79: Strategies for Growing Your Audience with Sherry Lynn Lee from 23rd Hour
Episode description
Sherry-Lynn Lee is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from the jazz-pop duo 23rd Hour. We talk about creating an identity, growing an audience on social media, as well as in your own back yard, creating strategic partnerships, and leveraging your success to build momentum.
Creating community
- Experimenting to figure out what creates engagement
- Creating a twitter strategy for promotion around popular hashtags
- Pairing a wine with a song for #winewednesday
- Repurposing video to multiple social sites
- Knowing where your audience is hanging out on social media
- Tailoring your content to your audience
- Consistently showing up on social media
Creating Strategic Partnerships
- Partnering with a music education foundation to promote their CD release party
- Finding an organization that is in line with your values
- Creating strategic partnerships with organizations in your local community to help grow your audience
- Donating show proceeds to charity
iTunes Chart Success
- Leveraging iTunes chart position to gain momentum to move higher up the chart
- Creating a partnership with Hungry for Music
- Converting album sales to instruments so fans could see how there impacting the charity
- Rising to the Top 10 on the iTunes chart
- Leveraging their success for additional exposure and promotion
- The power of promoting something people already care about
Why has success as a musician been historically defined as not having a day job? Why must we choose?
- Being a full time musician doesn’t work for everyone
- Some people have multiple passions. Why do we have to pick just one?
- Having a day job helps her finance Sherry-Lynn’s music projects
- Creating software also fills her creative needs
- Balancing two careers
Creating an Experience for Everyone
- Transporting listeners to another time and place
- Playing to a listening audience
- Making color coded set-lists for the band
- Making it easy for the venue to help you have a successful performance
Links and Resources Mentioned
https://www.facebook.com/23rdHr
https://www.twitter.com/twentythirdhour
https://www.instagram.com/twentythirdhour
https://www.soundcloud.com/23rdHr
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgUjwMHideFEBo_hBqlu1Tg
https://medium.com/@twentythirdhour