Transcript
The quickest way for a rapper to build a following is to connect with the people in the social circle. So that may be your cousins, your homeboys from the block or homegirls from the block, people you went to school with, people that you just know from the community. Just invite them out to a show. And by inviting them out to a show, sometimes you’ll find that other people who see that, “Wow, he has a lot of support,” then they’ll remember you more.
And the key thing is to get those people to follow you on social media. Because, say everybody comes to a show. And when they come to the show and they leave, if there’s no way to stay in contact with you, there’s no…a following is really a relationship. And the only way to build a relationship is to be in communication with the people that you’re building a following with.
So that’s key. You have to stay in contact with folks. The easiest way to stay in contact is everybody’s on Facebook, everybody’s on Twitter. So starting with Twitter and Facebook is a great way, but ReverbNation is also a great tool, because it has a lot of tools for artists to stay in contact with their friends. They have even an app building and you can have your own app where someone can follow you and stay abreast of the things that you’re going on.
But one very, very important part of building a following is to give value. If you only put out a song every six months or every year, you’re not going to build a following. People need to be interested in you. And for people to be interested, you have to be interesting. And how you stay interesting is by always switching up. You know, you may come with a video. You may do something like a show. You may do a show in a place that’s not traditional. You may have a press story that happened.
So you always want to share things with your following so that they can see progression, they can see the evolution. And by constantly staying in communication with your following and giving them things to do, things to check out, that’s how you build your numbers. And a following really is just a relationship with a large number of people that grow over time. So those are some keys that you can apply to build your following. Good luck.
