- our new professional network
While “more may be more” in some cases (in terms of “social proof”), YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE IT’S THE RIGHT KIND OF MORE
As we all know, this social media thing can be a pretty weird space. It’s hard enough (again, as we all know) to gain traction in the music business without having to deal with the further vagaries/craziness of social media. There is no doubt that it can be frustrating, after you put so much work into not only your music or content, but also in the crafting of your social media posts (the tagging, the phrasing, the hashtagging, etc) – only to see your follower count actually DECREASE :(. (I have seen this happen, and people voice their frustration, even for DJs/producers that have a pretty large following!) Seeing this occur can even make you think: “jeez, am I doing something wrong, or is my content not actually so appealing?? ?
What you want to do is realize you have the following choices to consider when this happens:
LOOK AT THIS AS A TIME TO EXAMINE THE CORE OF YOUR CONTENT
Would you rather try to please more random people, OR do one of these: post things that your CURRENT AUDIENCE LIKES, plus content that the **KIND OF AUDIENCE YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO ATTRACT** will like.
RE-ASSESS OR PRIORITIZE YOUR GOALS
Is JUST having a larger social media following really more important than say, achieving more download sales, landing on a wicked playlist, or getting exposure to some really cool, influential DJs or labels from your scene?? You can do this without having 100K followers or more.
ENGAGEMENT IS AS IMPORTANT AS THE SIZE OF YOUR FOLLOWING
In some ways, even more in fact. Seems like I’ve seen plenty of accounts with maybe 10K or more followers with a lot of tweets or posts that have little to no likes or comments….. **Be sure to keep your audience ENGAGED with a regular dialogue**
THE AUDIENCE IS LISTENING
I do also think it is true that – there can actually be more people (a LOT in fact) who are seeing and appreciating your work than numbers reported by social media platforms may seem to indicate.
BY ELIMINATING THE FLUFF, THIS WILL SHOW YOU WHO YOUR REAL FOLLOWERS ARE
As we also all know, these platforms are full of bots and all kinds of weird automated commenting schemes. If you see that your follower count drops, it’s quite likely that it could just be due to these fake accounts disappearing, through one reason or another).
Some people will just try to follow you to see if you follow them back. If you don’t follow them, they will un-follow you (the thing is: these goofballs will oftentimes unfollow you even if you DO follow them). I don’t know if I’ve seen this lately as much as I used to, but in any case, you can’t worry at all about that type of thing. You should ask yourself: “do I really want to have SpamBro Records or 1000playlists.web as my followers??”
SHOW SOME LOVE & APPRECIATION TO THE FOLLOWERS YOU DO HAVE
Shout them out, share their work… *Co-support is the lifeblood of the indie electronic music industry** (“Together we stand, divided we fall.”)
OTHER IDEAS:
To get a better idea of what fans (or should we better say, YOUR FANS!) would actually like to see, ASK THEM! Do a poll or survey.
KEEP YOUR FOCUS ON QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
So the conclusions are: sure, no doubt social media is still very important as a way to reach new audiences or keep your current fans updated on what you’re doing. But you can also look at this as a chance to reflect and re-examine your value structure or priorities. *Maybe you could make a shift to look at social media more (fundamentally) as “the icing on the cake,” rather than the cake or the “whole enchilada“ itself ;).
If, after considering things, you are confident in your content, tone, and overall messaging, JUST STICK WITH YOUR GAME PLAN, stay the course, and just keep doing what you’re doing. You will find that in time, you will attract more of the kinds of people you will actually want as your follower base: people who like and appreciate what you’re doing, who are interested in you and your work, and will inspire, encourage you and support you on this crazy rollercoaster ride through the world of social media in the music business.
Hope you found this useful. Please share your comments, ideas, or thoughts!
Photo credit: Valentin Salja (Unsplash)
