Music Business Myth Busters – Episode 9: Everyone who follows you on social media is your fan and loves your music and will support you financially

A lot of musicians conflate subscribers and followers with fans. A follower is not necessarily a fan. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all of your social media followers are die-hard fans of your music. Be open to the idea that you're wrong about a lot of assumptions you're making about your audience.

Most musicians invite all their friends and family, and everyone they know, and even complete strangers to like their Page. Just because someone has liked your Facebook Page doesn't mean they're going to engage with your posts or, even more importantly, buy your music and your merch, come to your gigs, or support your crowdfunding campaigns. Sometimes people just like your Page because they're being polite and they don't want to hurt your feelings. Or in the case of your family and certain friends, they want to support you by liking your Page, but they're not going to be your ideal fan. They're not going to help you become a full-time musician.

Because we've been brainwashed by the media our whole lives to believe that a successful music career looks like having a huge fanbase of hundreds of thousands, we chase the numbers. There's something satisfying to our egos about bigger numbers because we get validation on some level. We think it means that we're popular, that people love our music, that they're going to buy our music, and that's going to translate into making a full-time living from our music.

These numbers, whether it be the number of followers on your Page, the number of likes on a post, or the number of views on a video, are called vanity metrics. As the name suggests, they're about stroking your ego. Vanity metrics make you look superficially popular to others, but there's no substance to them. They make it look like you’re getting results, but they don’t really tell you anything about your business health or growth. And they're often misleading because they can be easily manipulated. You've probably heard about artists who have bought fake likes or gamed the system to inflate their Spotify streams. With vanity metrics the assumption is that the bigger the number is, the better. The more likes you have, the more famous you must be, the more successful you must be, the more money you must be making.

Those numbers don't always add up. You may have 10,000 subscribers on Youtube, but what's your engagement like? That's the key. Or you may have gotten 100K streams of your song, but how many of those listeners liked your Facebook Page, signed up to your email list, bought a ticket to your gig, bought your album, or supported you financially in any way? And do you even have a way of connecting with those listeners so that you can follow up with them and nurture a relationship with them so that they will support you eventually?

You should be trying to migrate your social media followers onto your email list. People who subscribe to your email list are primed to hear from you. They're more highly qualified. People who follow you on social media are just casually engaged. Even though social media potentially has a larger reach, it's a different kind of relationship. A Facebook or Instagram follower is a casual relationship. You might follow people whose music you've never bought, maybe just listen to on Spotify. But you're not deeply ingrained with them.

When you're building your fanbase, you can go wide or you can go deep. Most musicians focus on going wide, they chase the big numbers. There are times when that's appropriate, but it's not enough to just have a large number of those casual relationships. You also need to go deep and nurture those relationships to foster a deeper connection. It's those deeper relationships that are going to make the difference for you between being a starving artist barely scraping by and making a full-time living from your music. This comes back to the quality vs. quantity distinction that I often make. Success in the new music business means cultivating high-quality relationships with die-hard superfans as opposed to the old model of spreading yourself thin and having heaps of casual followers who rarely buy from you.

The difference between a follower and a fan is engagement. There are different levels of fan engagement. You can think of fan engagement as a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is wide and contains the most amount of fans. The top of the pyramid is narrower and contains fewer fans but they are most passionate and committed. There's 5 levels to this pyramid.

At the bottom you've got potential fans, people who have only just come into your ecosystem, maybe they've just stumbled onto you recently. They haven't been introduced to a lot of your music, so naturally they're not going to shell out and spend money on what you're doing because they don't know you yet; they don't have a relationship with you. Over time as they're exposed to more of your stuff, they can move up from this lowest tier of fandom to being a casual fan.

Casual fans know who you are and like your music. They might be a Facebook follower. They probably stream your songs. They might come to a gig but have no burning desire to go. Casual fans are more likely to buy your music than a potential fan. They might buy a CD if they come to a gig, but they have no burning desire to find out when your next album is coming out. They're still not the most engaged fan. You can move them up to the next level, which is an Engaged Fan.

Engaged fans like you but their lives don't revolve around you. They're active online to varying degrees. They may like your Facebook Page, follow you on Twitter, but they're not checking your Page everyday to see what you've posted. They've subscribed to your email list, post about you once in a while, and may have supported your crowdfunding campaign. They'll stream your music and share it, and they probably own a few of your albums but not all of them. If you only focus on one group of fans, it should be this one. If you nurture these engaged fans, you can move them up a level on the pyramid to become SuperFans.

At the Super Fan level, these people now are getting to be much higher quality and there's a much higher level of engagement. They're interacting with your social media posts, join your email list and read your emails, they're coming to multiple gigs, they'll buy all your albums, they'll buy your merch and wear your t-shirt, support your crowdfunding campaigns, pre-order music and tickets. They're supporting you financially on a consistent basis. They're evangelists for your music.

Last of all, the highest tier, you might call them ultimate fans. These are people that might follow you around on tour, even to different countries. Years ago when I went to see Elton John, I was sitting next to some people in the audience who were following him around Australia, going to every concert. They'll become your patrons and give you money every month. They'll pay for VIP meet-and-greet experiences. They build their vacations and even their lives around you and your activities. They spend all of their disposable income on you. That's a level of dedication that the majority of fans don't have. But every artist will have fans like that. It might be 1% of your fan base.

As you go up this pyramid it gets narrower towards the top, which means that you have fewer people at those higher levels. So again, it's not about quantity it's about quality. It's your job to move people up the ladder of fan engagement; move them up a tier in this pyramid. This won't work for everyone. Some people will be happy just being casual fans and that's OK. But there are some that you can build a relationship with over time and move them up so they're going to engage more with your social media posts, they'll get on your email list, they're going to come to more gigs, they're going to buy your albums and EPs, they're going to buy your merch, they're going to subscribe to your fan club, they're going to support your crowdfunding campaigns. This is what we're aiming for, this higher level of engagement. The true fan.

The important thing to realise here is that you can't treat every fan the same, because the level at which they engage with you can vary dramatically. You need to engage with each level of the pyramid differently. Fans at each level are going to want something different from you. So if the goal is to try to move fans up a level on the pyramid, you first need to identify fans at each one of these levels. Then you need to have a plan for each level and how you're going to reach them, reward them, and engage them.