One of the main things I’ve been trying to do with the artists I’ve been working with over the last year is help them put together a structure around their creative work to help them develop it and build an audience. It’s incredible daunting when you have a small fan following and no real income from your music and yet the end goal is having enough people buy your latest record to allow you pay your rent. There are a lots of different stories out there of bands who hit upon a killer online idea that goes viral and earns then enough exposure and cash to go into music full time. However the reality is that whilst these stories might look like an overnight success, the people involved have usually been slowly building that success over many years before they finally hit upon a breakthrough.
When you’re at the start of the journey the most important thing is to use your time and resources wisely so that they aren’t wasted. Try thinking like an entrepreneur and sketch out a plan to make sure that you (and your band) know what you are going to try and do over the short, medium and long term. Not only does it help focus your efforts but it also gives you a way of measuring your success by periodically checking what has been achieved and what areas maybe needs to be readdressed.
For example, one of the key areas we like to look at is social media engagement. If you don’t have a website, email mailing list, Facebook Fan Page or Twitter Feed then an obvious first short term goal is to get them in place. Medium term you might look at rolling out a ‘brand identity’ so that they are all styled with the band’s colours, fonts and logos to ensure they look visually consistent. Long term you need to examine if you are making the best use of the opportunity they give to engage with your fans and very importantly if you are translating online buzz into record sales & live show tickets.
One exercise we usually try and do is to put together a quick spreadsheet to show how many Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers, website hits and email list sign-ups an artist has received per month over a 3 to 6 month period. If their promotional efforts are working then you should be able to see increase in all of these individual numbers and the overall ‘total fan count’. If you can also plot events like gigs or music releases onto the same sheet then you should be able to see how effective those events are at building your audience. If you want to get really into it then you can also look at metrics like how many people are commenting on your posts or re-tweeting your twitter posts to see how popular the content you are putting out is and how engaged your audience is.
Dropcards are a great way to give fans at shows some music tracks in return for an email address.
The data from these sort of exercises can be really interesting and can then help shape what you do over the next 6 months to make sure you’re using your time & money effectively. For example, if these figures show that every time you post a performance video to Facebook book you see a big increase in fans ‘Liking’ you and visiting your website then you should probably think doing more of these videos. However if you see that whenever you do a gig you aren’t seeing an increase in your overall fan count then you need to rethink how you approach getting people signed up at your live shows. Maybe with something like a Dropcard giveaway that you can hand out at shows that allow people to download a free track in return for an email address or Facebook ‘Like’?
Ariel Hyatt has just posted a really good article on Music Think Tank titled A Musician’s Guide To Setting And Achieving Goals For 2012 . She also links to some other great articles by Derek Silvers on Goals and Carla Lynn Hall on How to Create a Vision Board . All are great guides on how to define goals for yourself and how to keep yourself motivated to keep working towards achieving them. I think there is probably no ‘one-size-fits-all’ system that will work for everyone but I think it is extremely beneficial if you can try and do the following.
- Meet with a fellow musician, mentor or friend to define some achievable short, medium and long term goals. Write these down and then agree to meet again to update your plan 2 or 3 times a year to make sure the goals are kept current.
- Make sure you distinguish between AMBITIONS like getting a song played on the radio and TASKS like setting up a Facebook page or finishing an EP. For the ambitions you should set aspiration timeframes like ‘within the next 2 months’ and not be too hard on yourself if you don’t achieve them but the tasks need to have actual deadlines like ‘by the end of July’. Making yourself accountable to someone, either your mentor or the rest of your band, will further motivate you to hit your deadlines.
- Think about ways you can measure success and implement them to see if the ideas you are trying are working. Are your promotional ideas resulting in increases in fans? Are your music releases making money and breaking even? If they aren’t working then how can you adjust your future goals to be more successful?
If people have some examples of the plans they’ve been working with or some templates they can recommend then let us know and maybe we’ll put together a gallery with some of the documents we use.
Indielab has been on hiatus for the last few months, life just got too busy to continue writing regular blog posts but after some tinkering with the website over the holiday period and some considered re-strategising (is that even a word?) we’re starting the New Year with a slightly different outlook.
We’ve been sent through a copy of the new Mag Book “How to make it in Music” and we have to admit, it’s rather good! It has apparently been written by musicians for musicians and covers everything from dealing with venues and promoters to publishing to online distribution and promotion.
We met Susan in New York about 4 years ago as she was starting to record her debut album. Several years later the album has finally been released and even though it is a cliche – it was worth the wait! Susan’s songs have featured in everything from the US TV show Bones to more recently Paste magazine. We dropped her a line to hear more about the route she took to working as an independent musician in NYC and her outlook on recording and releasing her music.