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Strategy
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Building Fans, Not Just Followers: Social Media for Artists
Social media is free and powerful, but most artists use it wrong. Here's a posting strategy that turns listeners into fans.
MeansMGMT
Posting your music converts non-listeners into listeners. Posting yourself converts listeners into fans.
Music marketing has two sides: growing a fan base and strengthening it. The value of getting new fans by converting non-listeners to listeners is self-evident, but the latter half of the equation is equally important. Without a loyal fan base that cares about them, an artist’s career will be short-lived, because listeners lose interest and drift away. And without dedicated fans, artists miss out on their main sources of revenue: touring and merchandise.
How to Attract New Listeners
For an artist to reach users who would be interested in listening to their music, the approach is fairly simple. Artists have to post their music. They might notice that other posts, such as comedy skits, perform better, and it's tempting to focus on those. But that targets the wrong audience. Creators attract users interested in the kind of content they post. The followers an artist would gain from posting comedic skits would be interested in those skits, not in their music. For this reason, the conversion rate from social media followers to listeners on Spotify would be poor, and their efforts would have gone to waste.
Another clear issue with this approach is that if an artist doesn’t share their music, their followers might not even realize they’re an artist. An artist with a million followers won’t convert their audience into Spotify listeners without posting their music, because people can’t support music they don’t know exists.
Furthermore, artists should post their music to maintain their image. An artist who never posts their music online will not be seen as an artist, but instead as a creator of whatever kind of content they make. Users scroll past posts quickly and will remember only a key detail or two, if anything at all. If they see an artist performing a cover, they will live in their minds as a musician, not as an artist. Artists need to post their music to reach the right audience and work with the algorithm.
How to Convert Listeners into Fans
However, there is another side to this strategy. If an artist only posts clips of themselves lip-syncing to the same song, followers get sick of it. They also never become cult fans.
Fans want to love the person behind the music too. Although it initially may seem contradictory to the previous point, this means that artists should post content that does not include their music. This content is for strengthening existing artist-follower relationships more than for gaining followers.
There is a lot of freedom with this latter form of content. It can be anything from an explanation of a song’s meaning, to behind-the-scenes tour footage, to the artist engaging with a separate passion. Hip-hop artist Action Bronson famously shared his passion for food with his fans, and ended up launching an entire YouTube series with VICE, “F*CK, THAT’S DELICIOUS.”
The series showed fans a side of Action Bronson they had never seen, and it made them bigger fans. The stronger that bond is, the longer it lasts, and the more fans will engage with an artist through their music, tours, and merchandise.
The Call to Action The third kind of post is a call to action: tour announcements, merchandise drops, or anything else that lets fans engage with the artist directly.
The purpose is to give fans something truly memorable, whether that’s a show, a meet-and-greet, or just merchandise from an online store.
The Music, The Artist, & The Community: A 3-Part Framework
What: Includes the artist’s music, either the official recording or a cover, depending on the song. This should be accompanied by an entertaining visual element, such as them performing it live in a venue, or a miniature music video.
Frequency: About 50-70% of posts. It's the most important content an up-and-coming artist can release. It builds the fan base and is the main way to alert fans to new releases.
Purpose: To attract new fans and alert existing fans to new releases.
Type 2: The Artist
What: Shows off the artist’s personality. Can be anything ranging from explaining the meaning of a song, to them enjoying one of their hobbies.
Frequency: About 20-40% of posts.
Purpose: Reveals layers of the artist’s identity, allowing fans to connect with the person behind the music, and deepens the artist-fan relationship.
Type 3: The Community
What: Engages the fan base. Often a call to action, like tour announcements or other live events fans can participate in.
Frequency: About 10% of the time, or when applicable.
Purpose: To further build the artist-fan relationship, to build a community of fans, and to give fans a memorable experience.
This approach converts non-listeners to listeners, listeners to fans, and fans to cult fans, with each type of post doing one of those jobs. Notably, this framework is highly variable. Two completely opposite artists could use this approach, and the output would be entirely different.
Tailor the content to the artist so it stays authentic. Always consider who the artist is, the niche they occupy, and their target audience. With a personalized version of this framework, artists can build a long-lasting fan base of listeners who genuinely love the artist and their music.
FAQ
Questions we get
If you have a release coming, start with two quick questions, about three minutes in total, and we’ll scope your campaign. Want the numbers first? The benchmarks report is free.
