Faith is… Wait what are we doing here?
Faith is… a song of doubt and sweet relief. And so many things. Of course broadly and most prominently it means strong believe, or strong trust in something. Most commonly we think about faith in terms of religion. Conviction toward religious beliefs. And things in that realm. But it also means a lot more.
To me, faith is the idea that you will believe in something strongly, despite a lack of strong, direct evidence. The courage to take on big things, despite fear and doubt in the outcome - because deep down in your heart - some combination of your personal beliefs and your intuition guide you there like a compass.
We put our faith in a lot of things that aren’t directly related to religion. We put faith in the things we believe. The things we believe are often absorbed through personal experience, or cultural ideals. The things we believe are often driven by fear, and avoidance of the unknown. Here our faith is often placed in the things we believe will save us from these things we fear, or helps us avoid coming to terms with these things that are unknown.
I fear I could go down so many rabbit holes with this topic - that I am going to stop for today as far as the idea of faith. After all - I am certainly no expert!
But I do have a song where I explore this a little - and I’d love for you to hear it. You can take forward your own conclusions about its meaning. I don’t intend to pinpoint a specific meaning here. But to help us ponder what it means to have faith, and how does this shape our actions, and what we are willing to believe.
What are we doing here?
What are we doing here? On this blog - I mean. Well…
I’m trying to do the opposite of “consolidate” right now. Why? Not sure. I think it is because I am realizing that putting all of my eggs in the Meta-based social media basket isn’t the best long term plan. Especially when they seem to be prone to randomly banning people for no apparent reason - and then if you have slightly port sided political views… problems. But that is tangential and not the point of this post.
Why are we here? Mostly I think I am going to just start using this space as a place to let my stream of thought go do its thing. Instagram’s 2200 character limit thing has been my constraint that I have been beholden to for over two years. And while that is already way more text than most people are willing to read - that’s also too restrictive for me SOMETIMES. In fact, people on Facebook are way more likely to read a longer post, just because of the nature of the platform. Instagram’s captions aren’t super terrible to read, but they also aren’t great.
And there is a whole discussion to be had there around using the platforms optimally. Like, the posts I do on Instagram should not be an exact copy of the post on Facebook. I mean they can be, but then what is the point for people that follow me on both? I think I’ll work on doing that a little differently going forward. In an attempt to improve my ability to reach “my audience.”
My Audience
The whole idea I’ve had of “my audience” needs to be rethought. For a long time I have stubbornly thought of my social media following and friends to be representative of my “audience” - but lets face it - that is NOT the case.
Especially for “Friends.” Personal friends do not represent a group of people that engage with you because of the art, music, or other content you create. They might engage with you because they know you from other parts of life, or they just know you - but they have no reason to have a strong connection to the actual artistic output.
This was hard for me to grasp at first. Meaning - for at least the last 15 years. For so long, I thought - hey these are my people. They will want to hear or see what I created! Occasionally that might have happened, or else I don’t know where that idea would have come from.
I did realize this somewhere along the way that I just couldn’t expect personal connections to actually be fans of my work. Maybe cheerleaders - but not fans. And an “audience” can’t really be filled with just cheerleaders - or else it is just a chorus of people hoping for the best, while there isn’t anyone actually engaging.
What are cheerleader fans vs. true fans?
OK just to level set real quick in case it isn’t obvious - I will define these two as follows:
Cheerleader Fan - An individual who has a direct or indirect relationship with the artist in either their personal, OR professional life. These individuals will root for the artist and cheer them on when cool things happen in their lives - but they do not actively engage in consumption of their output, nor do they support the artist through any major degree of patronage
True Fan - This is an individual who will within reason support the artist both in terms of cheering them on, but they are also actively consuming their artwork, music, etc. They are also more likely to purchase albums, prints, merch, and/or support through patronage opportunities.
Ultimately, the True Fan wants the artist to succeed just as the Cheerleader Fan does. But what is the thing that takes them from cheerleader to true fan? There is actually a lot to unpack there. So much so that I think I will reserve that topic for expansion another day.
