry about ‘Copying’ someone else, this is not something you want to do, this is just an inspirational task that will help you figure out the style of content you want to create.

Efficiency

  Next up is your efficiency, this is a vital part in the process of branding and creating content, without this you will find yourself struggling to keep up with a constant workflow of content creation. The first step to an efficient workflow is to create templates that help keep your content on brand, this includes colour grading presets, post templates, story templates, logo’s, icons and font types. With all of these things set in stone, you will find that creating content is a breeze. Once you have all of these things, you then need to think about how you will release your content and how it will be effective to your audience. This involves creating a content schedule and setting out a standard structure for your captions on your posts, how will you explain your picture/video? Will it be short and sweet or do you want to tell a story? All I can advise is that your social channels need to tell a story because people are more interested in reading the how’s and why’s of your content. Without a story or a backbone to your content, you become just another person who chucks videos on the internet without something to engage your audience.

Action

Now that that’s all out of the way, it’s time for the exciting stuff! It’s time to get your content out into the world with your fresh branding, your specific tone of voice, and your effective captions. Now whilst this is an exciting step of the process, don’t get carried away… DON’T POST ALL OF YOUR CONTENT AT ONCE! This is a vital bit of advice that you should try and take on board. If you start dropping all of your videos and content in the first week of the month, what are you going to do for the rest of the month? Exactly! Use the amount of time there is in a month to your advantage, space your content out, and don’t post it as and when you feel like it –  because I can guarantee that will be every day! Doing this will ensure that you never post something just for ‘the sake of posting something’ which can then cause you to come off-brand and see your content lose its aesthetic goodness!

Outcome

Finally, once you have followed these steps for a month of two, look back on your feed and take in all of that hard work you’ve done and how doing the ‘boring’ planning and scheduling was all worth it. Don’t let this fool you and think you’ve completed your task though… As humans we are constantly growing, evolving and changing, just like the internet and social media world! Be sure to keep on top of your content and continue to post following your schedule but always remember to continuously research and take inspiration to see how you can make your content stand out from others! Most importantly, HAVE FUN! The process of creating content, editing, scheduling, and posting can sometimes become draining, but don’t let that blur your vision of your love for DRUMS!

Kieran is an Endorsed Cruise Artist with Collision Drumsticks, based in Norwich, UK. He has played drums for 16 years, and has been playing with his band ‘A Thousand Voices’ for a number of years; the band has accomplished some great things, including winning Our Hollow, Our Home’s ‘Road To Holloween’ to earn a spot opening their sold out annual Halloween event ‘Holloween 3’ at The1865 in Southampton. They have released 3 standalone singles and a 6 track EP which are available to stream on major streaming platforms. With many years of experience in the creative industry, Kieran is a brilliant graphic designer – branding not only his own social media accounts but others too. To learn more from Kieran himself, here’s how you can get in touch:

Kieran Tonks

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