People can only follow you if you’re going somewhere so it’s important to invite your fans on a journey.
One artist who has modelled this very successfully is Sheffield-based singer, songwriter, author and blogger Philippa Hanna. She started her career in the Christian music scene, who is fast-becoming one of the UK’s leading ladies in country music and has travelled to 25 countries around the world sharing her songs and stories. Having gained a whopping £75,000 support through crowdfunding from over 2000 supporters, it’s reassuring that there are ways to build your career other than queuing up for TV talent shows.
But how do you go from playing coffee shops to opening arena tours and having national radio support behind your music?
One key ingredient is inviting people on an adventure...
So let’s take a look at a few things you might want to consider:
- Start a crowdfunding campaign… whether you have 5 or 5000 fans, when the average support spends £50 on sites like Rocket Fuel it makes a lot of sense.
- Establish a street team… invite your core supporters to help you promote new music and events. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd and it’s amazing how eager many people are to help with mundane administrative tasks.
- Put on your own events… they can be a lot of work but there is always a tremendous amount of value that can be extracted from programming and promoting your own events.