The Artist Rise #034
Welcome to your weekly resource for all things branding, release strategy, and overall artist development.
Every week I'll help you strengthen your artistry through sustainable strategies that will help you build your career rather than force you into burnout.
Let's get into it.
The Release Cycle
You write the song.
You deem the song worthy of release, and you bring the song to life through production.
It gets polished up, and you pick a date to share it with the world.
Then you dive deep into promotion and do what you can to get it in front of the ears of your future fans.
And then the cycle repeats itself.
Sure the process is a little elongated if you do a project rather than a string of singles, but the flow from top to bottom looks the same.
Except there's one thing we haven't accounted for yet:
The downtime.
The "Off-Season"
Whether you're rolling out song after song or waterfalling your next album, there's going to come a point at the end of your current release cycle and before your next one where things are at a pause.
Maybe you're writing the next batch of tracks or working on a new collab you want to get perfect.
Regardless of what it is, you're going to run into a time where there's a little down time and you're between releases.
It's inevitable to some degree, you're bound to fall into a natural break at some point.
And it might not be long, but it'll be there.
And the longer the release cycle, the longer the off-season.
But what do you do in the off-season?
How do you stay front-of-mind if there isn't a new song on the way?
Off-Season Social Strategy
Momentum is how you build, it's essential to growing your fanbase and developing your artist project.
So what does that look like between projects?
What do you use your promotional channels for if there's nothing new to promote?
Here's what a social strategy looks like at times like this:
1. Song anniversaries
Every release has a birthday, so celebrate them.
Use the anniversary of the song as an excuse to revive an older track from your catalog and remind your audience that it's there.
Odds are you've picked up a few fans since that release and it might still be brand new to them.
Plus, there's no such thing as a song too old to promote. Unlike us, music doesn't age.
2. Covers
Take the downtime as an excuse to jump into some of your favorite songs that you didn't write.
A cover is a great way to add to your artistry because it showcases not only your style but your music taste.
More often than not, we make music like the artists we admire and so if you cover a song someone likes, odds are they might like your music too.
An alternative route to this as well is to cover something on a different side of the music landscape and put your own spin on it.
3. Alternative versions
There's nothing like a spin on one of your own songs that your fans and followers would love.
Taking a song and stripping it down to an acoustic version or using an old drafted verison of the song is a great way to extend the reach of the song itself.
Plus, if you like what you come up with enough, it could be another release to help fill that gap.
Added bonus that the release process would be low lift given the song is already written and out there.
All in all, there's a lot of ways you can get creative with your existing catalog to keep your momentum building.
Executing in the Off-Season
It probably sounds a little counter-productive, spending time to fill the gaps instead of putting your time into shortening it.
But in order to make your future releases hit effectively and continue growing your fanbase, you have to keep engaging your current audience and stay relevant.
The grind never stops, it's true.
So in order to make this as easy on yourself as you can, keep the creation simple and stick within the routine that you've (hopefully) developed for your regular social content.
But even then, this isn't meant to be anything fancy. You should still put forth an effort and image that you want, but we can keep it casual.
The role it's meant to play is bridging the gap, so don't go crazy.
What It's All For
We're building routines, filling gaps, continuing the cycle in a way that leaves fans satisfied because there's never any room for them to lose interest.
You still get to carry through the release cycles and can dedicate yourself to making the most of every release, but this time there's no room for losing interest.
We all know there are casual fans that hop on board for a single release because that song brought them in the door, and sometimes they walk right back out because nothing followed up to maintain their interest.
This is the solution to that problem, integrating previous tracks in a way that keeps attention and engages those casual fans into ones that are going to stick around.
That's the ultimate goal, right? Taking those fans further down the funnel?
Well, this is where it happens.
Consistency is the key.
Want to go further?
If you want more guidance in developing content strategies that work for you, book a free intro session and see what a game-changing social strategy can look like for you and your artistry.
Until next time,
-Ava
That's it for this week! Hopefully this helped you take the next step in developing yourself as an artist and a brand. Stay tuned for more next week.
If you have any topics you want to see more of or any questions you'd love for me to answer, simply reply to this email.
Keep learning and growing,
Ava Rose Lynch
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