3 Simple Ways To Keep Fans

the smile of a man with a wild fan base

Photo Credit: notsogoodphotography

When you look at this question, it’s quite simple. If You Don’t Care About Your Fans Why Should They Care About You? The more you care about your fans and the more you include them, the more they will care about you. It makes sense, after all it’s in our human nature to want to be apart of something. Especially something bigger than ourselves.

And yet outside of gigs, so few bands actually care about their fans. When was the last time you responded to a fans email, message or tweet? It’s surprisingly common in this ever evolving online world for bands to just get overwhelmed.

Few bands have mastered the balance between caring about their fans, and living normal lives. After all, it can be a very time consuming process. The shining example of a band that truly cares about their fans is NIN.

Trent Reznor is a pioneer in the online music world. Whilst most of us don’t have the money or fan base he does, we can all learn a few things from him.

Have a defined online presence

It’s one thing to be on a site, with a profile and a few songs. It’s entirely different to be involved in it.

Don’t spread yourself too thing over many websites. You want to pick a key group that you know you can monitor and maintain. If you have too many places to go you will quickly fall behind.

There will be a few sites like MySpace, Twitter and Facebook that you will have almost no choice about. This is because your fans are almost certainly already on there. So don’t forget to keep these up to date.

If you can handle it, pick a few others that your fans are on, or want you to be on. A great example would be thesixtyone.com and ReverbNation, as it also provide a fantastic opportunity to attract new fans. Don’t forget to maintain these sites as well.

Maintain that online presence

It’s one thing to be on a site, with a profile and a few songs. It’s entirely different to be involved in it. Once your on a site make sure to keep these up to date. There are many simple ways for instance, have your Twitter update your Facebook, MySpace and ReverbNation status’. The beauty of this, is that you can be active on all those sites without having to visit them, even though you still must.

Photos and videos can be uploaded in one place, and then further be embeded around the web. This is important for the sake of being active on all the sites you’ve chosen. This is also one of the few things you can get away with having someone else do.

As often as you can reply and interact with your fans. The more you can do it the better. For some people getting a ‘real’ message back from an artist they admire can do so much more to increase their love for you than a new song. Furthermore, theres a good chance they will tell their friends.

Balance your time

It’s almost impossible for you to maintain all these sites all the time. And no one really expects you too. You do need to be tactful about what you do though, as you can’t respond to everything.

I would highly discourage having someone else answer your emails and messages as it’s very impersonal. It can also be a PR disaster if you’re caught out. Replying yourself helps build the artist-fan relationship.

Also don’t spend too much time a day on these sites. You need to find what ever balance works for you, but don’t let it negatively impact your music.

Pick a few sites to have an online presence on. Set a certain amount of time per day to jump on and interact, say a few hours. But always remember not to let it swallow your time. And most of all, you should enjoy it.