Musicians need a loyal following to be successful. A genuine connection with fans and listeners drives music sales, marketing, a positive brand reputation, and your career. So, finding ways to share your music and connect with people should always be on your to-do list as an artist.
YouTube is one of the best platforms to do the above. It's one of the biggest video-sharing platforms in the world, perfect for a musician that wants to show off their talent and personally connect with fans.
These six best practices can help you grow your music career and audience on YouTube.
1. Build an Authentic Brand
Nearly every musician has a YouTube channel these days, making the music competition on the platform pretty stiff. However, an authentic brand can help you stand out.
Don't make about trying to get every one of the 2.6 billion active YouTube users on your side. Instead, be true to who you are and focus on getting and keeping the attention of the people who genuinely like you and your music. An authentic connection is what will keep them coming back to your channel.
So, build a brand that's true to who you are and the music you make.
Think about your personality, back story, and voice. Also, think about the reputation you want to have in public. Create visual branding elements that you can use across your marketing channels. And create products and content that further support your artist brand.
2. Understand YouTube SEO
Growing your audience is much easier when you understand and use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques for your YouTube videos. With the right SEO strategies, you can increase your visibility on YouTube.
The following tips can help you take advantage of SEO and drive organic traffic to your YouTube channel:
- Create high-quality videos
- Generate more engagement
- Use keywords in the titles, tags, and descriptions
- Cross-market your YouTube page on your other marketing channels
- Use a well-thought-out title for each video and custom thumbnails
- Conduct extensive keyword research and choose keywords wisely for each video
- Create long and short-form video content to accommodate both sides of your audience
3. Create and Publish Different Kinds of Content
It'll be challenging to attract new fans, let alone keep the attention of the current ones if you post the same kind of content repeatedly on your channel. Instead, be dynamic with your YouTube content.
View your video content efforts as a part of a larger content marketing strategy. Every video should cohesively coincide with the other, giving your audience a complete picture of your music and artistry.
Do live streams. Create short and long-form videos. Design a few paid ads and run them regularly. Make YouTube shorts. Throw some memes, GIFs, and interactive content in there too.
No matter the kind of content you create, ensure it's mindful of your audience's perspective, high-quality, and diverse.
4. Track Metrics and Learn to Read Data
If you really want to grow your music career and audience on YouTube, you must track the performance of your videos. That way, you can duplicate what's generating results in future videos and adjust what isn't working more quickly.
You can also collect data on your audience. You can learn:
- Demographic information
- How they engage with your videos
- The kinds of videos your audience views the most
- Which devices they're using to view your channel
- What time your audience watches your videos, and for how long
You can use all of this information to personalize the experience for your fans and make videos in ways they're more likely to resonate with. And that, in turn, will help you build trust and relevancy with your audience.
5. Engage with Your Audience
Posting high-quality videos are only part of the YouTube battle. Another significant part is engaging with your audience. Engagement makes your videos appear more often on your subscribers' timelines. Engagement also fuels the emotional connection you want to make with your audience.
So, dig into conversing with, entertaining, and interacting with your audience on YouTube.
Ask questions in your videos and ask for responses in the comments. Reply to every comment with something thoughtful rather than just an emoji or one-word answer. And finally, give viewers a way to contact you more directly, whether in the DMs of your other social media platforms, on your website, or through an email address dedicated to fan conversations.
6. Be Consistent
Consistency might be the most critical practice on this list. Without it, your chances of growing on YouTube are slim. At the very least, it will take much longer to build a following and elevate your career as a musician.
Create a publishing schedule you can keep up with. This could be posting one high-quality video a day or publishing a few every months. Of course, it all depends on your resources and how long it takes you to develop concepts and create and edit videos.
Be sure to digitally document or write down your publishing schedule too. After that, develop a YouTube content calendar. This will help you stick with your publishing schedule and ensure your content strategy is cohesive.
Final Thoughts
Establishing a solid presence on YouTube is more straightforward than most musicians think. Build and authentic brand, understand SEO, Experiment with different content, measure performance, engage with your audience, and be consistent. It's as simple as that.
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