Back to the point
But there was a point to where I was going with this - ah yes…
This takes me back to the beginning of this whole project for me. If my friends were always going to stay in cheerleader territory (at best) - how could I start reaching people who actual wanted to follow me and engage with my work? Well, I needed to go find them - or they needed to find me!
Which is truly why I started the whole social media presence that I have as Sarenrae. Being realistic, I know now it’s just a different thing - trying to find the people that actually want to engage - vs. trying to reach my friends and family.
But it makes plenty of sense.
Think about music in general. Everyone has their own preferences and their own life experiences that drive what they connect with. What are the odds that an artist has enough people in their family and friend connections that they could actually foster some kind of reasonable base of fans? It’s virtually impossible - unless they are already so established that a lot of their friends are friends in the first place because of the art or music they have shared or experienced together, etc.
Rambling here but I am just saying it probably breaks down something like this:
If you are lucky - let’s say you have 1,000 friends and family connections.
Most likely - no more than 20% of those connections know you enough and care enough to be cheerleaders. They’ll actively tell you that you’re doing great things - keep going!
The 80% contains largely indifference - with some thinking it is neat that you are trying - but won’t be bothered to react to your posts or anything like that.
So if you have 200 cheerleaders - it might give you the impression that you have somewhere between 25-100 fans - truly a base for which you could start building your audience. Nope. No. Wrong.
The reality, especially in friend-first cheerleaders, you might have between 5-10 fans from that group - maybe less. Estimating 1-5% are actual fans.
That likely transfers at a very similar rate when you consider expansion to a “Page” situation like I am in now with followers.
Is ‘growing an audience’ the purpose of a Facebook Page?
It often feels like the purpose of the page has been in many ways - to ‘grow an audience’ so that the people that want to engage with my work - can find me. Or I can find them. And the truth is - that DID happen. Or else almost none of you would know who I am or know nothing about my work. So I am not discounting that reality.
But there is still the matter of cheerleader vs. true fan. Many who are following have been doing so for a really long time and many have become true friends. But even amongst those fans that I could call friends - a big % of them are not in the True Fan category. They want me to succeed. They’ll give me words of encouragement, they’ll celebrate with me, and they will truly want the best for me. But they won’t truly engage - or maybe they have tried to engage and will realize it isn’t for them. Both of those are fine - I don’t mean to suggest everyone has to be a true fan to be valuable to me and my journey. But is important to find that actual audience.
So what is the point of all this?
Oh yeah the point. What I am trying to get at here is that I need new ways to try to foster my actual audience. My actual audience should consist exlcusively of true fans. These are the people that have repeatedly said - yes, I want to support you and your work - and I want to know about your new work when it is completed so I can listen, view, etc.
So there are two issues that come about from that:
Figuring out how to easily differentiate these on social media can be extremely difficult. While Facebook for example, does try to share content with “Top Fans” earliest with each new post - this does not necessarily mean each Top Fan is = to True Fan. Many Top Fans are dedicated cheerleaders. They are so consistent with their support at the cheerleader level, that they appear according to Facebook to be the most engaged, and thus most important.
There are strong limits to what you can do to target the true fans in the current situation. You can broadly attempt posting - but not everyone will see it. And certain types of posts, like links to YouTube, are almost certainly going to be hindered by Facebook because it doesn’t want users to leave the platform. In fact, it will most likely lean toward showing those users that will engage through reactions or comments, but that are unlikely to follow a link or go look for the music. Leaving the possibility that the true fan isn’t even seeing the content unless they go looking for it. And as humans - it is unlikely that this happens too often without provocation.
The implications from these issues are:
The artist has limited to no control over who sees their posts
Any attempts to target to true fans goes directly against what the platform wants, so it is unlikely to go very well.
I don’t technically have an audience. Meta owns my audience. I am renting this audience.
Then - how do I actually grow my audience? Well I have ideas, and you’ll start seeing them. But for now - this was already a lot. Thanks for coming along on this ride on Voximina’s stream of thought.
