Music Business For Dummies
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Content is king in the music business. It draws people back to your website, stores, products, and you. Applying the most engaging content that draws a direct and indirect interest in you is a requirement to connect with new fans as you continue to maintain and keep interest brewing with your existing fan base.

Your fair sharing of content

Quality over quantity is going to win every time, and it’s the best approach to take. Whereas it’s key to produce regular content on a daily basis, an excess of too many posts every day will come off as spamming and annoying.

Dueling dualities of your posts and engagement

Every post has a three-fold purpose. Here are the three fundamental pieces and actions:

  1. Engage and draw interest from new fans.

  2. Maintain interest and engagement with existing fans.

  3. Convert new and existing fans to purchases, shares, and promoting to others.

Posting content versus posting the sell

The content comes first and then the sell comes next in order to engage and maintain new and existing fans both.

Imagine that you post about a new album some friends just released. You give the link and ask your fans to check out the new music and leave a short review. At the end of your post, you can add your call to action so they can find out more about you . . . and voilá. You’ve just offered something fun for new and existing fans, that being a new band and a place to go for new fans to find out more about you.

Automating messages can be trouble

At one point, an automated message was sent when a fan starting following you. This feature had a great conversion rate . . . for a while, at least.

The bad side is that these autoreplies can come off as impersonal and turn off fans. Be careful if you add an automated message on Twitter. Give it a sense of personalization, but keep it professional.

Other options include adding a message about a free download, or inviting fans to check out a new song sample. You can also add a link to a video — or better yet, to a video that welcomes a fan and gives them an introduction that is not available as a public video.

Respecting the fan, not the fan number

Identifying that you just hit a milestone of 500, 5,000, or 50,000 fans is something for you or for industry professionals to know, not your fan base itself. By posting updates about how humbled, excited, or amazed you are to hit a certain number of fans, followers, views, likes, friends and so on, while cool for you, disrespects those who have been with you for a long time.

Marketing to fans outside of music

You don’t need to become a fan of sports, films, and cultural events, but respect what your fans are into. Try to tie into some of the larger events with a post about a song, a Super Bowl discount you’re offering fans, or something that enables that much more engagement with those who are already engaged with the event.

Political or religious posting

Be careful when it comes to political and religious postings.

If you want to talk politics or religion and that is part of your vibe, brand, or music, then go for it. That said, however, understand that fans might be turned off and turned away by your political or religious beliefs. If you’re able to keep your these beliefs for your personal life, you may find a much greater chance to reach a much wider audience.

Overly personal and private posting

Engaging with your fans is a wonderful thing. Giving them pieces of you outside of music is also great for a vicarious connection to elements they might have in common with you. Still, leave some of the details private, and let your personal and private life be just that.

News jacking posts and comment jacking

While it’s good to cross-market and tie into certain mainstream events, draw the line at news jacking. News jacking is where you take a news-related or trending post that has absolutely nothing to do with you and use it in an exploitive manner.

News jacking works two ways. You might share news about the death of a celebrity and then create a post that puts the focus on you or your music. Or someone posts about a topic that has nothing to do with you and your music; a topic-related thread goes on but then you post something about your new song or a concert date.

Repeating posts over and over and over

In a sense, this breaks all the good-practice posting rules by being redundant and not considering the audience that’s already seen the post.

If you want to bring continued attention to a purchase link, video, social media site, and so on, reset the headline and revamp the content to reinforce the interest in fans both old and new.

Keeping an eye on the walls

Keep those walls clean and remember that this is the first visit and first impression for a new fan. Make sure you’re presenting yourself in a way that draws people in immediately over making them have to search and scroll for information.

Engaging and tolerating the critics and the haters

Not everyone is going to like your music, and there are a lot of people on social media who are more than happy to share that fact with you. Take it all in stride and don’t worry about trying to defend your music, look, show, or anything else.

The cooler you can be, the better the long-term results. Engage, but play nice, even when they aren’t. This works well for your appearance with other fans, but also with how you’re seen by the industry.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Loren Weisman is a music business consultant, speaker, and author who has been a part of over 700 albums. He also maintains TV production credits for three major networks and has served as a media consultant for many businesses in and out of the arts and entertainment fields. Loren is an executive producer and co-creator of Leveraging Smart, a new reality business TV show airing in 2016.

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