Do you want to grow your fan base and keep fans engaged with your work as a music artist?
Growing your fan base (and keeping them engaged) as a music artist can be tough, but there are plenty of tools out there that can help.
A musician doesn't necessarily need to be signed by a major label or have thousands of fans or followers. The only thing that matters for your music career is to build a few hundred or thousand "true fans".
Your own evangelists. Think of them as your own army of ambassadors.
In this blog post, we'll go over some of the best ways to build engagement for musicians. We'll cover everything from connecting with fans on social media to building a website or blog that is optimized for SEO.
There are many ways to build engagement with fans as a music artist. We'll cover some of the best tools you can use below, but first, let's look at an overview of what it means to grow your fan base and keep them engaged.
Ready to get started?
Then let's dive in.
Connecting with fans on social media
Let’s talk about connecting with fans.
When it comes down to it, there are three major ways you can engage with your fans on social media - by being active and responding to messages, or by posting content that will generate a lot of buzz when it's published, and by creating live streams.
We'll talk about how you can do these two things below:
Post Content That Engages Fans
Your fans need to hear from you.
They want to follow, share, like (and maybe even dislike) what you put out there. Social media is your chance to connect to millions of potential, interested, and passionate fans who could swing vote you to glory (or sometimes not).
The only way to ensure that you build your fan base on social media is to post content regularly. Little updates that drip into their life. Post your music, create videos of "behind the scenes" action, or maybe just talk to your fans about your day at work.
Show them how you write lyrics, produce songs, the number of "takes" for a string of music, or share how the music you produced came to be (and the story behind it).
Further, share all other content that you create (blog posts, actual music videos, audio clips, jingles, and even the casual garage jam sessions with your local band).
Be Active and Responding to Messages
If you share passively, a passive fan base is what you get. You need an active fan base so that this fan engagement takes your music career to where it needs to go.
To have an active and engaged fan base, you need to be active yourself.
After creating, publishing, distributing, and sharing your content, go out there and be actively responding to comments, messages, and more.
Go out of your way to thank people who share your work. Get into small conversations with as many of them as possible.
Note: this is applicable on every single platform (social media or not).
Launch Live streams
Live streaming is the closest you can get to doing live events. Live streaming is real-time and it comes included with mistakes you end up making, your flaws, and everything that makes you, "you".
Live streaming is the best way to build engaged, hyperactive, and true fans for your music work.
Where do you live stream? There are more places now than you can manage: YouTube Live, Instagram Live, Facebook Live, and Amazon Live (which can also double up as a great way to become an influencer by promoting products related to music, music gear, and more).
Building a website or blog that is Optimized for SEO
Despite all of the venues available online, some people want to dig into text. Circumstances might not allow them to watch live streams or maybe some countries don't have access to certain platforms (No Facebook in China, see?).
Plus, the written text allows you to put your thoughts down clearly, in a polished way that makes for some great reading material for your fans.
So, write and maintain a blog. Writing SEO-optimized content on your blogs also helps you get more traffic (which means more fans).
Note: Do share your posts on social media for that extra boost.
Run relevant contests
Running occasional contests takes advantage of several things at once and helps you build a strong fanbase (and fast):
First, the age-old human need for excitement (and winning something in exchange for it).
Second, it makes for memory (and memories last longer than your social media updates).
Third, contests directly encourage people to share your music with others (who are still outside your fan base). This helps you reach more people than you'd have otherwise missed.
Run contests and let the winners get exclusive access to your premium music content, for instance.
Are you getting ideas already?
Would you like guidance, resources, tools, and the help needed to grow your music career or your music business? Join HyperTribe today.
Want to get the latest updates? Join below