How knowing your audience can improve your content
As an artist, one of the most vital components of maintaining an effective presence on social media is understanding your audience. Without knowing your audience, you will struggle to make a real connection and your engagement rate will suffer as a result. Many struggle to find the right methods for understanding their audience. Understanding your audience relies upon asking yourself a few simple questions and researching what the answers to those questions may be. Some answers may come naturally while some may require more thorough research, including through social media.
Firstly, you need to think about why your audience is interested in your content. For many, music is an escape and a coping method for getting through their struggles in real life. For others, music is social and they like to connect with others through their favourite artists. These simple answers have already provided you with vital information that could aid you in developing your future strategy. By thinking about the use of music as a coping mechanism, you can strategize in order to make yourself more relatable. Consider sharing some of your own less personal struggles, without going into too much depth. You may want to share a post about missing home or feeling lonely on the road. Often, for people struggling with their own personal issues, they won’t want to see constant posts about how flawless your life is, a bit of reality will go a long way. When considering those who use your music to connect with others, think about methods for allowing your fans to connect more easily. Post about your fans being a family and urge them to connect across social media. For example, Martin Garrix has Garrixers, Don Diablo has Hexagonians, Nicky Romero has Protocol Family and NERVO have the NERVO Nation.
The second question to ask yourself is where do your fans go to consume music and learn about you. This research can be conducted through looking at the statistics behind your Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube accounts, as well as your social media channels. By understanding this, you will be much better able to distribute your content where it is most visible to your audience, thus generating more views, more clicks and more engagement. Focus your efforts on growing your following on the channels that your fans enjoy the most.
Another important question to ask yourself is who does your ideal fan also follow on social media. To find this out, do some research and see which of your competitors have a growing fanbase that associates closely with yours. The next step to improve your content is to learn from this particular artist and see what makes them so appealing to your audience. By doing this, you enable yourself to improve your content as a whole and bridge the gap between yourself and your competitors. If your competitor is experiencing a great deal of engagement through live video footage, try to replicate this same level of success on your own channels.
It is also important to ask yourself what kind of content your fans enjoy the most on your social media. This may be videos, polls, photos or even more personal posts about your day-to-day life. In order to answer this question, look at your engagement rate across your different posts and establish which kind of content performs better than others. By doing this, you will be able to further improve your content in the future and enjoy increased engagement down the line. Without analysing these statistics, it will be almost impossible to improve your strategy as a whole.
Another way to understand your audience while also provoking a great deal of engagement is asking your fans a question through a social media post. This could be as simple as ‘what is your favourite track at the moment?’ This is a great way to encourage a great deal more comments while also finding out which other artists your fans have been listening to. You can ask your fans anything, from ‘what’s your favourite food’ to ‘what’s your favourite holiday’. This is a much more engaging method for communicating with your followers on social media.
Without knowing your audience, it is impossible to effectively plan your content and your content calendar. You must investigate exactly who you are trying to appeal to in order to understand exactly what kind of content you need to provide. An artist targeting people over the age of 50 won’t use the same methods as an artist targeting people in their 20s. Understanding your following is one of the most important aspects of being an artist as it allows you to really communicate effectively, as well as provoking a great deal more engagement. Ultimately, in order to reach more people you need to optimise your content, and to optimise your content, you need to understand your fanbase.
