Learn how to quickly build a dedicated and loyal fan-base for your music for free.
As musicians, it can be really frustrating when you’ve spent a lot of time (and probably money) on creating music to share with the world.
You’ve carefully written your songs, gone to a studio to get them recorded, or recorded them yourself but your results on Spotify or Apple Music haven’t been as high as you were expecting.
We’ve been there ourselves - it sucks, but you’re not alone!
So many artists fall into all the traps of self-releasing, but without the knowledge, resources, time and money to promote your music properly, your dreams of becoming a rock star probably seem like climbing Everest at the moment.
In this article, we’ll be discussing a few tips on how you can start building your fan base today, meaning that your next release will be more successful, opening up more gig opportunities and get you on your way to making it in the music industry.
Before we dive into the techniques in this article, we need to make one thing absolutely clear – you need to escape the myth that if you create something, people will find it.
In today’s music industry (or any industry for that matter), there are so many people all trying to do the same thing, so the chances of your music being discovered is so tiny that sitting back and waiting for fame to happen is the biggest mistake you can make.
Instead, you need to take proactive measures to achieve the success you want, stop thinking like musicians, and start thinking like a business.
"sitting back and waiting for fame to happen is the biggest mistake you can make"
Contents
Audience Identification, Mind-Sets & Psychology
Interactions
Social Media Optimisation
Content
Build an email list
Get into a gig/release cycle
1. Audience Mindsets & Psychology
Before you can start to build your fan base, you need to think about who you are trying to push your music to.
Nobody wants to “sell-out” to appeal to a wider audience, but if you don’t define your audience before you start, you won’t have a clue how to capture their attention.
Take a few minutes to think about your ideal fan: Where do they hang out online? What music do they listen to? What venues do they go to? What films do they like? What food do they like? What do they do in their free time?
Once you’ve answered those questions, you’ll have a much deeper understanding of your audience and this will allow you to shape your brand around these ideal fans.
Everything you do needs to capture the imagination of your fans, so you need to tailor everything you do to echo the lifestyle that your fans lead.
2. Interactions
Another easy trap to fall into is running your social media like a brand and not as people.
Human beings can resonate far more with other humans that they can with companies, brands or logos.
Your brand is NOT your music, your logo, your artwork – it’s YOU!
You need to interact with your fans as people, not as your musical act: sign off your posts with your name, reply to your comments and social media mentions, and post content with your faces (think rehearsal photos and videos, live performance snippets (more on this later).
Your fans will feel more included and part of the team when they see your face. You want to be building relationships with your audience NOT trying to get more Likes/Follows.
You need to think like a business, but behave like people.
3. Social Media Optimisation
If you’re a small artist who plays a few shows and release once a year, it’s likely that your audience will be finding you on social media, so it’s crucial that everything is set up correctly to maximise the chances of people finding your music and attending your gigs in the future.
Even if someone sees you at a gig, if they like what they hear, they’re probably going to head to Facebook or Instagram to find you, so it’s crucial everything looks professional, clean and easy for them to find what they’re looking for.
Firstly, choose your platforms - we suggest that you start with Facebook and Instagram, adding others if you think your audience uses others more.
You should also have a YouTube, SoundCloud and BandCamp account to share your music directly.
Then, make sure all your handles are the same - your handles are either the @....... or the text after .com/……..
You should choose something that is easy to remember, includes your artist name and is available on all platforms.
Don’t choose something crazy like weird spellings, numbered version of the letters in your artist name. Ideally, just go with your artist name, or put ”band” or “official” after it.
Head to https://www.namecheckr.com to check if the handle you want to use is available across the platforms you use.
Next, make sure you put all your links in the about sections or bios of your social media channels so people can go between platforms easily and quickly.
Having worked with many artists in the past, there’s nothing more frustrating for me than not being able to find what I want.
Use tools like https://toneden.io or https://www.linkfire.com to create smart links to your other channels.
You probably spent a while creating a logo for yourself, which is great – it should be eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing, but DON’T use it as your profile picture.
Your profile picture should be a professionally shot photo of you (and your band if you’re a group).
We suggest you only use your logo on your artwork.
Lastly, you need to post regularly.
Facebook and Instagram prioritise posts from pages who post regularly, have high interactions rates (viral content) and relevancy.
Sadly, smaller pages (probably like yours) will fall short on all of these points, as irregular posts will lead to lower reach, which leads to lower interaction rates, which leads to lower relevancy.
It’s a vicious cycle, so you need to post frequently to start beating the algorithms but most importantly stay “top-of-mind” with your audience.
This is a concept which is so important in any industry, and it essentially means that if your name keeps showing up in people’s inboxes, notifications or timelines, they are more likely to remember you, interact with your content and buy your music.
This is because you're building relationships, likeability and trust. Read on to see what kind of content you should be posting…
4. Content
Your content on social media is what people will first see when they hear about you from a friend, see you play a show or find you online somewhere.
You need to have varied and regular content to appear organically on Facebook to as many people as possible.
Video is by far the number one way to get in front of your existing fans and reach new ones online.
As an artist, you might be concerned to hear this, as creating music videos is difficult and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be high quality content.
Remember, you’re trying to capture the imagination of your followers and build relationships, so things like in-the-studio videos or rehearsal videos are an easy way to show your fans what you’re up to.
It’s best to avoid posting links to content that point away from the platform you’re posting on.
We suggest you post a photo or video that shows what the post is about, and then post the external link in the comments and pin it to the top.
It’s also best to avoid using text that sound salesy or desperate.
You obviously want people to go and listen to your content, but they will get annoyed if they’re constantly being asked to do something.
Using links in the comments allows your fans to see a clip of your music and then click through if they want.
Check out The Unsigned Guide's article for more tips on engaging content!
5. Build an Email List
Building an email list is a fantastic way of reaching your audience.
This is because your emails go directly to your fans and they will actually care about you if they bothered to sign up for your mailing list.
Remember, the reason people sign up to a mailing list is because it’s a subscription, so you need to share regularly (otherwise it’s not a subscription).
It’s good to start with monthly updates, as more frequent than this would probably be too difficult for most of you reading this, but any less frequent doesn’t allow you to stay top of mind.
Read this article from Ditto to learn how to build an email list fast.
6. Get into a gig/release cycle
We’re going to be covering this in a later article, but getting into a gig/release cycle helps you to achieve everything we’ve mentioned in this article so far.
Imagine this: if you play a show at the start of every month, and release a single half way through each month, you create a 2-week exposure window for your audience.
Using this strategy, you can get into a monthly campaign of creating social content, releasing music, promoting your gig(s), all of which means you have more views, interactions and relevancy on your posts.
This means you can sell more tickets, get more streams and start your way to success.
The critical point here is that your gigs and releases have an objective.
Imagine standing on stage and saying to the audience “We put a new single every month, and our next one is in two weeks” and your social content can say something like “Our new single dropped this morning, and we’ve got a show in two weeks! Catch us at [venue name] on [date]”.
Key Points
That about wraps up this guide. We hope you found it useful!
We have a few key points to help you keep your career on track and build your fan base as quickly as possible:
Post videos (gigs, behind the scenes, practise sessions)
Release more regularly
Set objectives to your posts, release and gigs
Create a monthly to-do list