It is that time of year again…. The HOLIDAZE! For artists, there is no better time to work on building engagement within your fan base and it’s a great time to also stimulate sales. Our friends at CyberPR offer 7 tactics that you can use to first activate your fan base in order to build engagement or sales – or both.
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1. Create & Share Holiday-Themed Music and Content on Your Socials
Get Social and get in the spirit at the same time! Use your favorite social channel (or all of them to show your own holiday spirit:
Record a holiday track and use this as your main content and supplement with holiday memes, art that you create or videos
TIP: If you are recording a holiday classic make sure it is in the Public Domain, if not you will need to get a license.
Facebook: Post holiday themed photos and videos or ask holiday specific questions.
Instagram: Create special tiles that are holiday oriented and allow your fans to interact with you
Twitter: Use holiday themed hashtags to seek out and engage new fans or, in the case, engage new media makers who may be showcasing holiday music on their blogs, podcasts and playlists.
Youtube: Create playlists of your favorite holiday songs or music videos
Spotify: Create holiday specific playlists and share with friends and followers
Blog: Write about your 5 favorite holiday songs/ movies/ recipes, etc.
Pinterest: Create holiday-themed Pinboards
2. Crowdsourced Fan Contributed Content
Give your fans an opportunity to join in on the fun! Pick a holiday theme (i.e. ‘All I Want For Christmas Is…’), and then request content from your fans that can result in a single, crowdsourced project. The result would be something that everyone can enjoy.
- Ask fans to upload photos to Facebook and tag your Page track all submissions and then create a collective Holiday Photo Album.
- Create a video announcing the project and ask your fans to submit their images – share on Instagram, Youtube and Facebook
- Ask fans to submit photos through Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, and then you can create a slideshow music video using the fan submissions.
- Create a collaborative Spotify playlist and ask your fans to add their favorite songs based on the chosen theme. The end result is a playlist that can be shared with your entire fan base and collectively listen to throughout the holiday season.
3. Create a Cool Contest
An excellent way to not only engage your fan base, but also create a strategy that showcases your merch (without being overtly self-promotional) is to create a contest.
It is important that your contest be worthwhile in order for it to work, so make sure your contest is set up with a prize that offers something exclusive and valuable.
One large example is when Jessie J utilized a split screen technology that allowed her fans to cover her song “Flashlight” with her. It made it seem as though the two were actually singing together. This produced many many videos that got as many as 14,000,000 views. Click Here for an example.
- Wishpond – Compatible on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Utilizes Live Promotions for contests.
- WooBox – Compatible on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Websites. WooBox uses Salesforce and Constant Contact in order to create extremely successful contests.
- Shortstack– FREE Application that integrates with many platforms such as WordPress and MailChimp to run your contests.
4. Create a Holiday Hangout!
If you have a large enough fanbase, why not create a live streaming event for them? Use Facebook Live or stream on a platforms like Stageit or Concert Window. Picking between the two they are both quite similar, will allow you to either charge a set ticket price or use the pay what you want model. Play holiday songs mixed in with an acoustic set right from the comfort of your own home!
5. Create Bundles & Experiences
A brilliant tactic for boosting sales at the end of the year is the bundle. Fans may be less likely to purchase your album because they can stream it but may be far more likely to purchase if you bundle it with other cool things. Here are a few levels of bundles that could work well:
Low-Price Level idea: Album + Merch
Low-Price Level idea: UBS Drive of full anthology of albums (possibly even including exclusive, previously unreleased content)
Mid-Price Level idea: Album + Tickets to an upcoming show
High-Level idea: Album (or USB Drive) + Tickets + Merch + Phone call / Skype Call with Fan
The best way to make these bundles effective is to create multiple price points, with each one increasing in exclusivity.
Use BandPage Experiences to organize these offers:https://www.bandpage.com/support/how-store
6. Send A Dedicated Holiday Newsletter
You already know the importance of your mailing list, Create a special holiday newsletter and include an exclusive video, unreleased track on a private SoundCloud page, or a create funny card featuring the whole band –http://www.jibjab.com/holidays
7. Associate With a Charity
Hold a drive or a holiday show and get your fans involved. There are so many wonderful charities you can collectively support. Here are 7 (See how we did that?) to get you started!
- Charity Water – https://donate.charitywater.org/campaigns/new
- Toys For Tots – http://www.toysfortots.org/donate/toys.aspx
- Music Cares – https://www.grammy.org/musicares
- ACLU – https://action.aclu.org/donate-aclu?ms=web_horiz_nav_hp
- TJ Martell – http://www.tjmartell.org/how-you-can-help
- Sweet Relief – http://sweetrelief.org
- World Hunger Year – http://whyhunger.org/
How Have YOU Made the Most of the Holidays?
The list of holiday-themed content strategies and tactics can go on and on, so hopefully this acts as a starting point for your digital strategy for next year. Share with us anything you have done that works. We want to hear all about it.