How To Build An Engaged Fanbase

Building an engaged fanbase online and learning how to get more followers is important if you are going to succeed as a singer in the music industry.

Social media is just that – it’s social and it involves media and it’s important to understand those two terms if you’re going to build a fan base.

So often with new artists all you see is “listen to my single”, “I’m releasing a new single”,  “look at picture of me in the studio”,  “buy my single”.   This is in your face boring stuff which people don’t want to see.

Why do you go on to social media?

You go on to social media to connect with friends, perhaps to see funny videos – whatever the reason, you do it for a break from reality. You don’t do it to be bombarded with loads of musicians trying to get you to listen to their latest single do you?  And you don’t do it necessarily to buy loads of stuff from other businesses. So it’s very important to consider yourself as a business, because you are trying to get more fans and get people to listen to your music, which is in effect the product that you make.

But you have to do this in a clever way that really works.

Getting more followers and keeping more followers means engaging with your fanbase in a way that’s not annoying to them and where you give them value and actively engage them.

For example, if you were to subscribe to our YouTube Channel so that you can watch all of our TuesdayTopTips,  it’s because you want to watch these tips, you want to be better at what you do as an artist and you know that this can help you get there.

It’s the same if you’re working on Facebook as an artist, or if you’re posting on Instagram. If you want people to follow your music and you want people to pre save all your singles, you need to build trust in a community that likes what you do.

So the first tip in relation to building a fan base, is to go online and have a look at artists who are similar to you.

Really dissect what they do on their own pages and Instagram feeds.  See whether they have a certain theme, whereby they use the same colour scheme (for example Ariana Grande on her Instagram seems to use the same colour filters which are kind of pastel-coloured).

You could potentially go for something like that, or you could look at the timing of when they put their posts out and see whether there is a particular schedule they stick to – as having a regular time when you post is also important for consistency when it comes to building a fanbase and working with a similar target audience.  For example, if you’ve seen a lot of our TuesdayTopTip series, you know that we post at 4pm UK time on a Tuesday. If you watch a TV program you know it comes out on x day at y time.  Imagine if they just released it whenever they felt like it?  How could you possibly get into watching it if you never knew when it would be on?

The second tip would be to make sure that you treat each platform differently.

Don’t just post the same content on every platform because they are very different to each other.  Video content on TikTok is going to work great on TikTok, but might not work at all on Facebook or Twitter.   Just like on Instagram you’re mainly looking at images. So treat each platform as its own thing.

Don’t go overboard with the amount of platforms that you use so that it just becomes saturated and you can’t deal with the amount of things you have to do. But equally don’t just concentrate all your efforts on one platform, because not everybody uses the same platform that you do as your number one.

Tip number three is making sure you create content with a good ratio of personal, professional or promotional types of content.

People want to see you as a human being and therefore, posting personal photos is important –  you on a beach, you on holiday, you with your pets, you doing sewing at home, whatever it is that that makes it you.

This shows people that you are somebody who they can connect with, somebody who’s like them.

Then we have professional.  That is pictures of you doing your craft. Whether it be you in the studio, you practicing on a stage, you in a concert…whatever it might be, those are the professional images.

And then finally, promotional.  Listen to my single, download my new single, my new single’s out. But that should be the least that you post.

Tip number four is don’t reinvent the wheel.

Look at things that have gone viral. Look at things which people like to hear. For example, harmony videos where people do multiple layers of harmony.  There are plenty of songs and you could choose to do a new take on that. It’s not a new idea, but it can certainly get you great views. One of our artists got over 400,000 views, doing a similar thing. And again, it’s not Reinventing the wheel, it’s doing something that people like to see and it can help you to grow a fanbase for your music.

So, have a look on things like TikTok and see what really is trending, what people love – and create your own video of that style and go with it. You may find that you get loads more fans and loads more followers from doing something like that.

Tip number five is don’t forget to use hashtags.

Hashtags are really important to tell the computer (or the system that you’re putting your image into) what this is actually about.

If you have an active fan base with millions of fans, you probably don’t need as many hashtags because you’ve already got your fan base and they will see your new posts anyway because they follow you.

If you’re new and you’re trying to grow a fan base, you need those hashtags to bring new people on, because people searching for certain images like “Studio UK”, “producers UK”, “rappers us” “rappers”, whatever it might be, they might search for that hashtag and then your image will come up, or your post will come up, because you’ve put that hashtag in your post and told Instagram or whichever platform you are using that this is what your image is about and that really can drive traffic to your profile!

This is why it’s really important to include hashtags, because you can then attract a new audience to your posts.

My final tip would be ask questions in your post. 

If you ask questions that need a response, you can increase your engagement rate. “Have you ever done this before?” “Can you sing as high as I can?” post your video.    whatever it might be, do something which requires a response from the person watching it. Because if they comment or like your post, or if they share it, their friends will see that too and so on.  That then grows your reach massively.

Don’t forget to head over to our YouTube channel and subscribe for more #TuesdayTopTips and good luck building your fanbase!