Growing a solid fanbase is not easy. Posting your music on various social media sites will not instantly give you the rewards that you deserve.
With the right tips, tricks and strategies you can maximize the results and build up a solid fanbase.
You can also generate more income, if that is part of your goal.
Here are some tips in advance to help your channel grow and get more fans:
YouTube Channel design
You are an artist. That is why your artwork should represent you in the best way possible.
Having a great Banner and thumbnail design makes a huge difference for your future fans.
It will show how serious you are with your music, and also gives a “feel” of the music style you are going for.
By using the same artwork, style, and tone of voice on YouTube and all your social platforms, you maximize the results to attract a large group of new fans to your music.
Choose a style and stick to it.
Create an awesome banner that contains your bandname (or personal name if you are a solo musician), the type of music you create, and optionally a call to action.
You can create this artwork in a free piece of software like Canva, and is pretty much a ‘set it and forget it’ type of thing.
After you have done this, you pretty much have 2 options in terms of building a fanbase.
- You invest in ads and attract a selected group of possible fans to build up your subscribers and gather more views on your music.
- You can create searchable content to use the youtube algorithm in your advabnstage.
Find out what your best fans are searching for, and create content that taps into that.
Invest in ads.
This is probably the best method to get the fastest results. If done right, this can be a repeatable and scalable process that gives you a good return on investment.
One way of making this as cost effective as possible is to use your YouTub revenue for your ad campaigns.
If you want to post your music only, and will not add searchable content, this is pretty much your best way to gather a group of fans and find out yoru best audience.
You will find your audience by checking the analytics that you already have, and use that in your google ad campaign, and in return you will get more analytics from the results, with an even more detailed overview of your best fans.
Optimize for search as much as possible.
Because youTube is a search enginge, it can help to create content that people are searching for.
Many fellow musicians and music lovers are looking for tips and tricks on creating music, the best gear for starter musicians, basic music lessons and muc more!
Do a quick youtube search on the topics tat interest you and you can create content around.
See what comes up and try to visualize how you would create a video around the same topic.
You have found a good subject if the search results gives you a decent amount of results, and you can easily create 20 videos around taht subject.
Use these topics for your videos, mention them in your titles and description and try it out for at least 90 days to see if it works for you and for your audience.
A good example can be, to use longer sentences when you upload a quick video. Instead of “Me playing guitar in the yard” it can be better to use “Acoustic version of This and That song, performed by The Artist” or “Trying out my new Ibanez abc-123 guitar to play This and That song”.
It is a bit more difficult if you only upload songs from your band or music project. You then only want to use titles that include the name of the band/project, and the title. In that case, you actually don’t want to make them too long. No need to add any dates or locations, unless it is a liveshow in a specific place and time.
Note that a channel with only your music will not grow as quickly because you need to become a known artist first 🙂
This style of YouTube channel is usually more of a Digital Portfolio, that showcases your music.
Upload frequently, with a main focus!
Yes, you are an artist and yes, you might have tons of ideas to create content around. Or, maybe even the opposite, you have absolutly no idea what your next video should be.
In both cases, the trick is to find just one (no more than two) topics to create content around. Want to do guitar lesson videos? Vocal tips? Songwriting skills?
ONLY do that, for at least 90 days.
This will give you the chance of testing out what works for you, and it gives YouTube a chance to help your channel rank.
Both of you need to know if this is something that people actually want 🙂
And, the good thing is, that this will not take up as much time as you might think. 90 days is around 12 weeks, so 12 videos if you do one a week.
Record multiple videos at once, and you are already weeks ahead!
(Batch recording also helps to stay on topic 🙂
Share, share, share.
Needless to say, if you are just starting out on YouTube, people might not know who you are and what your channel is all about.
That is why you want to share your content whenever it is fresh. (Yes, you can also share older content, but for the sake of this post, we go with new videos 🙂
If you only share your own content once or twice a week, it will not be too spammy for your followers.
Combine it with other, similar content that your fans will love.
To make it easier, you can use free software that helps you to schedule your posts with easy.
Buffer and Later are great tools for that, and together they pretty much cover all main social profiles!
Bonus tip: Collaboration!
One of the more powerful ways to grow a YouTube channel is collaboration.
Find a similar YouTube musician in terms of style, audience size and artform, and do a collab!
Play a song together, do an interview or create a fun skit about a trending topic that matches your art style.
There are many more tips to share, and the journey and goal are different for every artist.
With the above tips, you can start your basic YouTube strategy and work on a solid foundation for your online music promotion.
I have more tips on the shelf, so let me know if you want to know something specific 🙂
Greetings Maurice from music-mindset.com
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