If you’ve been wondering how to promote your music on social media, you’ve come to the right place. An effective social media strategy is arguably as important to the commercial success of an artist as their music. For example, check out Sony CEO Nick Gatfield discussing how Sony leveraged social media to set up boyband One Direction for global domination. Publishers and major record labels are no longer the gatekeepers of the music industry. Thanks to DIY music tech available, and streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, the process of recording, releasing and distributing your music has never been easier.
Through successful social media marketing, any artist with the right combination of talent and authenticity can be successful. But after browsing social media platforms, you will see an endless number of creatives doing the same thing. Want to know how to promote your music on social media? In this article, we will look at our top tips for social media growth, how to promote your music on social media, and how to stand out as an artist.
How To Promote Your Music On Social Media: Top Tips
We have put together 7 tips to help you develop and execute a social strategy, increase your social presence, gain collaborations, and grow a loyal fanbase. Here we go…
1. Know Your Audience
First and foremost, to make an impact and be successful with social media marketing, you need to consider your audience!
You should pay attention to your target audience more than anything else. They will be the ones who spread the word about your page and, consequently, help you grow your brand. In 2020, there are currently over 3 billion active social media users worldwide. The opportunity for artists to grow loyal fanbases and become viral sensations is greater than ever and is an opportunity artists need to capitalise on.
2. Build Your Audience
Maybe you are a pop songwriter based in Sweden trying to reach an audience comprised of 14-18-year-old girls. Or perhaps you are a Florida trap producer who appeals to 19-24 males that share your interests in beat-making and rap? Once you know who your audience is, you can use data insights to see what your audience is engaging with.
Sites like Facebook have user-friendly, free-to-use insight tools that can help you track the activity on your page. This can be invaluable in helping you understand your audience’s consumption habits. Once you know this, you can adjust your strategy to maximise engagement. (Learn more about how to promote music on Facebook in this article)
3. Maintain Consistency On Social Platforms
Be consistent and most importantly, authentic. Particularly with music marketing, consistency is a crucial element of social media strategy. Inconsistent use of profile pictures and imagery/dialogue on social media will confuse your current fanbase. It will also make the process of discovering your pages a lot more difficult.
In order to be consistent with your content, you need to remember who your audience is. For example, if you are releasing an alternative rock album, your audience is unlikely to engage with content debating whether Lil Pump is a better lyricist than Cardi B!
Focus on building brand recognition around authenticity and honesty. You didn’t build your following by being the same as everyone else, did you? Aim to communicate in a way that resonates with your audience, and elicits an emotional response. From there, you can adjust the content you release according to the performance of your social account insights.
4. Build Your Brand & Let Your Personality Shine Through!
Appreciate and acknowledge the value of the following you already have. Regardless of whether your Instagram account has 10 or 10,000 followers, like and reply (whenever relevant) to comments made by your audience on threads.
This will demonstrate your gratitude to your fan base, and also increase the responsiveness icon on platforms like Facebook! Direct engagement can also provide invaluable insight as to what your audience wants to see more or less of.
5. Use Chatbots
Chatbots are highly effective customer service tools and are growing rapidly in popularity. Used by many brands today, chatbots take on the burden of the more mundane and time-consuming duties. Using artificial intelligence to leverage chat mediums (i.e. Facebook Messenger, SMS text and other social messengers), chatbots are essentially virtual assistants. Also, they are a great way to directly communicate with your audience.
Believe it or not, email marketing receives an average CTR of around 5-10%, whilst the outreach of chatbots typically ranges from 15-60%! Chatbots are undoubtedly a highly effective and snappy solution for providing quick customer support. If you are too busy to immediately respond to a query, a personal message can be sent through direct messaging. This provides reassurance that you will respond when you can, and also adds a personal touch.
Additionally, chatbots are a great way of communicating messages to your followers on a mass scale (i.e. updates, announcements and competitions). People are more compelled to respond to direct messages than they would to standard notifications.
