How to build a fanbase

Whether you’re an artist playing to 10 people or 10,000 people, the one unifying thing is your fanbase. The people who are going to turn up to your shows, buy your t-shirts and CDs, tell their friends about you and generally support your every movement are undeniably crucial to building success as an artist. It’s understandably frustrating, then, to see your fanbase grow so slowly, even with major hard work. However, there are a few things that can be really beneficial to building a dedicated fanbase and keeping it.

To be clear here – fanbase isn’t just Facebook likes or people who once accidentally walked past the stage you were playing – were talking about building a dedicated army of people who genuinely will go out of their way to see/listen to/support you. So, with that in mind, how do we grow this group?

Paid Promotion (Social Media)

If you’ve been on any kind of social media in the last 2 years, particularly with a band or artist page, you’ve probably been asked to pay to promote a post. This, for those who are unaware, is an algorithm-based ploy from social media companies where your regular posting will only reach around 10% of your total audience. They then ask you to pay, which boosts it onto your full audience, plus other additional potentially interested parties. The claim made in favour of this is that your posts are boosted into the feed of people who don’t like your page to attain potential new followers and boost your reach.

I recently studied the effects of a boosted post on Facebook. A post, which would regularly have hit 40-50, likes reached almost 6,000 with £7 worth of paid promotion (£1 per day). The reach of the post was increased sevenfold, proving that paid promotion really does put your material in front of more eyes. With that being said, the demographic reached was definitely not the target market, in fact in most cases it was almost the polar opposite of what would have been intentionally targeted.

Although it hasn’t been long enough to see if there were any long-term positive changes, my guess based on the post at the time is that the people reached with paid promotion are often not going to remain a fan of your work and I would expect only a tiny handful of that reach to ever even look at your page again.

Self-Promotion

If paid promotion is fibre optic broadband, then what I refer to as self-promotion must be dial-up broadband. This is the old school and sometimes, still the best way to go. Broadly, this covers everything like radio, interviews, live shows and more. An essential rule of thumb here is to be the nice guy, as the people in front of you are the ones who you want to snag as fans and it will only ever benefit you if they don’t have bad things to say.

Radio/Interviews

Getting radio and other interviews may seem less important now than ever, and you’d be forgiven for thinking so too! But they can still prove a viable means of promotion, not least because it gives people a chance to see you outside of your usual musical environment. This creates a personal connection with your audience, rather than simply a business one, and allows those following you to feel closer connection to you. Not only this, but higher end interviews on big national radio can prove incredible for boosting your profile and any training you can give yourself beforehand will make you more comfortable when the time comes.

Be More Than Music

Although it may sound like a T-shirt slogan, this one is becoming more and more crucial everyday. Sadly, most people these days need to be almost spoon-fed with anything new, particularly music and few will actively seek out new artists off their own backs. Therefore, linkups with other brands can be a viable way to get yourself in front of new eyes.

The important thing here is to make sure that you pick brands you want to associate with and represent similar views to you. It can be catastrophic to be taken down with a brand if any wrongdoing or immoral actions are brought to light, not to mention pretty disheartening to have all of your hard work taken away by someone else’s actions. It’s also good to be realistic about what brands you approach to align with. The best bet for most is to find start-up companies and small businesses that just want to mutually promote with creative artists – a more common thing than you think! Often you can link up with clothing companies, small food and drink outlets, jewellery companies and other small companies that relish having artists to bolster their image.

Be a Good Person

A life lesson, which will also help in this situation. Anything that is illegal, immoral or just not that nice is going to turn people off of supporting you. Whilst some bands get away with the ‘so wrong its right’ styling, it’s hard to do and far more prone to go wrong than right. It’s of course, not possible to please all of the people all of the time, and you shouldn’t fake who you are necessarily, but avoiding negativity surrounding you is always beneficial.

Remember:

DO

• Be a genuine and approachable artist
• Seek out opportunities to hone essential skills at a local level
• Treat every opportunity like a potential new open door
• Look into merchandise and paid social media promotion
• Find other small brands to partner with and increase your reach

DON’T

• Be offensive or aggressive; bad names stick!
• Dismiss people trying to help you progress
• Overbuy merchandise that you don’t need
• Expect it all to come easy!

Above all else, don’t expect this to happen overnight. It may seem like all your favourite bands became stars out of nowhere but the hard work you don’t see is the bit were talking about. Putting in the hard work now will be worth it. Also, don’t forget that this is a rough guide, so be sure to adapt all of the advice herein to your own situation.

Sam Cross