4 Savvy Tricks for Engaging your Audience

My success today is a result of endless amounts of hard work and learning from my mistakes. This includes collaborating with other artists, sharing and promoting your work on every possible platform, and making a genuine effort to connect with people online.

I truly believe that NOW is the best time in history to be a creator.

We have endless resources at our disposal, with just the click of a mouse or tap of a finger. By being someone who people want to follow and support, and giving them something valuable back in return, you have the ability to create something meaningful.

          1. Treat Yourself as a Business

In order to be a successful community manager who provides value to his supporters, you need to be interacting with them as much as possible. Think of your social media accounts- FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and email as a storefront. For example, if you owned a shop and someone came in to browse, you wouldn’t ignore them. You would say hi and thank them for coming in! Treat your interactions with online supporters the same way.

I always encourage people to study business in college if they have the opportunity. In order to be an independent creator, you have to be a part businessman. There is simply no way around it.

          2. Build relationships with your supporters

I engage with people on a multitude of online platforms every single day. I use resources such as Mentions for Facebook and TweetDeck for Twitter to know when someone is talking about me or my music.

If your following increases substantially and you cannot keep on top of this by yourself, I recommend hiring someone who can respond to people as you. Most importantly, make people know that they are noticed! I do my very best to reply to everything, and with as much genuinity as possible. Even if someone is insulting me or hating on my music, my policy is to Kill ‘Em With Kindness. It usually works ;-).

          3. Treat your Supporters as Equals

It is so important to me that my supporters know I am their equal. Be real. Don’t act as if any of your success as a creator makes you a better person than anyone else. It doesn’t. When I respond to people’s comments, messages, or emails, they are often overjoyed. Sometimes even tell me that it made their day! And when it comes down to it, that is why I do what I do.

          4. Patreon

I respond personally to every Patreon message that I receive. Patrons are my most engaged fans, the ones who actually pay to support my work and have decided to embark on this journey with me. This is the most important online community you have.

My patrons are the reason why I am able to do what I love and support my family. They are my source of inspiration for creating art and helping others make a living doing what they love.

This blog is a summary of a post from my Creator 101 series with Patreon, check out the full piece!