 Everyone could see that their favorite artists do a ton of things that keep them top of mind for their fans. But when most DIY artists attempt to replicate this, they make crucial mistakes. Many people don't get there's a method and some organizational tips to keep fans engaged with you so you constantly grow and continue to accelerate how fast that growth happens. So in this video, I'm going to explain those techniques and how it affects algorithms and human attention spans. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from 0 to 10,000 fans and this is Muse Formation. So I wanted to update one of my videos that didn't get the most views but has been consistently one that people have told me is one of the most helpful that I've made. So it's amazing how many artists get intimidated about doing the work to promote their music because they imagine that it's going to be so much work and they really make a mountain out of a molehill and I don't want to belittle how much work it is since it's a good deal of work but most of the time when I hear how much work it's going to be before an artist has done it it's an exaggerated hallucination of a mountain that forgets that once you're doing this work regularly, it gets easier and easier and once you get past the pain point, a concept I'll talk about in a little bit the rewards come in and keep you more motivated. I know many of you also get concerned since so many people are vying for your potential fans' attention but the good news is people have many favorite artists and what I'm going to show you is a technique that artists use to capture fans' attention keep them thinking about them and make outsiders see your name and then discover your music this method has been in my book Get More Fans which is taught in a dozen universities to music business majors and I learned it from publicists for big indie and major artists who've been doing it for even longer than that and once you get it, you'll see that many of your favorite artists have done it when they were in the phase of building their following before they were cemented as a huge artist as it's been used by nearly every artist in the book while many things on this channel are my own ideas and creations this is truly an idea that I feel like is gate kept in the meeting rooms of top artists that doesn't make it to the DIY musicians it's the idea that the way you keep fans' eyes glued and call attention to yourself to get new fans is to maximize the attention economy by doing something small every other week it's something big on the weeks that skips now these will all be eventful things but as we know in marketing some events are bigger than others and as you follow artists on social media you can easily tell things like a show or an interview is not made as big a deal of as say a new song, album or tour drop those are the major events so I'm going to show you how to use those to maximize attention but let's really discuss why all this works so you can get why we're planning to do all this boring work and while we're on the subject of boring work let's talk planet so this dude Warren Buffett is the kind of guy that finance bros and khaki pants used to have man crushes on before they discovered their hairplugged donning king Elon Musk and so Warren once said this really great quote an idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan and truly I can't think of a much better quote that explains the way the music business works since many musicians are often truly absolute morons but that person on their team with a plan helps take that raw idiot charisma that happens to have some musical prowess and that plan brings us to the idiots we all can't stop watching in the music world each day and love the records of so the other thing aside from a plan is to know the cheat code to music promotion today and the main cheat code for making algorithms like you as well as making humans think about you all the time so that when they're hanging with their friends they recommend you and then your fan base continues to grow is of course consistent sustained promotion and if you've been around this channel for a while you probably are thinking you've heard this one before but trust me it's been 14 months since I've gone really deep on this one I've heard a lot of comments on it in that time so I got a bunch to add to make the picture more clear so you all can do better promoting yourselves so it's some of you discuss CSP online you grab on to one of its main features which is the release plan of releasing your song along with a video of just its album cover then two weeks later releasing a lyric video or a visualizer and then two weeks later a music video and then two weeks later and this one is optional to release an alternate version and then you start again with a new song and repeat and keep growing and calling attention to yourself now I don't want to bore everyone so if this is intriguing click on the video on the screen now or in the description below on the video titled my release strategy so this is the main pillar of CSP since in this day and age you need to feed an audience eventful things so they stop and pay attention to you and human attention spans naturally gravitate towards those who are doing eventful things since psychologically we think we need to know who's doing interesting things in order to bond with others and make friends trust me, this is what people like Kanye or Donald Trump take advantage of and why they never shut up so when you see that bloated fool who used to make good music before rotting his brain he'll have his new girlfriend do 10,000 interviews while he buys a house across from his ex-wife and asks for her back on stage and then releases a documentary this is the same technique but just what it looks like when you're selling attention because you have so many products in the world that any attention on you is monetizable you, an unknown artist, don't have that so people don't care when you do all this stupid garbage so you need to do what your potential fans care about making music that will form a lasting and meaningful relationship with them that will make them feel a way they'd rather be feeling and after that happens and you build a fan base then you too can act like an obnoxious fool in public and have it generate streams and sales of your stupid looking shoes so we should talk about the ingredients to consistent sustained promotion and the first crucial part of this of course is consistency the number one thing I hear from musicians about this is their favorite artists don't release music this constantly so why should they have to just like our friend we just discussed yay your favorite musicians already have a platform and most likely they built it when the rules of the game were different and have to work at making the thousands if not millions of people hear about what they are doing so that takes a lot longer you do not so you have to show people you are someone to pay attention to and that person is someone who is always feeding them you know how all the advice for YouTubers or podcasters is how we have to post weekly and for TikTokers it's three times a day well for musicians who are on the rise this is what you need to do this is the clip and that's the consistent part and of course I'm asked about releasing music more than every