Since my client is an aspiring musician, I was looking for a successful profile that had a good following but was not a well-known mainstream musician.  I spoke to my client to see if he had anyone he followed that he aspired to be like socially, and he directed me to a musician called Anth.

Tyler began following Anth approximately 4 years ago.  He became aware of him after a friend shared one of his videos.  Tyler states that when he began following Anth on Facebook, he had approximately 10,000 followers.

Today on Facebook Anth has 1.2 million likes and 1.6 million followers.  That is a huge growth in the past 4 years!  I reviewed his account to see what approach he has taken to help him grow so dramatically, and how I could use this information to benefit my client.

One thing I noticed right away is that Anth posts a lot of short videos with things like behind the scenes clips preparing to shoot a video, writing a song, etc.  Some of the most successful videos are when he is candid and vulnerable.  Making short videos like this would help raise my client’s brand awareness.

Anth’s videos have boldly worded captions to draw attention, such as “Wait till my ex hears this”.  I feel these eye-catching graphics are important in contributing to the number of views.   His recent video views range from 1 million to 14 million views!  This is a great approach for my client to use as well to raise his view count.

When Anth was growing his community, he would post photos and ask for fans to “caption” it.    He permits fans to post photos to his page. This would be a great idea for my client to use to get fans to interact with his page and create a sense of community.

There are strategies this musician uses that are consistent with what we have learned so far.  His handles across all social media platforms are the same with clearly posted links to all content.  He has a brand logo that is clear and well defined.

Additionally, I noticed his profile is marked as a musician/band.

This would be advantageous for my client to add to his profile, so his site would come up in musician searches.

There is some aspect of Anth’s community that could be improved upon to help it grow.  For starters, he has no biography or personal branding statement.

It appears that he has a huge following because of the large number of likes and views, but after closely reviewing his site, it seems that his regular following is limited to a small number of dedicated fans.  This is not a bad thing, as loyalty is more important than quantity.  I do believe that he could grow that number of loyal fans to more closely resemble the number of followers.

I noticed when Anth was starting out, he would faithfully interact with his followers.  In recent years, he has stopped that practice, even though most posts have only 100-300 comments.  In addition, his posts are sporadic.  Making regular posts and interacting with his followers will help raise his impression and reach and grow his community.

Using Anth’s blueprint, I feel we could easily implement many of these tactics for my client.

This exercise has proven very helpful in determining what steps my client and I can take in the future, as well as what pitfalls to avoid.