Being an independent artist is much more than just making music. In order for your hard work and talent to not go to waste, you must get your music in front of people. The first things you may think of when it comes to the question of how to further your career as a musician is promotion, marketing, and advertising.
It is typically difficult to promote successfully music without first forming some form of artist brand. You may have heard this term before, but you may not truly understand what your brand fully is yet.
While your brand does include your colors, fonts, logo, and website, it is much deeper than that. For this article we will be covering 5 important steps to building your brand and career as a musician. While this is great for artists just starting out, it is also very beneficial to already established artists as well. It’s always great to make sure you’re doing the necessary things to keep success operating at the highest levels.
Establish your Image and Personality
The first thing that you should focus on establishing is what image and personality you would like to present to the world. This is who you are as an artist overall and what makes you unique. Keeping it authentic and genuine always goes the furthest so try to stay true to you, but try identifying a specific trait you can build on. This should be genuine to you while also relating to your music.
For example, an artist with emo music may build their image around that. While they may not always be an emo mood, this is the personality and image they present to the world. Your image includes what you wear, how you act, the content you share on social media, and really everything surrounding your music and artist brand. For an emo artist, this may mean they wear “gothic” style clothing, write emotional captions, and share emo memes.
Stay Consistent
Consistency means two things in this case. First, it means having a consistent style, image, and personality across all platforms. If your brand style includes pink, butterflies, and other happy things, you shouldn’t randomly post black and red darker stanic content. This is not the interest of your fans and is not what they are following you for.
Secondly, consistency means posting and engaging consistently across multiple platforms. Focus on one platform like Instagram or TikTok, but don’t forget the rest. Try to post 3-7 times per week on your platform of choice. You can use this same content and recycle it to other platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Don’t forget to consistently engage with your fans and random people on these social media. This builds a stronger connection between your fans and yourself, but also helps the algorithm show your post to more people. Make sure to spend time engaging with strangers who are also part of your target market so you can gain new fans!
Identify your Target Market
Identifying your target market makes it easier and more effective when promoting your music and interacting with potential fans on social media. By identifying your target market you know exactly who your fans are and what kind of content they are looking to consume. Ask questions like, “how old are they?”, “what do they do for fun?”, “what kind of jobs do they have?”, “where do they shop?”, “what apps do they use?”. By identifying the answers to these questions, and more, you will know exactly what niche market to target and ways to do it. For example, if your fans shop regularly at small book stores, try getting your music for sale there or even just playing over the speaker.
Knowing your target market allows you to come up with successful content and engage on social media effectively. For example, if your target market is teenage girls that love to dance, then you should focus on creating a dance trend to your music.
Identifying your target market also helps when coming up with hashtags to use for your posts. For that same target market, hashtags may include: #HipHopDancers #DancersOfLA #HighSchoolDancers #DanceDreamTeam. Make sure you are choosing hashtags that have under 100k posts, and preferably 1k-50k. This allows for your post to actually be shown within those hashtags. Use these hashtags to engage with other users that use the same hashtags!
Build a Fanbase and Interact
Your fans are the most important aspect of your artist career. Winning over fans is even more important than winning over the industry. Without fans your hard-work goes to waste and you will make very little money, if any. Building your fanbase is the first step to your artist career after making music. You can even begin to build your fanbase before releasing music.
Building your fanbase is best executed on social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook. After identifying your target market, choose a platform that these people are on the most. For example, Gen Z is mostly on TikTok and Instagram while Boomers are on Facebook. Millennials seem to be on the widest variety of platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Twitch, and more.
Once you’ve decided on a main platform to focus on you must post content consistently, content that your target market wants to see. Once you have content posted you can begin to interact with other users. Create a list of 20-30 hashtags that your target market would be using and comment on posts within the hashtags daily. Make sure to comment something meaningful, not just emojis.
Once you’ve built up a fanbase, make sure to interact and engage with your new fans! Your artist career is about way more than just your music. It’s about the monetization of a personal connection. The stronger connection you can build, the more loyal your fans will be.
Give your Fans a Reason to be Loyal
Once you have built a fanbase, you want to grow the connection between you and your fans even deeper. The more you can show your face and personality while also engaging with your fans, the deeper the connection you will build. You can show your face and personality by streaming on platforms like Twitch or getting interviewed by music blogs.
A way you can engage deeper with your fans is through creating a community on Discord. Pop artist JAWNY is an example of an artist that has successfully done this. He has almost 700 fans that have joined and there is constant engagement. It seems like his fans feel as if he is a friend of theirs. They even share inside jokes. It’s safe to say the majority of his fans on Discord are loyal and are more than willing to financially support him. This should be your goal.
There are many other ways to create deeper connections with your fans. By really understanding who your target market is, you will be able to effectively identify which platforms, trends, and content they use and want.
If you have done these 5 things to build your artist brand, you are on the right track for a successful career in music!
Remember, it’s all about building relationships and ultimately the monetization of an emotional connection will occur when someone wants to support you.
Winning over fans is more important than winning over the industry!
If you have any questions please reach out to us via email at info@respectmyregion.com or directly to me via IG @hannahlistensto.
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