You're talented fam! But when you don't get the results/support you desire from your music, sometimes self doubt can creep in and cause you to question your talent. Don't doubt yourself! You have unique value that people will appreciate! But to get the results you desire, it's going to take asking yourself a few specific questions and then putting an action plan in place based on those answers. Here are the questions you need ask yourself:
Question 1: Who is your ideal supporter? Who is it that you're specifically trying to communicate to with your music? What demographic traits do they have? The clearer picture you have of who that is, the better you can define every part of your brand to connect with them.
Question 2: What message/value are you trying to communicate to that supporter? What benefit would you like your ideal supporter to get out of your music? At the end of the day, people care more about how they benefit from what you're offering vs the thing you're actually offering. The clearer you are on your benefits/value/message, the better you can define every part of your brand to connect with your ideal supporter.
Question 3: Does your social media content/website/music clearly communicate your benefit/value/message to your ideal supporter? Everything we do/create should be framed to communicate our benefit/value/message to that ideal supporter. That's how we attract the right people to us. Many times we cast too wide of a net and end up missing the people who would authentically resonate with what we do. So we have to constantly re-evaluate our strategy to make sure we're communicating the right thing to the right people. It's not about reaching everybody because what you do isn't going to connect with everybody. It's about reaching the right people.
Question 4: Does what you do elevate your ideal supporter's life? At the end of the day, regardless of what business you're in, we're all in the solutions business. People have problems, we create solutions, and people pay us for our solutions. Our music (and anything else we do) should be providing some type of solution that elevates our ideal supporter's life. Whether that's just entertainment, encouragement, confidence, faith, consolation, etc. We have to constantly re-evaluate what we offer to make sure it's providing solutions/elevation because that's how you keep winning. People may forget your lyrics and melodies, but they'll never forget how you make them feel. It's all about impact!
Question 5: Do you have a vehicle in place (outside of social media) to frequently reinforce your benefit/message/value to your ideal supporter? Social media is great and necessary, but all these algorithm changes can quickly throw a wrench in your strategy! One month your reach may be fantastic and the next month nobody is seeing your posts. This is why you also need email marketing, text marketing, or both in place to capture your audience's contacts and reinforce that connection. You can use email services such as Aweber, Mail Chimp, Get Response, etc to create an email signup for your ideal supporters and then stay connected through a valuable weekly/bi-weekly/monthly email. You can do the same via text with companies like Textedly, Simple Texting, etc. I'm assuming you already have a website but if you don't, you can easily build one with sites such as Wix, Squarespace, etc. Any time you have some value to offer, new music, new products, etc, you can let your audience know directly via email/text marketing. Social media is an amazing tool to gain exposure for your brand but if you don't capture that audience via email/text marketing, you're doing yourself and your ideal supporters a huge disservice.
After you answer these questions for yourself, identify the weak points in your strategy and put an action plan together to fix them! As you consistently demonstrate brand clarity in these 5 areas, results will come! But it's a continual process. We all have to frequently revisit and answer these questions for ourselves in order to keep moving the needle forward. So as I continually do this for myself, I hope it helps you as well! Blessings -Tone