eight weeks all the time but any more than once every four weeks I strongly feel does not have the same effect as you become an artist who cries wolf releasing songs so often no one believes you when you say it's great you just become someone making noise not showing that you have put out something you put extraordinary effort into since part of human attention span today is that when you throw it at us we have to decipher what's extraordinary and what's noise and decide what gets our time continually pushing your songs and showing you put a lot of time into it and telling stories around it gives that impression that it's important putting the song out every week shows you're throwing the wall to see what sticks and you're making it so fast it barely matters to you to promote it but let's talk about why consistency matters so much when you're doing eventful things potential fans keep seeing your fans share your name constantly or see it posted in a discord or read it enough times that it becomes familiar when you're inconsistent they forget about your name and are less likely to cross the curiosity gap and investigate further when you're consistent and keep fans addicted to you by doing music's purpose which is making a fan feel the way they'd rather be feeling they keep thinking about you and you stay top of mind to tell friends about when you stop feeding their addiction to you on a regular basis they look for someone else to make them feel a way they'd rather feel and focus on them and talk about them to their friends and share that artist's content that's why consistency matters but let's also focus on this since it's important you make a good impression if you get a fan to cross that curiosity gap and learn about you and what most music fans do once they want to bridge the curiosity gap and learn about an artist is often click on the link in their social media profile which probably means it's a good time to tell you about the sponsor of this video Koji who offers what I consider the best experience for a fan to have when they want to learn about you I find their link in bio to be better than most websites for clicking around it and getting to know what an artist has going on Koji is a link in bio app store for creators it offers a free to use free to customize link in bio platform and is truly the best link in bio for musicians I mean, just look at these profiles they look amazing and can all be done for free but here's the thing you've probably seen ones like Linktree but Koji has this app store where you can do amazing experiences for fans to get to know you interact with them and build relationships and even make money and I want to say these are not iOS apps nothing to download these are link in bio apps that live in the link in your bio on all your socials 24 seven so let me show you a few of these apps that I find to be amazing for music marketing the first is email collector which gives you a way to easily collect emails and own your audience no more setting fans four or five clicks deep into a website to get their email where they just give up once they're subscribed to your newsletter you'll be able to stay on their minds daily or weekly with marketing messages and other content directly into their inboxes then there's link locker which you can use to charge for live streams or any other content where you will give a fan a link after they pay there's so many cool possibilities for this one as well here's this super cool app called rares which is your own personal non-sexual only fans right on your link in bio the fans who pay can get access to the content you make behind the paywall so you could profit from your most passionate fans who want to hear from you all the time while not having to over post on your socials and lastly there's dare you where you could run lip sync contests cover contests or dance contests on your link in bio as organic marketing campaigns for your single or album this is such a cool way to get your fans building relationships with your songs getting more addicted to them and encouraged to make content that spreads your music which is what so much of this video has been about so you should really start right here so go learn more and get your own free Koji link in bio page for all of your socials head to the link in the video's description or to withkoji.com that's W-I-T-H-K-O-J-I.com okay so obviously the second ingredient is sustaining this so many of you suffer lapses in momentum and we have to remember what you're trying to do here is create an impression of people who are hearing about you and whether that's a potential fan who has a friend who shares your new song whenever you release one onto if some blog is covering you or a playlist that adds each track you put out if you aren't doing this for months on end and having your potential fans hear about you on a regular basis you are less likely for them to bridge the curiosity gap and find out who you are or for that matter even remember you even if they liked you before as people pay attention to the artists who regularly remind them about what they could be doing to change their mood with music so how long do you need to sustain this? on average nine months is when anyone sees any real growth so let's remember it only takes six to eight songs a year to fill up that entire calendar year but you do have to work at this and sustain it and you have to understand that the sustaining is important since no matter how good you are it takes months and months of people seeing your name to even jump the curiosity gap it's so funny when someone puts out one of those songs or albums that is considered a classic in a genre what we all see is it takes around nine months to a year before they really peak and have everyone aware of what they are doing which is probably a good time to start discussing why most of you don't ever get to sustaining your promotions since in the past two years boy do I hear about this a lot I think it's what discourages most of you it's crazy how many of you say I'm doing CSB and put out my single last week and it isn't working which makes me wonder did you look up the word sustain? so you know how you will always see this graph when people are talking about growing a fan base I want to talk about this time period right here which is what I call the pain point your numbers aren't really going up you're just getting songs out and if you are following what I tell you which is to save your best material for a few songs into your release cycle so that the other songs will help you build an audience and set up your best material for success then you're probably already making that mistake and if you don't know what I'm talking about and why you constantly see your favorite artist put out a good but not their best song first when they launch their record well you should probably watch my video on focus tracks and building momentum with each song released so you understand this and why it's important for your promotions anyhow, so you're at the pain point you've not yet put out your song that most people will be susceptible to liking and will probably give you accelerated growth in addition to that you're really not seeing huge gains in your fan base and worst of all you're working really hard you're learning all this new software that's intimidating and gives you massive ego