#180 - Five Ways to Build Anticipation for your Next Release
Hint that something is coming - Put out feelers early by hinting at a forthcoming project while it’s still in the production stage. This may sound counterintuitive, but capturing your excitement for the project during these early stages gets people on board from the get go. And just remember, you don’t need to give an exact release date which means this is a great way to hold yourself accountable without putting yourself under massive amounts of pressure.
Involve your fans in the process - One thing WIPs are great for is social media content. Instead of going silent on your fans between releases, share the trials and tribulations of creating your new single / album with your audience - i.e. share videos of you riffing, trialling melodies, and writing and rewriting lyrics etc. Rather than ruining the end product, this is only going to make viewers more excited to see the finished project.
Encourage audience engagement - Another great thing about involving fans in the process via social media is that it’s a two-way channel, meaning that fans can respond to your WIP content. Taking this a step further, you could actively encourage fans to share their thoughts on snippets of your track, you could run a poll to let fans choose your cover art, or even choose song subjects for the project submitted by your followers. The possibilities are endless.
Give regular progress updates - Sharing each progress update i.e. the first track having been mastered, the first video to be finished, a confirmed release date, allows the excitement for your release to accumulate over time. All of this means, when you reach the pre-release period of your release campaign, fans will be poised to pre-save your track.
Count-down the big launch - Once you have a firm date in the diary and you know exactly when your main release campaign is running, you can launch one final, mega countdown for the big launch. This is your chance to get creative with daily content, ramping things up with trending challenges, silly versions of the song, and perhaps even influencer endorsement.
