Hangouts are the ultimate fan home. A home you own. No algorithm will get in the way. Your fans know they can go there, chat about your music, your concerts, and everything happening. Fans use Hangouts to organize organic meetups, help each other with travel to your shows, and hype your music and artistry to each other.
Hangouts are also dedicated to those who sign up for your community, either as a Member or All-Access. Only they will see the full feed and be able to post/like/comment. Fans who aren’t in your community will get a preview of the last several posts and get asked to join your community to get into Hangouts. Just another way we help you build your community.
A few features:
Easily cross-post your Drops and Announcements to Hangouts.
Fans can engage with your posts with likes and comments
Post images, links, and more
Set up community moderators to help you stay on top of your community
Here are the steps to setup your hangouts
Step 1: Enable Hangouts in your Dashboard
By default, Hangouts are off for your account. We know they are a commitment to your fans – but one well worth it!!
When you are ready, simply go to My Hangouts in your dashboard and click Enable Hangouts
Step 2. Invite Community Moderators
We know you are busy! We make it easy for your fans to help you run your hangout.
Navigate to My Team->Community Moderators. Add one or more community moderators.
Step 3. Post to your Hangouts
To navigate to hangouts, go to My Hangouts in your dashboard, then click “Go to Hangouts”
Then simply post what you are thinking. Note that any posts from your come from “Artist Team”
Under my Hangouts, you can see engagement for every post at a glance
Moderation
Fans can report SPAM or hateful posts, which then automatically go into your moderation queue. We also have an AI moderator helping, but it is very forgiving. That queue is visible to you, your Community Moderators, or vyb Admin. Any of those three can moderate any posts.
You or your Community Moderators will get an orange bar notification if something needs to be moderated. Click on that notification to bring up your moderation Queue
Next evaluate each hangout post that is in your queue. Decide if that post should be allowed or deleted
Keep your Hangout a fun and inviting place to go for your fans. A healthy community will run that Hangout, but they need to hear from you!!
Here’s some ideas for you:
Always announce things first in your hangout, long before your socials. These are your insiders, they need to know first. If hangouts are just a repeat of your socials, after your social posts, then they lose all importance.
Run some contests from your hangouts
Periodically do an AMA session, fans love those! Announce it ahead of time – “This Friday I’m doing an AMA at 5pm ET, come join me in hangouts”
Use the Hangouts to keep people in the loop on your GoLives: “I just posted soem BTS footage from backstage at last night’s show.” or “I’m going to do a GoLive on Saturday Afternoon from the Studio, come join me”
Use Hangouts to call your fans to action: “I’ve been telling you all about the new album. I’m going to announce it on IG tomorrow. Please go check out the post!!”
vyb is a place for your fan community to come for all your latest. It’s not for your casual fans; this is for your real supporters. Your artist home page has three main sections to keep your fans interested and engaged:
Photo Slider
Announcements
Drops
From your profile, you can customize your Logo and Fan Community name
The photo slider is managed in “My Photos”
Announcements can be anything you want to highlight on your home page. If it is your pinned announcement, it will be above your Drops. Otherwise announcements come after Drops.
Anytime you do something new on vyb, new merch, new music, anything – you can add a Drop to your homepage.
Drops are how you make it easy for your fans to find all the latest things.
Step 1. Set up your Photos
From My Photos in your Dashboard, you can access the photos section.
Us the “Upload Photos” button to bulk upload your photos
Clicking on an individual photo will allow you to add it to the photo carousel that is on your home page
Step 2. Make an Announcement
Under “My Drops and Announcements,” you can create and manage announcements. Only one can be pinned at a time, but create as many announcements as you’d like
Clicking on “Create Announcement” gives you this popup.
Make a title and description for your announcement, and choose if it is will be your pinned announcement.
Step 3. Create Drops
Under any item, like merch, music, or event, you can go to its action menu and Create a Drop to promote it on your home page.
Alternatively, in Drops and Announcements on your profile you can select “Create Drop” and then the exact item you want to create a drop for.
Note that there is only ever one drop per item. If you need to change it, you can edit the drop itself
Now edit the title and description for your drop.
vyb will auto-choose an image and will scale it automatically for desktop and mobile use.
You can substitute your own image for your drop if you’d like finer control over the pool.
With these tools, you can keep your home page fresh and engaging for your fans!!
In vyb, we have powerful email automations built into the platform. Whenever someone joins your community as a free Member or paid All-Access, you can automatically send them a message thanking them. You also have an invitation template that can be used when you upload contacts to your list.
Make sure to edit and personalize the automatic replies. These are your super fans; they want a genuine message from you. Add pictures, links, and most importantly, tell your story!!
Importantly, whenever someone uses your signup landing page, they are automatically made a follower and will receive your follower welcome message. Make that message count by editing the template.
Read this to learn more about the using the QR Code to build up your list at gigs:
Social media is great, but you can’t talk directly to your audience. In fact, as you build a larger social following, each post reaches a smaller and smaller percentage of them. That’s the business of social media; while the allure is that a post will go viral, the truth is that they are going to charge you to reach your fans.
We have an easy solution for that: use vyb’s direct email tools.
Bypass the Algorithm. Talk to your Fans Directly.
Use email to direct market to your fans. Social posts often reach only 2% of your followers. Fans will open emails 40% of the time; your dedicated fans will read them at a much higher rate!
