Involve your audience in your story

The regular readers here know I can sometimes take the long road to get to the point 😀 So strap your self in, here we go again. I was reading an article on how Twitters shares dropped earlier in the year. This was to do with them adjusting their growth projection. There has been a lot of speculation what is behind this, some pointing at the comparison to Facebook. I personally buy that… I think that’s like comparing pizza to an ice-cream.

I personally think Twitter suffer from one big problem. They have amazing platform which service very specific need. And if they try to go after the ridiculously big Facebook audience, they would risk loosing everything they have built. The reason I hear so many people not using it is because they don’t ”get it.” You see Twitter has a massive user base, but for it to grow, they need to get better at sharing their story. If they can do this, people will “get it.”

The reason so may start-ups fail is not the lack of great ideas, it is the inability to tell and share their stories. You see it is the story that gets us engaged, and if the story involves how we should be part of it, then they are on to a winner.

And if you by now are wondering what on earth am I talking about Twitter stock price and failed start-ups, well here’s how I stir things back on track 😉 Most musicians fail for the very same reason. We fail to share our story. OK, some just are not up for the job. For some the product just isn’t good enough… But I have heard so many great artists over the years who never got the recognition they deserved, and eventually gave up. The reason is the same, they failed to tell and share their story.

But if you can do this, and even more so do it in a way that your potential audience becomes part of your story, you are onto a great thing. Whether you like it or not, people need a reason to do something, even to listen to music. We might not know it in the moment, it is not necessarily a conscious thing, but the music we choose to listen to is there to do a job. It could be to cheer us up, calm us down, or even just emphasise the mood we are in. It can be there to forget, or remember something from he past. So if we as musicians can tell our story, and involve the listener, give them the reason why our music could be just what they might need in want ever moment they are right now.

Learn to tell your story, and involve your audience. It is not just as a musician, it is an interaction between you and the listener. Ok, time to pull over and I’ll let you out 😉

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get EIGHT of his songs for free go HERE