As a musician, you have a lot of things to juggle, both when it comes to creating music and dealing with the business side of things. In the midst of it all, it can be easy to forget about the most important aspect of your career — your fans.<\/p>\n
Like a married couple, sometimes you and your fans are going to piss each other off. Maybe you release a lame album, for example. Or maybe you release a great album, but your fans don’t buy it.<\/span><\/p>\n These kinds of things happen in relationships. At the end of the day though, if you’ve built your relationships with fans upon a good foundation, you’ll be able to work through any problems and continue to move your career forward.<\/p>\n The connection you have to fans is more important than anything else you\u2019re doing in the music business, including the music itself. Without fans, you have no career.<\/p>\n Most musicians go for the equivalent of “pickup lines” when it comes to their relationships with fans. They get caught up in “instant gratification” techniques that add numbers to their Facebook friend count, Twitter followers, or even sales figures, but little to do with building (and maintaining) the type of connection and rapport that, when done right, are more than just a passing fancy.<\/p>\n Long term strategy is how the music business game is won. If you want to be around 20 years from now, “superfans” who will buy everything you release (and more of it) are the way to go.<\/p>\n This is done through relationship building.<\/p>\n Here are a few ways you can build “superfan” relationships:<\/p>\n Reply to Messages<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Fans of your music know you\u2019re busy, so they don\u2019t always expect you to reply to \u201cfan mail\u201d or other messages they send. Because of this, a reply is extra powerful when it comes to showing them how much they are valued.<\/p>\n