I know you’re out here on Social Media, sharing away, creating a content strategy, bringing value, iterating week after week… but maybe your growth has stalled…. Ring a bell?
Well, that’s because it’s just the TRUTH about the current state of platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Organic growth is close to dead, these platforms are mature, and they aren’t looking to give “free” exposure to anyone these days…
So what do we do about it? Well, there’s a few strategies that come to mind to help find and grow your audience with new people who might be interested in the topics that you share on your channels.
Collaborate - find ways to reach new audiences by finding other creators doing something similar to you, and work with them to create something exciting! Could be a duet, an interview, something crazy/weird/fun, or just helping each other out by sharing each other’s content. This puts you in front of a whole new set of audience members (each others!) Tip: try to collaborate with other creators who are around your awareness level/age. The “we’re in this together” mentality between the two parties is pretty important!
Viral Content - Study the internet. Look up trends on YouTube, IG, Facebook, Tik Tok… and try to participate but in your own way! If you can put your own spin on an existing trend, and get it out in a timely fashion (ideally, the same day that you observe the trend), you can garner some new audience members. Note: many of these people might just be following you to see more content that’s like the trend you just copied - ie humor, outrageous, etc. If they end up not following for long, don’t be surprised...
Paid Media - This is my favorite pick of the three. Paid Media is a pretty basic strategy that companies have used for decades, changing mediums as culture evolves. Paid Media means amplifying your content in an ongoing way, to a curated audience via Social Media Advertising. There’s really never been a better time to jump into social media ads - the tools are amazingly strong to connect with the exact audience that you want to create! The strategy here is to think of each piece of content as a billboard that can be shown only to people that care about that thing (ie. You or your genre of music). Once we get enough people to see your content and engage with it, you can then re-target them later on, with an offer that brings them value. And after that? You re-target them with an offer to make a purchase from you, give you their email address, etc. But it all starts with amplifying that your content. This is something we do for artists at Outside in Music, for as little as $25/week in ad spend. Just hit us up, so we can get your content shown to the right people!
In short, yes. I think organic growth has slowed WAY down… not just compared to 5 or 10 years ago, but even for the last 6 months… we manage many artists social media accounts, and we can confidently say that the ones that are growing are engaging in one or more of these activities!
Hope this helps - get in touch if you want assistance with any of these growth strategies - we’re always here to help you grow!
Have an amazing week -
Nick