Every artist knows how important engaging with their audience is, but not to what degree, or if they're doing enough.
In this short article we'll go through some tricks to keep your fanbase more engaged and some subtle tricks to keep you in the front of their mind.
Post Frequency & Quality
You want to aim for daily high quality posts. With that said, it's a huge challenge to produce high quality content every single day. If it keeps quality high, stretch posts out a bit, but try to keep upload frequency no more than 3 days between posts.
Stories is an entirely different game. Quality is not a concern, and you want to be sharing multiple times a day.
Keeping Them Engaged
For your posts, ask your followers questions in the description. Headlines like "tag a friend who ...." or "what's your favorite ...?" produce a crazy amount of additional engagement (which besides the obvious, can encourage Instagram's algorithm to push your post to new audiences). Try this on your next post.
Instagram Stories is another great tool to keep your fanbase engaged. Add in stickers like polls, questions, quizes, etc. Instagram tracks which peoples stories you interact with most and shows you them first.
Play games with your audience. Try polls, play games that stretch over a day or two (so they remember to come back) or ask and respond to questions. Only you will know what content your audience wants to see most.
Show Your Personality
This is one I'd argue is THE most important. You can game the algorithm and encourage interaction as much as you want, but if your following doesn't connect with you, that's all they are, a follower.
People see through the facad. People want someone who they can connect with and relate to. Being raw and real with your followers converts them into fans. Fans that buy your merch, fans that buy your tickets, and fans that pre-save your songs when you announce them. Followers don't do that, but fans sure do.
Other Social Media
This post was primarily focused on Instagram engagement, but most of the same applies to other socials as well.
Reply to comments, encourage engagement, and be yourself. If you can keep that recipe going you're ashooing to convert those new followers into fans!
woah aaron what a great blog post! (hehehe)