The 5 Things You Don't Need to Be a Successful Artist
The 5 Things You Don't Need to Be a Successful Artist
As an artist you will often get advice about what to do in order to push your career to the next level, acquire more fans and gain popularity. You will also have your own perception about the things that can help you in building and maintaining your career. But have you ever thought about what you actuallydon't need in order to achieve these goals?
One of the most difficult things in the music business is being able to engage and monetize fans through focusing on the right tools and strategies that can show tangible results. Too many times artists end up wasting time, and in some cases money, on things that seem productive for their career (but really aren't).
Here are the 5 things you don't need for your success:
#1. You don't need charts to tell you how great you are
Being listed at the top of a chart is always something exciting for a musician but you shouldn't consider that as the sole measurement of how much your fans love and consume your music. Charts constantly change and they usually only take in consideration very specific metrics; without considering the fact that many of the charts you can find on the web are basically meaningless due to the limits of the data used to create them.
At FanBridge, we will never get tired of repeating that the most authentic indicator of your success is the interaction you have with your fans.Focusing on your relationship with them is what will really pay off in the long term for you. Having a group of valuable fans that are loyal and excited about your music will allow you to push your career to the next level and evaluate how good you are as no chart will ever be able to.
#2. You don't need a big inactive fan list
In other words, focus on quality not quantity! Being able to engage your fans and keep them active matters way more than pure list size. You need people that open your e-mails, come to your shows, buy your music, comment about you and refer you to their friends.These types of engagement metrics are far more important than your overall list size.
If you have a large number of email addresses you can send campaigns to, but the people receiving them don't open your emails (or if they do open it, they don't take any further action), it makes no difference whether you are contacting 10 or 10,000 people. The same concept can be applied to social media.The number of fans you have on your social network profiles doesn't mean anything if their only and last action was adding themselves to your profile.
It is important for you to realize that what really counts is having REAL fans that like hearing from you and that are interested in what you do. All the others are just faux followers that add to the number of fans on your page but don't provide any real value for you.
Analyzing your fans and not relying exclusively on the number of people on your list or on social network profiles will help you get a better understanding of what your real fans enjoy about you. In addition, you will also learn some of the things that they may not be too fond of. It will also give you the necessary tools to build a strategy for turning your faux followers into real fans that will play an active role in your career not only on your social network profiles, but in almost anything else that is linked to your name.
Check out this great article by business & marketing guru Seth Godin that talks more about Faux Followers':http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/02/viral-growth-trumps-lots-of-faux-followers.html
#3. You don't have to spend money to create content fans want to help spread
Designing a new cover for your upcoming album, having some new cool pictures for an upcoming tour, or creating/renewing your website are all indispensable elements for your promotion but they can also be very expensive. Looking professional is essential for the credibility of a musician but in many cases it is very difficult, especially for an emerging artist, to be able to invest a largeamount of money in these kind of things.
So why not transform this necessity into an opportunity to engage your fans through viral content? Allowing them to participate in your project can be an amazing as well as beneficial opportunity to get your fans involved in the things you need done. For example, you can create a contest in which you let your fans design your album cover. The fan that comes up with the best design wins a prize of your choosing (be sure to make it something worthwhile and interesting), plus they will forever be able to show their friends your album with their artwork on it!
After you collect all the material from your fans, you can even have people voting for the best design to involve even those fans that couldn't participate in the contest. The possibilities to engage your fans are countless and this approach will help you seed a viral strategy whereby your fans will get excited about exposing your projects to their friends.
#4. You don't need to be everywhere
Each week, new social media, music streaming and music websites get launched, and in many cases they disappear as fast as the emerged. All of them are free and easy to access, so musicians often are tempted to add themselves wherever they can, creating new profiles on any new online spot that becomes available.
But many don't consider the fact that creating new profiles takes time and it takes even more time to keep them all updated and relevant. When evaluating the costs of your promotion you should also take in consideration the time you spend doing this kind of things (time is money!). For this reason it is important for you to stay focused and select few but valuable places where you want other people to find your music. Make sure to keep all your profiles updated with fresh content (nobody wants to see a page with old content) and evaluate if the effort of doing this can really pay off.
Not all music websites and social media are suitable for all kinds of musicians. Some can provide better results for Folk artists, others for more commercial Pop ones, some can be perfect for Rock music, others for Hip Hop. For this reason, being able to select the right places and use them in the most appropriate way is essential to achieve concrete results.
Don't be everywhere, be where you need to be!
#5. You don't need to be selling something to get value from your fans
When stressing the importance of maintaining a constant flow of communication with fans, we often hear musicians getting concerned about not having NEW things to say to their fans. This is the most common mistake musicians make, thinking they need a new album release or a new show to talk to their fans.
Promotional content is only part of what you can offer to your fans and your communication with them should never be limited to that. There are numerous ways you can engage your fans, and for the most part, providing something that can make them interested in staying connected with you can be easier than you think.
Sharing personal thoughts/feelings/experiences, new ideas, even just a new lyric verse you are working on can all be powerful tools to make your fans feel like a part of what you do and who you are. Let them know that their opinions are important by asking for their feedback, make them part of your "work in progress." This practice will not only help you build an intimate relationship with fans, but it will also create the foundation of your fans' loyalty.
There are no good excuses for not talking to your fans regularly. You can always find interesting content to share. Fans love hearing from you so just make sure to keep the conversation alive and relevant with content that can give them the possibility to comment, share their point of view and enrich their personal experience through your art and personality.
Driving tangible results from your promotional efforts is about being a shrewd investor of your energy and focus. Don't waste time and money on useless things and remember that much of what you can do is tightly linked to your fans and how you interact with them. If you are getting little or no return on your promotion, try to analyze every aspect of your communication. You may realize you are not giving your fans a valuable reason to stay tuned. Think about yourself as a fan. What could artists you love do to get you excited about staying in close contact?
Article originally posted on FanBridge Blog (http://blog.fanbridge.com/)
Live Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets VS Virginia Tech Hokiesh College Football TV On November 4,2010 Virginia Tech Hokies VS Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets Live Stream NCAA® Football Week 10 On PC TV on November 4 How to Choose a Northern Virginia Roofing Contractor Daniel Smith Artists Materials Review and Coupon Code long term care virginia ARTISTRY Makeup Products Together With Great Pure Minerals Mounting The Saddle Of Artistic Sexual Satisfaction Virginia Beach Hotel Deals Free Song Lyrics, Artists, Bands And Collaborations Long Term Care and Assisted Living Facilities in Virginia Four Things Artists Can Get Out of Being on Twitter Hard Money Lenders Virginia helps in understanding the two types of Rehab Money Personal Financial Crisis In Virginia