36: 4 Ways to Build and Grow Your Following
with Andrew Ousley
It is really hard to get noticed. How can an artist begin to build a presence?
There are four ways that artists can grow their following. The first is putting good content out there consistently
and just getting organic growth. People share and other people find out about it. People hear about you. People, people come to your concerts or your publicity, read your publicity, or hear your publicity, and want to come check you out. That's just the organic sort of most baseline way to do it.
The second is leveraging other people's or other institution's followings. And that, I think, is the most positive, most important proactive way where again, if everywhere you perform, asking if they'll, if they want you to do
an Instagram takeover. If you do that, their followers will follow you if you put out compelling content on their Instagram. If you get exposure to their social media following, you're going to leech some off of them. If you have colleagues, friends who are... have big followings or different followings, do a collaboration with them, do a video, or do an interview, or talk with them, or something like that. How can you get them to share content with you that will bring some of their following to you? And some of your following to them? It's, you know, the 'rising tide floats all boats.' But that idea of taking other accounts and getting access to them, that then brings their followers to you. That's the most powerful way to get more organic growth, but proactively. But again, if you don't have good content, it all comes down to content. Because if you don't have good content, they'll come follow you and be like, Ugh, this is boring, and they'll sign off.
Then there's paid acquisition. And this is-- can be dicey if you don't, again watch a bunch of videos and learn how to do it and how to target. Because there's a lot of artists who put a lot of money into growing their following, but they get people who ultimately click on them but then are like, I don't really I'm not interested in this guy.
And that's where you have 50,000 followers and one like per post. But if you do it right and if you have a sort of a story or a community that you can reach that might know you but not follow you, then that paid acquisition can be a great way to gain-- to grow your following, but still have it be engaged and organic. And you still want to do it over time. You don't want to put $50,000 in on one day. You want to grow it over time and make sure that they're responding to your content, that your engagement percentage isn't and-- levels aren't going down. So that's why, again, you check the metrics. But that's a way to boost your, your growth in a more proactive capacity as well.
And then the fourth is what's called Black Hat Tactics, which is--
Kellogg:
Say it again?
Ousley:
Black Hat Tactics, because they're, they're evil. That's where, for instance, you like, pay $5 and you get 20,000 followers. It's from, like, click farms in the middle of nowhere where you have a huge warehouse and people just follow you from 50 accounts.
And that's what they do all day. Sketchy, and I don't advocate any of them. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.