The entire planet is seemingly in quarantine right now. For a performer, this can present many problems. You can’t do any live shows, release parties, or meet and greets. How is your brand supposed to survive the apocalypse?
During quarantine, performers can enhance their brand awareness through several strategies. Establishing a professional website is crucial, along with researching SEO strategies to boost traffic. Leveraging social media for live content and engaging audiences is vital, as is creating branded links for easier sharing. Collaborating with other artists can extend outreach and credibility. Analyzing metrics and conducting social media contests further increases engagement, while targeted marketing campaigns can drive website traffic and sales.
The good news is, there are numerous avenues an artist can take to grow their brand awareness. You can grow and measure brand awareness a number of ways, metrics from ads for instance and through analytics on social media. If you’re not a branding pro yet, there are tools out there to help you measure not only who is looking at your web pages, but when they’re looking, how often they’re looking, and where they’re from.
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Build A Website
If you don’t have a website, you definitely need one. As a performer, you represent your brand and you should treat your brand as a business. Most people don’t trust a business that doesn’t have a professional-looking website, especially not other professionals. Take a look through similar entertainers’ websites to learn more about how yours should be put together. Use professional photos and be certain to spell check any copy you add to your pages.
Research SEO Strategies For Your Niche
Once you have a website, start researching SEO strategies to bring more traffic through your site. There are many tools online that a person can use to search the frequency and popularity of tags for specific keywords. Adding these keywords as tags to your website will make it more likely to pop up on the first page of a google search when people search for those terms. You want to be careful to add tags that have high search rates but low competitive rates. If most other websites are using those tags as well, your site could get pushed further down the list, and it’s unlikely it will get much traffic if it’s not on the first search page.
Use Your Socials
Many entertainers are leaning on their social media now more than ever. Whether they’re live streaming performances and meditation circles, or TikTok-ing their way into our hearts, performers are finding ways to connect with their audiences on a regular basis.
Create Branded Links
Simply put, a branded link is a shortened version of an URL you want to share online, in a place like social media bios and twitter posts. Generally, brands that create branded links like to create one that incorporates their name, what they do, and a unique keyword. Not only are branded links easier to remember and place in posts with limited word counts, but they can be used to track clicks and metrics as well.
Start a YouTube Show
If you’re a performer, this should be a no brainer. Start filming yourself playing music or showing off whatever your talent may be and keep growing your audience.
Partner With Other Performers
Even if you’re unable to get together face to face with other performers, there are apps and video creation websites that allow you to partner with other artists and collaborate together. Doing videos and social media appearances with other artists in your field introduce you both to new audience members as well as lend your brand more credibility by way of endorsement.
Analyze Your Metrics
Now is the perfect opportunity to analyze your social media metrics and create a growth plan. Take a look at your audience growth rate, engagement rate, and influence (who’s talking about your brand).
Social Media Contests
Create a giveaway or some other sort of contest on your social media to have more engagement opportunities with your followers. Set a goal for what you want your brand to get out of this contest (i.e. more followers, more engagement, etc) and research past social media contests that have reached that goal successfully.
Social Marketing
If your brand has the merchandise you want to sell, consider looking into some social media marketing. Marketing is also a great way to direct people to your website and to collect more valuable metrics. Do some research on your target audience and set specific goals for your marketing campaign. Doing this ahead of time will help you to find the best products and techniques to set up successful ads.
Laurel Daggers is a writer and the Business Development Director at AMW. Currently residing in Los Angeles, CA, she writes about social media and entertainment business strategy.