Tips to grow your Fan base

You’ve seen it before the independent artists that spam all the big bloggers and personalities on the web via Twitter, Facebook or in their Instagram comments.

Some of these artistes are the ones who leave comments promoting their music on posts that have nothing to do with music. You don’t want to be one of those.

Spamming people on the Internet is no different from walking up to strangers, interrupting their conversations or phone calls, and demanding that they stop everything they are doing and listen to your music. Rude, much? Believe it or not, with some work and dedication and genuine interactions, you can get people to listen to your music without spamming them.

Here are the 5 important and surest way to get poeple listen to your song.

1. Do Not Ask for Anything

Your first apptroach to a potential fan should not be asking them to do anything. They don’t know you.

There is no existing relationship. You are a stranger, and really, 9 times out of 10, no one responds to someone who is a stranger. Remember “stranger, danger!”? Exactly.

Building a fan base and disseminating your music should fall into the 80/20 rule when you are approaching new people – 80% of interactions should be building a relationship on a personal level and providing relatable content.

20% of interactions should be promotion solely. This is a great balance that lets you not appear too indifferent and makes the fans feel special and not like they are just being “talked” at.

Once you’ve established a rapport, the quality of your content will be what gets them to stick around and to become disciples of your music

2. Understand Your Audience’s Behavior

Research, research, research! To know your audience is to have all the power in your hands. It’s your job to understand where your audience spends their time, why they spend their time there, what they are looking for, and how much time they spend there as well.

Content is king, and it drives most types of platforms in different ways. For example, Twitter is more about conversation/back and forth type dialogue.

Instagram has little to no dialogue outside of comments and is image driven. Facebook is a space for sharing, commenting and threads with interaction and discussion.

You should be providing them the right kind of content via the right platform for maximum dissemination and blog like Naijaloaded for better promotion.

The next part after you’ve done the research is to make sure the content you’re providing on your channels redirect fans back to your original material.

If memes are popular on Instagram, you should be posting those as well, but make sure there’s some direct connection to your material that is easily accessible within the restrictions of that platform.

If your Twitter name is the same as your Instagram name, cross promote both usernames to get additional followers, for example, by tagging your memes with that information.

3. Be A True Fan of Your “Fans"

There’s nothing worse for an average Joe then following their favorite artist only to see them retweeting compliments and random show dates only. That’s not interaction. That’s being on a pedestal.

It pays to show genuine interest in your fans. Regularly responding back to fans and discovering what types of things they enjoy, will go much further than just retweeting one-sided compliments and tossing out random show dates via some automated service.

4. Provide Incentives That Fulfill A Strong Desire

While providing such cool incentives like behind the scenes footage, show tickets and merchandise are great to keep preexisting fans, it probably won’t garner you too many new fans. Why? Like mentioned above – there’s no relationship! You need to find incentives that would be better suited to attract new fans not familiar with your music.

A few examples might be giveaways that cater to their interests (electronics, gift cards, etc.) or raffling an experience that might make them become a fan – a studio meet & greet, an event with open bar, etc.

5. Collaborate With Similar Artists and Fans

No man/woman is an island. There are other similar artists in your lane more than likely with bigger followings than you. By tapping into that network organically, you can also attract new fans to your music.

Share their songs and posts with your followers/fans. Comment on their discussions.

Create playlists around your music that includes their music and share those as well, tagging them and any other artists along the way.

There’s a high chance they might share that playlist with their network as well (if they like it!). Once you’ve established some rapport with your fellow artists and shown that y’all are all in it to win it, they will continue to share your material possibly and vice versa.

You’ve turned being a fan yourself of a fellow artist into more fans for you as well (see Step 3 above!). Collaborating with your followers is another great idea.

If you’ve done a cover of something that someone comments they really love, turn that around and ask them what they want to hear next.

Collaboration can come from both sides of the velvet rope, so to speak.

These are just a few ideas to get you started on getting your music out to your musical peers and even potential fans.

Don’t be the guy who walks around with an extra pair of headphones on the street, asking people if they want to listen to his mixtape. They don’t! Likewise, don’t Spam anyone and everyone on the Internet with a link to your Soundcloud. It won’t work.

The steps above are just a template, and you can surely find more creative ways of sharing your talent.

Thanks for viewing!!