When putting on large-scale shows back in the day it was artists like the lottery winner who showed me how to become a full-time musician, they said to me “Josh with the bands you have worked with do they often have over 1000 followers?” I said “ The majority do yes”
“ahh so here’s the hard bit, just turn those 1000 into superfans, if each of them pays just £8.33 a month on a t-shirt or a gig ticket that band will turnover £100,000 a year.”
Learning these tips and tricks progressed the artists we worked with, it gave us all targets and direction. We sat down with our clients and created a 24-month plan to achieve this goal. We said we would be consistent on social media, put a regular ad budget and stick to trends to build our 1000 superfans. Through research, we found that if our social media followers interacted with our client in 7 different capacities we could hook them as superfans. We did this by clipping the same song in different formats such as acoustic, acapella and keyboard. Clips like this even filmed on your phone in your kitchen… can blow you up, believe me!
So if you are an artist who is bored of playing in the same city in the same venues to the same audience you need to start building the foundations around you as the very best are putting all of their efforts into the main ingredient for an artist’s success which is, of course, the music. They are having all of their time into creating the best music possible. So here are the three ingredients needed:
Show yourself as a true brand
Get a proven music manager to take the business side of music
Get a connected booking agent to guarantee paid shows in front of full crowds.
But Josh how do I make myself a true brand, that’s coming up but think about what artists you love and their brand. How did you first discover them? Through a friend, maybe an Instagram ad “POV you just found your new favourite artists swipe up to listen to their Spotify”. For me, it’s all about finding common ground that truly connects someone to your music. I fell for it just yesterday “songs that make you feel like a villain” I loved them all and added them straight into my playlists! One of the songs I loved so much that I downloaded his whole catalogue.
As an artist, you need to put your head in business mode. What is your Unique selling point? What makes you different to other artists in your genre?
Once you have written them down you need to write next to the reasons why that adds value to your customer market. Is it entertaining? Factual? Is it relatable to a niche?
Then write down some big- well-known artists who are already doing it. At this point, you know what you are, what value you add and to who you can market that too. I would be posting daily content that has been made in a great quality filming (the latest phones can do this) and format it specifically to each social media your posting on to please their algorithms. If your reading this and thinking im writing in a different language or you don’t have enough time to do this balancing brand practice and a full-time job. Do what the best do and hire an expert. Most will charge a lot of money I won’t deny that but there are competitors of LMSUK (My business) who have amazing value for money or come to us directly who take pride in affordable social media management as artists come first.
What LMSUK account specialists will do is create a 24-month marketing strategy, they know the latest updates on socials to keep you competitive and relevant. By doing the latest trends consistently and us paying the social media companies to advertise IT WILL GROW, you will get loyal fans who are not friends and family in new areas. PR rarely blows up musicians now in the modern day however social media is blowing up artists every single day.
Realistically if you’re paying a social media app money to promote yourself and it’s on trend, high-quality and most importantly CONSISTENT! They will push your content to the top to reward you for being a top-performing content creator on their application. At LMSUK we tell every single artist that joins us this process will likely take up to 12 months to build to a sustainable level.
Once you are at a level where engagement is high and you increase followers regularly you can start to monetise your followers. Even the biggest businesses/ artists in the world somehow make every single follower almost feel like a friend in the way they can engage with them. Tom Grennan jumping on live feed to answer fan questions or Myles Kane offering a secret link where all his best fans can chat and receive discounts. It brings the follower closer to the artists, once that connection is there a relationship can start to build.
When posting regular content it’s important you can hook people in, here are some of my favourite that has caused content to go viral:
“This may be controversial but…”
“Everything you knew about X is wrong!”
“Come with me to do X”
“I found the best life hack….”
“This one mistake could be costing you, X”
“The story of X”
“What would you do if X”
“I discovered the secret to X”
