The Numbers Game
Have you ever come across an *instagram influencer* with a million+ followers but you’ve never heard of them before? Yeah, me too. It’s something that seems to happen every day. The rise of influencers over the last 5 years has been alarming honestly. I’m all for people who are truly talented creators, with real passion for creativity and influencing others in a positive way but I’m SO tired of seeing the “beautiful” people being recognised for literally just having socially acceptable genetic patterns. It doesn’t seem fair! Like myself, you might be a creative who thinks they work really hard at their craft but still don’t measure up to people that effortlessly gain thousands of followers over night. Well I wanted to talk a little bit about this number game we’re all playing and break it down; because I get asked questions about it all the time but also, it’s a part of my career.
In 2019, I was asked to be a part of a commercial campaign for tourism in Liverpool. That campaign ended up being bought out by the government and I was posted on billboards around the Northwest, in shopping centres and bus stops. I got so many messages and pictures sent to me, praising my appearance in the campaign but the reality is that that campaign didn’t even have my name on it and there was a lot of things that had to happen behind the scenes in order to make it right in the end (financially). After that, I got to be in the Pepsi advert with Paul Pogba and Mo Salah which I never received a proper pay out for, worked with Pretty Little Thing for an instagram campaign, Dr Martens x Melodic Distraction for The Face Magazine and Blackstar Amps. I get asked a lot how I landed partnerships with these brands but realistically, it has just come down to the connections I have and many collaborations come from friends putting me forward to brands they work with or work for. I’m super grateful for that and it has helped me grown my social media presence a lot in my eyes but I’m still not at the point that I think I should be. But why do we put this type of criticism on ourselves? The amount of followers you have doesn’t equate to how much work you might get in the real world. It helps for sure, but when I did that campaign for Liverpool tourism, I think I barely had 1,000 followers. Of course, social media helps us promote our projects, our new singles or just anything we want and that’s the beauty of it but numbers aren’t everything.
When I hit 3k followers, I thought it would help me push my music out into the world and that 3k people would listen to my music and share it too but we all know the algorithm doesn’t work like that. My social media grows pretty slow, I don’t use a growth strategy at the minute because I just simply don’t care enough to do it. In 2020, at the beginning of national lockdown, I would have said the complete opposite; numbers were everything to me and I was making content for the wrong reasons. That caused me a lot of mental stress and I removed myself from social media for a short period of time. By the end of 2020, I felt reborn in a way (idgaf if that sounds cheesy!). I had moved to Manchester, had more space to breath and work and I had been doing bits behind the scenes (like I always do anyway). Now, I was trying to focus on a way to up my Spotify numbers because, well, it matters to a lot of people.
Normally, when I meet new people, we talk about what we do, what we’re into, blah, blah, blah. When we get to the part of the conversation where they find out that I have music out, it’s an instantaneous reel of 1.) opening their phone 2.) typing in my artist name into Spotify 3.) changing their attitude towards me based on the numbers they see on my profile. It’s the same for instagram following too. This used to give me anxiety when people would look at my Spotify profile and be disappointed that I didn’t have thousands of plays or monthly listeners when instead, they might have only seen 200 or 300 monthly listeners with a few tracks barely hitting 2k plays. Now, it’s not like they were outwardly expressing this but I can always tell when the mood has changed or shifted. I was embarrassed. I thought people thought less of me because of my numbers but that’s how our society works and I’m sure other people feel the same. I ended up switching my distributor at the end of 2020 from Ditto to AWAL and that had made a massive change in my numbers….to be more exact, it’s boosted my numbers by more than 1000%. Currently, as I write this blog, my Spotify monthly listeners are sitting at just over 7.3k. I feel a lot more confident to show people my music now because of these numbers and how I’ve gained traction through Apple and Spotify editorial playlisting (this is all through the service that AWAL provide to me on my distribution deal). I’m unsigned, I don’t have a manager, I don’t have very many people on my team to help me create most of what I do. My reality is that numbers play a massive role in my career but I don’t have to let those numbers affect me. I’m still trying to find that balance and trying to remind myself that I don’t need 10k followers to find success.
Every day, people speak to me about how numbers affect them and how they should be utilising TikTok more but I just think, if you enjoy it, then that’s good. If it’s causing you anxiety and stress, then don’t. I know it’s easier said than done but I’d rather live my life trying to mentally be my best self rather than destroying my mind over something so menial as social media. Content creation is hard work, it takes time and dedication. Some people make it look easy and I’ve had people that I’m one of them but trust me, I struggle with ideas the same as anyone else! More importantly, look to your real life accomplishments to hold value for yourself; not just how many likes a post receives because at the end of the day, likes and comments can always be bought but earning something for your hard work can’t.