For more tips, go here. Otherwise, either use vyb’s built in tools or your chosen link in bio service.
Use vyb’s Link in Bio to Connect Your Followers to Your Email Signup
Using vyb’s free Link In Bio Tool, you can easily drive your followers to your list
vyb’s Free Smart Link In Bio Tool automatically has a button that links to your email list signup.
You can just use this free service, add it to your profile, and start people to your list.
Don’t worry that only a small number of people join your list. They are your dedicated fans and the ones you want to build with.
For more information on setting up the free vyb Link in Bio – go here
Link your Email Signup in Your Existing Link In Bio Tool
If you have your own link in bio tool that you already like, simply navigate to Fan List in your artist dashboard under the Marketing Hub and you can copy the list signup link.
Paste the Signup Link into your link in bio tool and your are ready to drive followers to your email list
Escape the Algorithm
Doesn’t matter if you use vyb’s free Link in Bio tool or your own; get off the social media treadmill by taking ownership of your fans.
Periodically remind followers to join your fan club
When you post content like new merch for sale on vyb, remind your followers that they can get to be the first to get notified by signing up for your fan club
Use the email list thoughtfully. Don’t spam out at people with tons of messages. Take the time to do storytelling.
Don’t just say that you have something new for sale, tell your fan club why this is unique and why they should care
Use your email list and you build up a loyal fan club that wants you to succeed.
As we’ve been working with different artists, we keep running into the headaches of keeping all their bio links updated. Since at vyb we have your email signup, music, merch, and everything else, we decided to make a free Link-in-Bio Tool that you can easily use. Like our free email list sign-up landing pages, we are making life easier to stay connected with yoru fans and give them an easy way to access everything you have.
Our tool will automatically populate based on your content on vyb. For example, as soon as you make your first merch item, the merch store button will automatically populate. Have any upcoming events? The event link button will auto-populate. No more having old, stale links.
The service is 100% free. Because we win when you win.
Here are the steps to configure and use this yourself.
Step 1. Navigate to Link-in-Bio on your Dashboard.
First click on “My Dashboard” and then click on “My Link in Bio”
You will see your current Link In Bio.
From here, you can copy the link to it or update it.
Next click “Update Link in Bio” button to start configuring it
Step 2. Select Social and Music Platforms
Now simply select all the social and other content sites that you want. These will show up as icons underneath your name in your bio for easy access
Note that you can also add a generic button to your Link in Bio if you want something to be more prominent.
Step 3. Edit URLs for the selected links and Your Image
Next enter in the URLs for each of your social and music platforms.
Now re-order these links by selecting their icon and dragging it.
On the right hand side you can replace the picture that shows up on the top of your Link in Bio
Step 4. Edit Buttons
We have pre-populated your Link In Bio with links to everything in your vyb account. You don’t need to manually add those at all. You can change the name, but realize that each of these is preset to always go to that service. For example Merch button will always go to your vyb merch store.
Now you can drag the buttons to re-order them.
Next, you can also include or exclude any default button, but know that if you don’t have any content in that area we will auto-hide it anyway. For example, until you post some GoLives your GoLive button will be hidden.
Step 5. Add Custom Buttons
Next, if you want to add your own custom buttons, click “+ Add Button” to add your own button. Give it a name and a URL
Step 6. Style Your Link-in-Bio
Now choose one of the preset themes at the top for an initial starting point.
Next you can change the overall change background color, your name text color and font
Edit the button styles, picking color, font and transparent or solid.
Finally, when you are done, click “Save” and you are done editing.
Step 7. Add your Link-in-Bio to your Instagram and other Platforms
Finally, it’s time to go live and use your new Linke-in-Bio! Back on the main Link-In-Bio dashboard page, copy the link.
Paste this into your Instagram and all other services to give a one stop place for your fans to get to you.
While most GoLives can be done as spur-of-the-moment recordings from your phone, sometimes you want to use footage you’ve already created and get some buzz for your fans. In vyb you can upload any footage and schedule when it will GoLive. This is especially great when you want to create some buzz but can’t do multiple GoLives, just take existing footage and schedule out your whole campaign. Now, this means that you can’t react to comments, so just remember that.
Here are some ideas:
Go back through your old videos, what do you have from significant moments in your career?
If you are recording a new album, take some videos during the recording process. Make some teaser videos and schedule them out to build hype to your release
Stitch together cool moments from your shows in a video montage showcasing the energy of your live performance.
To upload and schedule a GoLive, follow these simple steps:
Step 1. Navigate to GoLive in your Dashboard
Select “My GoLives” in your Dashboard
Step 2. Select “+ Upload GoLive Video”
Just like a regular GoLive, edit the title and Audience. Don’t stress too much on these, you can always change them from the Action menu under your GoLive dashboard.
Step 3. Set Your Source
For the source, you can set a Thumbnail image. This is purely optional.
Upload the video by selecting from files on your device.
Step 4. Schedule your GoLive
By default, your GoLive will publish immediately. You can change the date and time to anytime in the future.
Use this feature to upload multiple videos and schedule them out.
Once your are ready, press the “Upload GoLive” button.
Make changes if you need
That’s it! Make scheduled GoLives part of your campaign to build buzz with your fans.
If you want to change the date or title of the video, simply use the Action Menu next to the show.
