I gained 50,000 followers in a year.
As an independent artist, I wanted to expand my reach and connect with potential listeners organically.
After trying the utterly overplayed "new single out now, link in bio" posts to no avail, I knew I needed to find content strategies that would not only attract engagement, but also create a sustainable growth model.
Thus, in 2023, I completely re-thought my social media strategy. It wasn't until then that my follower counts on TikTok and Instagram began to increase.
It's one thing to create content. It's another to adapt content.
It might sound weird, but I think of social media as transactional.
If you give people something of value (a video), then they give you something in return (engagement).
I've found that people find tons of value in educational content. When people feel like they've learned something from a post, they tend to show their gratitude by liking, commenting, or sharing.
I started giving detailed attention to my video analytics, identifying which videos performed best, and adapting my content based on those identified outliers.
By doing this, I identified two key music-related niches:
Music production tips (targeting producers and aspiring artists)
Songwriting analysis (with a focus on Taylor Swift and similar artists)
I leveraged current trends, such as Taylor Swift's latest releases, Sabrina Carpenter's music, and other relevant pop culture events such as Grammy nominations, to keep my content timely and discoverable.
I continued to study audience retention and engagement analytics to refine future posts, sticking with my identified niches so that people would not just engage with my videos, but with my profile as well (aka, they'd follow me).
Results
In one year, I grew my combined TikTok and Instagram following from zero to 50,000 with significantly increased engagement rates.
My developed content strategy not only drove followers, but allowed me to convert a sum of them into listeners of my original music, because I balanced my educational content with content promoting my music.
Key Takeaways
Niching down was crucial—focusing on music production tips and songwriting analysis helped me connect with a dedicated audience rather than simply having a few viral videos.
Data-driven content adaptation was the key to growth. The more I studied what worked, the more efficiently I could scale.
Trend incorporation helped boost discoverability, but long-term success came from balancing trends with consistent, valuable content.