What do artists do to keep their fans engaged between projects? Vince Staples told us straight up that utilizing the internet is a top priority to keep the bag coming.
Granted he was talking about taking advantage of people on the internet to benefit his career. But he wasn’t wrong. So who are these social media samurais and how does it work?
“Send out 20 tweets a month, get people to look at them and then you don’t have to do anything except maybe a show” – Vince Staples
Being social media savvy is becoming a requirement for any public job. Whether its entertainer or politician, knowing how to tweet and use memes will put you on a different level in your career.
Lil B
THUNDERCAT – Lil B
— Lil B THE BASEDGOD (@LILBTHEBASEDGOD) September 26, 2019
Peep OG Lil B. Although his fame has died down in recent years, the based god stayed relevant on Twitter without having to release a lot of music. And it worked.
People stayed tuned. Because of his loyal fan base, Lil B still gets constant interaction from his fans, and no to mention tons of feet pics.
Rich Brian
im goin to mcdonalds yall want anything? pic.twitter.com/GrXsbJOkIe
— Rich Brian (@richbrian) September 22, 2019
Rich Brian is a more recent example. Starting as Rich Chigga, the Indonesian artist got big after his hard-hitting single “Dat $tick” exploded online in early 2016. A complete album titled Amen wasn’t released until 2018.
During that gap, Rich Brian retired the Rich Chigga namesake to be more conscious of racial implications of being in and benefitting from a Hip-Hop space.
He also made sure to capitalize on the “Dat $tick” popularity with more appearances and collabs here and there, but most importantly Rich Brian was conscious of the importance of the internet. His Twitter is a perfect example of an artist keeping the hype alive even after releasing his July 2019 album The Sailor.
SZA
It’s always the one Person who knows u fr https://t.co/tdPdYrA2bG
— SZA (@sza) August 21, 2019
SZA similarly has the same tactics. While we wait for another album release to follow CTRL, we can engage with one of our fave artists on twitter and IG. SZA regularly responds to fans and comments on other artists’ tweets.
Lil Nas X
— i am reading all that (@LilNasX) September 19, 2019
Lil Nas X also uses his social prowess to keep fans engaged since “Old Town Road” blew up. Between that, the remix music video and his latest album, Lil Nas X has been consistently tweeting and posting on IG to keep the masses interacting with the music.
Zack Fox
But Social media king manipulator might be Zack Fox.
His music is mostly on SoundCloud and only has two songs on Apple Music and Spotify; the infamous viral freestyle “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression)” from 2019 and “Square Up” in 2018. However, Fox has dominion over socials.
So much so that his Twitter got suspended and he moved over to IG and didn’t skip a beat. Did we mention that there’s no album in sight?
Princess Nokia
Princess Nokia also expertly used her presence online to keep things alive between her music releases.
Her Instagram frequently showcased her amazing style as well as her spiritually as fans awaited a music release fulfilled by her song “Sugar Honey Iced Tea (S.H.I.T.)”.
Kehlani
Kehlani hops on tracks here and there but hasn’t released a full album in a minute. Although she’s busy with other things like being a mom, she’s still highly active on socials.
With her Twitter posts garnering over 100k likes and 15k retweets, and IG posts always over 500k often just shy of one million likes. It’s important to remind everyone she’s still in the game even if the next album is still a little while away.
What’s important is keeping people involved and engaged. Remember the saying all publicity is good publicity? Now it’s just a numbers game, how often people interact with you and your content depends on how you use social media and the internet to interact with them.