Whilst chatbots aren’t a permanent replacement for human interaction, their value is undeniable. Because of this, they are being picked up by brands and businesses worldwide. Not only can it save you time and money, but it can initiate leads and encourage brand loyalty (e.g. 24-hour info support). For chart-topping artists like Migos, chatbots are a vital tool to their social strategy for communicating with followers. As an artist, you can use chatbots to announce new songs to your fanbase, as well as provide them with unique ways to engage with your brand.
6. Give Your Audience Their Daily Fix
Whether you are an aspiring producer, budding entrepreneur or professional songwriter, the demand for content is higher than ever before. Between 2013 and 2017, Forbes announced that social media revenues have grown approximately 37% annually. With such a high potential for revenue and growth, it is crucial that your audience receives their daily dose of content.
Feeling overwhelmed? Browsing through the endless amount of social media marketing strategy suggestions on the internet can be daunting, and certainly overwhelming at times. So, what is the right balance between quality and quantity of content? What is the advantage of blogging, and how can I leverage photo and video content to grow my brand? These questions only skim the surface of the pandora’s box that is social media marketing.
Scheduling your content is one of the most effective steps you can take to ensure you are engaging with your audience enough to keep them intrigued and engaged. It also saves a lot of time and hassle!
7. Provide Value To Your Audience
Dubbed the ‘Video Megatrend’ by Mark Zuckerberg, video content on social media platforms has skyrocketed in popularity in the past several years. Facebook videos currently receive over 100 million hours of play daily, and other tools such as Snapchat maps, Instagram live and IGTV and video streaming performances have also gained a lot of traction. So, how can you capitalise on this trend?
Integrating visually engaging content into your social strategy is a fantastic way to maintain your relationships with your fanbase, as well as drive brand loyalty and awareness. This presents you with the opportunity to deliver a limitless amount of content, as well as providing a way to connect with your fanbase more intimately than ever before. Try micro-documenting the process of recording or making your music, live stream your gigs and rehearsals, or even vlog your ‘day-in-the-life’ experiences. These are all tried and tested tactics and have worked for countless influencers.
Exciting times! But coming up with ideas for original content on a daily basis can be exhausting…
What Are The Solutions?
Repurposing! This concept of recycling old (but still valid) content is one that not nearly enough people take advantage of. In fact, only 34% of content marketers report reusing their old content.
Be careful to not fall into the trap of recycling the same old content over and over. This will eventually get on people’s nerves (and they might start to identify your page as a source of spam). An effective way of repurposing content can be as simple as converting an old Instagram video into a blog post or podcast (or vice versa) or publishing unseen footage.
Be as creative as possible, ensure you are providing value to your audience, and eventually your hard work will pay off!
Set SMART Goals
There is a lot to be excited about if you are an artist promoting your music on social media. The opportunity for social media growth which leads to general growth and exposure to new audiences is vast.
Whether you are a social media rookie or a hardened veteran, with the right marketing strategy, the sky really is the limit! Always be optimistic, but also remember to set yourself realistic goals. Specifically, set SMART goals.
Be Specific
If you want to increase your following, CTR or audience engagement, we cannot stress enough that you write down your goals in detail.
- Measurable: How do you plan on measuring your success?
- Attainable: Aiming for 100k followers from zero followers in a month on Instagram isn’t achievable for the vast majority of brand pages. Try to strive for attainable goals that act as benchmarks of your journey to success.
- Relevant: Make sure your goals are aligned accordingly with your brand values and/or objectives.
- Time-specific: Set deadlines.
How To Promote Your Music On Social Media – Final Thoughts
We hope that you found our tips on how to promote your music on social media helpful, and can now begin making a social media marketing plan. Another great idea is to collaborate. If the prospect of reaching out to other artists to collaborate seems daunting, remember that collaboration is arguably one of the most often overlooked practices by musicians regarding social media marketing.
Don’t get us wrong, social media music marketing can be tough, especially when promoting yourself. Building your network is one of the most crucial aspects of being successful when marketing in the music industry and social media platforms are a fantastic way to do so. Our social media strategy for music artists’ summary is to keep your brand consistent, keep churning out that content and listen to what your audience is telling you!
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