Musicians Can’t Wait For New Fans To Find Them, They Must SeekThem Out
Guest post by Michael Brandvold Founder/CEO, Michael Brandvold Marketing and Co-host, The Music Biz Weekly Podcast.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Google+, SoundCloud, ReverbNation… the list goes on and on and on. I am sure many of you have profiles on all if not many of these sites.
But what are you doing on those sites?
Just having a presence on a site does not mean fans find you. Build it and they will come does not exist. Outside of known name artists fans are not going to spend much time searching out bands they have never heard of. This means it is your job to find your next fan and introduce yourself to them.
The difference in the number of fans you could have on one of these sites can be dramatically different between bands that seek out fans and bands that just wait for the fans to find them. A calculated plan to search for fans can increase fans over seven fold in less than two weeks, I have seen these results. This can mean the difference of having 150 fans or having more than 1000 fans.
It is your job to find your next fan.
Search is one of your best tools for locating fans. Search artists in similar style to you and reach out to their fans. Find radio stations that play your genre of music and reach out to their listeners. On a daily basis you should be looking for more fans. Set yourself a goal everyday.
Pick one social network and focus on it first. Don’t take them all on at once. I feel Twitter is one of the easiest sites to seek out fans. Once you find a fan on Twitter you can then follow them to Facebook or other sites they may use. Hell, just ask them to follow you on Facebook. Don’t think the results will be big on a daily basis, you will not have a 1000 new fans by tomorrow morning no matter how many ads tell you otherwise. My efforts are seeing about 10-20% of the fans you seek out actually end up following you back.
Make sure your profiles are active and exciting, nobody is going to follow an account that looks dead. You need to have a plan of where you are going to look for these fans… day in and day out and a plan on how you are going to build a relationship with these new fans.
If you are looking for help on how to find fans on Twitter I encourage you to check out the webinar I hosted with Brian Thompson, How To Use Twitter to Promote Your Music.
And perhaps a good thing to add to the “Make sure your profiles are active and exciting” section is to also make sure those profiles don’t make you look like a spammer. You need to show you are capable of real communication and not just look like a walking advert
Great point Sarah. I see so many Twitter profiles with no profile photo and no description. Nobody is taking you serious if you can’t spend one minute to update these two items.
Thanks Michael! your article really grabbed my attention. Just found out about hypebot from a College DJ named Dirty Glitter….so i checked it out. Hope you and your readers find this New Social Media tip below a happy and interesting New Years find and don’t mind me sharing!
Hey Social Media Seekers!
RadioFlag.com has been compared to twitter for radio. However, it is selectively focused on LIVE RADIO Only. It harbors a community of Music/Musicians ,Dj’s, & Talk host personalities, who socially connect and promote themselves, while interacting with their listeners and fans On-Air-Live and in Real time.
RadioFlag is Radio driven “Niche” Social Media, where Music Artists can promote themselves to a national audience , get booked by arrangement with Radio Dj’s who focus on their genre, and listeners who are seeking specific/ niche genres.
Artists can interact and promote themselves to their Radio listening fans by posting messages “Flags”, @mention radio listeners , posting links/photos, ….. OH and send Fan comments directly to FB and TWitter at the same time if they want. We are a totally inclusive-One stop shopping; social media for a New generation of radio listeners.
RF is a new start up company,still in Beta. The company launched ‘nationally’ just 3 months ago, as the official App of College Radio day. College DJ’s and Indie Station Networks from all over the country are using it currently. We stream thousands of terrestrial, internet stations, and adding more international stations. In addition to our website platform, we have mobile apps for iPhone, Android, and soon releasing windows 7 , and blackberry platforms. So…you can Listen and interactive Live while on the Go!
RadioFlag Spotlights Up-and-coming artists, Djs, talk hosts in their New ‘Save The RadioStar’ blog. Go ahead and Check it out http://blog.radioflag.com/articles/rebirth-of-a-radio-star
Yes! …your so smart… you caught me..I could not resist posting something and gettin this info out after reading this perfect “set up” article. I do work with RadioFlag , and its pretty cool I must say.
Therefore ,I am happy to answer inquiries for interested parties , so contact me if you like…Oh & if you are or know of a Talented band or musicians, we are open to taking to you , and possibly assisting you after initial review. Annika AT radioflag.com
Thanks All!
Flag On!
A
One good way around this Sarah that works incredibly well for me is to openly post about and feature people that make music and art you like that are similar to you. Find our what your fans like apart from you and support them with this. Don’t be jealous if the other guys you feature seem to become more successful than you quicker. Chances are they have done other ground work for their success.
The climax is when you actually get around to posting something about yourself and what you are doing. The response can be phenomenal, a sort of karmic rebound for your generosity in pleasing your fans with things not connected to you.
Good article!
One other thought is to mention your twitter handle at shows. Strike up a conversation about it in between songs, ask people to follow you, or have a contest that give the 1,000th follower a free CD.
Quite a few times just bringing it to people’s attention will get you a few followers.
Thanks,
Greg
I think a lot of bands fall into the trap of “sell sell sell” when trying to promote themselves on social media. I love the tip about not focusing on too many social networks, the thing that people forget is the point of a network is to be social. This means ENGAGING in conversation.
For example, you don’t go to a party and just talk at people without stopping to listen to what they have to say and interacting with them.