Looking to grow your social media following?
Want to give your streams a boost?
It’s fair to say that most career minded artists are in pursuit of exactly that.
What if I told you that you could grow your social media following to over 5,000 and your streaming count to over 15,000 in seven months or less?
Well, Sarah Tolle did it, and we recently caught up with her to discover how.
In addition to these jaw-dropping results, Sarah also shares a little bit about how SEO works for the independent artist.
Here’s Sarah to fill us in.
1. Who are you and what do you do?
I am an independent singer-songwriter and actress. I work full-time in a content director role at an indie digital media company.
Here are links to my social profiles. I am most active on TikTok, where I have almost 5,000 followers to date:
➤ YouTube
➤ TikTok
➤ Instagram
➤ Facebook
➤ Spotify
➤ SoundCloud
➤ Website
2. What is something most artists don’t know about SEO that they should know?
The technical stuff is usually better handled by someone else who’s interested in messing with your website, but there is a lot to be learned from SEO in terms of understanding “search intent.” Of course, in marketing your music, you’re often putting it in front of people who are not actively searching for it—they passively discover it.
But paying attention to the conversations in the SEO space about search intent is helpful, as you get more practice adopting the audience’s perspective and understanding their needs and wants as expressed in their own language.
3. Why does SEO for artists need to be done on a case by case basis?
For technical SEO, that needs to be done on a per-website basis—you’d need to do a technical audit of their website to understand if anything’s going wrong and how to fix it. For the parts of SEO related to producing content, it comes down to developing a strategy on an individual basis. Not all artists need to produce blog content, for example, and might be better off investing in ads or social content, while other artists might benefit from the search traffic that SEO-focused content generates.
There are so many voices out there telling creatives that we need to be everywhere and make everything. I think that’s putting an overwhelming amount of pressure on ourselves. Each artist needs to decide how to run their own business (or hobby, if it’s that); they need to experiment and figure out what works for their schedule, skills, resources, and audience as they go.
Each artist needs to decide how to run their own business; they need to experiment and figure out what works for their schedule, skills, resources, and audience as they go. Click To Tweet4. What have you been able to accomplish as an artist in one year?
It’s only been a little over Seven months since I started. Before I began, I never had it in my mind that I could sing or be a professional artist, but since recording my first song in February, I’ve released three singles and I’m about to release my fourth. I also produced my first music video for $0 by asking friends and family to send in homemade dance footage. I’ve been lucky to work with an awesome producer (Ovi Bistriceanu) from the start.
I joined social media some time in late July, and I’ve grown a following from zero on all the major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube; I use Trello to plan out lots of daily social content in advance. TikTok’s my most successful platform, where I have almost 5,000 followers.
Overall, my songs have garnered around 15,000 streams so far. I’ve developed the business side of things by starting to work with a marketing agency and hiring a personal/marketing assistant.
Seven months is a little early to be needing to see results, but even so, I have hit a lot of milestones very quickly, and I’m looking forward to working on remixes, sync licensing, some PR, and of course, releasing many more singles next year.
Final Thoughts
My takeaway? If you plan your work and work your plan, and follow a path that’s right for you, you’re going to see fast results.
What about you?
Did you enjoy this interview?
Then be sure to say “thanks” to Sarah. All her social media links are above!
And if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below!
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