Well, my band is just coming to the end of our 2018 touring year and on Saturday we played to this rather large crowd.

Now would seem like a good time to reflect on the factors needed to building a strong live following.  How do you get people to come and see you live, and then return again and again? Well, based on my own experiences here are some of my thoughts.

Give Them Great Songs

You can’t underestimate how important songs are, they are the building blocks of your career. You need the raw material and the songs to work with.  If you’re starting out, you might not have the songs yet, and you might need to work at writing the types of songs that fill the ‘gaps’ in your set. It was probably 4 – 5 albums in before we were able to start to create something approaching the songs that we needed to sequence  a knockout live show.

Give Them A Great Night

You don’t need big production values to give your audience a good time.  What you do need is an awareness of how to sequence a set (what songs go where), the ability to engage an audience and the stagecraft to entertain and keep an audience’s attention.

Give Them The Right Venue

If you’re booking your own shows, choosing the right venue can be important .  The venue’s marketing power can be a massive contributing factor into how many people will make the effort to come and see you.

Have A Marketing Budget

Each of your shows should have a marketing budget.  Mine is mostly spent Facebook ads on creating awareness of my band and my music, with the majority of the budget then promoting the show.  Rinse and repeat.

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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