depletion and no, ego depletion doesn't mean when you're significant another tells you your songs are trash in order to keep you watching 90 day engagement disaster or whatever on the couch with them ego depletion is that every unfamiliar task drains us and there's only so much draining things we can do in a given day before we're drained and exhausted and give up and this is important because the pain point is filled with this you're making lyric videos doing graphics having to reach out to artists who don't write you back look up playlist people and doing all these annoying things and it could be some of the most ego depleting things I can think of but here's the thing it gets better after two to three songs those aren't draining activities any longer they're tools you use to be creative and just things that are a part of your daily routine if you sustain and get past the pain point remember when you were learning your instrument or your DAW how annoying it was at first but once you got good you're a creative functioning person who gets that thing and makes sounds that are in your head this all gets easier and easier especially if you start seeing those numbers going up you feel empowered and inspired and here's the even better news dog while you were getting good at all this you were practicing and now you're ready to release your real bangers of songs as you've waited to release your best material until you've put out a few of them and have the hang of it all and have learned some lessons and can do right by your best material look at that happy ending it's like we're in a rom-com and I guess that makes me the dream email lead so the last concept we have to discuss is being eventful eventful moments for your music are promotions that actually make your fans or potential fans stop and give you the attention you're requesting that they would then tell someone else about so when we talk about doing something eventful we're literally just talking about doing things people would turn to a friend and tell them about when you are designing these events for your marketing there's a simple question to ask yourself what is the thing you could do that will get the most people telling their friend they have to look at it so they will discover your music the more the event comes with hearing your song and hopefully turning the fans into an addict who is interested in paying attention to you the more worthwhile the event is and truly the way I always engineer these is I just ask myself what I'd like to see a musician do that I'm a fan of and reverse engineer from there while a song isn't that eventful these days for your fans it is and we have to remember that event when you have fans is how word spreads about you but if you're not connecting why this is important think of it this way when you do eventful things it keeps you on the top of mind of your fans it gives them a reason to reshare your content to tell friends about you and gives them conversation points to talk about you on discords and reddits it gets more people to know about you and the more interesting and eventful these are the more people hear about you this is why musicians spend up coming up with all these crazy marketing ideas is it serves the purpose of starting conversations and that's how people connect with one another it becomes a tool for your fan base growth but you're probably wondering why I was going on and on about planning for over 10 minutes ago so let's get into that first make a list of all the songs you have and put them in the order you're going to release them then let's make a list of smaller things you have to promote like say an alternate version like a feature or a remix behind the scenes videos or play-throughs tour videos, contests or a major interview you're gonna do and that's all going to unveil a lot of your story on the street now you can see one I made for incel hypebeast who is of course my fake persona I use for videos on this channel so once you have all these potential events you could start laying them out so I have them listed as big events and small events and that's how we will distribute these every other week for a year as you can see the big events are songs and video releases the smaller events are the behind the scenes videos the play-throughs or a drop of an interview or a blog or a collab that you did with another artist and it can even be small events like it could be a contest like incel hypebeast can have a contest to stand on the supreme line with them and let me emphasize here the key here is to make them things fans would talk about so you take this plan and this list and you put them in order and that's gonna be your focus for each week of the year and you will promote this event during that week in addition to your storytelling and if you don't know what I mean about also doing storytelling you should really watch my 60 day plan on how to promote your music on social media which is linked now or in the description and it tells you all the posts you can make on social media in addition to these events so now that we have all these events listed it's time to put them on a calendar but if you look on that screen right now you can see on the calendar that the small events happen one week and the big events happen the other week and you make sure you make posts about them for the weeks after and try to make sure these events get the attention they deserve and lure potential fans in now I'm sure some of you are exhausted and wonder how you can do all this but remember even your favorite artists get ahead often by three to six months before they ever start releasing a song and have all this content done ahead of time so on weeks where they say you have COVID or are heartbroken well the content machine can keep running and keep growing your fan base honestly I know a few labels that won't even give a release date until six months of this is turned in so this is the main crux of it but the last ingredient into this is of course community outreach meaning you need to know your community and make them aware of what you're doing and truly this is the most important work here after making a great song and doing everything I described about the consistent sustained promotion and if you don't know what I mean about finding your community and outreaching to it I made a whole playlist on this which you should watch which is linked on the screen now or in the description below and here's the nice thing if you do all this work you'll know you've done everything you could to promote your song but I'll also be honest with you the commitment of doing this all will grow your creativity like a muscle and you'll be better at everything you do and know you did right by your music this is what you can do to feel empowered and in control of building your fan base okay on this channel this is the type of stuff we discuss so if you're interested in that you should definitely like, subscribe and most of all get notified so you don't miss crucial videos that will help you level up on building your fan base I answer every comment below that doesn't insult me so if you have a question hit the comments on the screen now is a video on how to grow your fan base from zero to ten thousand fans or how to get your music noticed or how to blow up on Spotify in 2022 click on one of them and keep learning