If you are a musician, you might notice that maintaining marketing strategy while working as an artist is tough. Handling social media accounts while composing new music can be difficult to maintain.
Keeping a social media marketing plan to back you up is a good idea as it can help you promote your new songs, post content regularly, and do some networking.
The tasks can be tiring, but mastering these key elements will be rewarding in the long run of your career.
Why do Musicians Need Social Media Marketing?
Musicians need social media marketing to grow their audience. Having only digital profiles won’t make them instantly famous, of course. Sometimes you can have a jump start if you collaborate in the presence of a well-known professional.
Speaking of social media marketing, musicians can adopt business strategies. Many companies are applying this approach to reach a greater audience. Try emulating these methods and market yourself, so you can expand your fanbase.
While Soundcloud and Bandcamp are famous amongst musicians, you need to build your profile on the other platforms. Social media sites like Instagram and Facebook have more active users; thus, making you more appealing to people by using these platforms.
TikTok has video-based content with an estimated 689 million users. Having a Twitter account can also help because it has approximately 206 million users. While it is not obligatory to focus on every platform, you can choose the one that advocates music, especially if you are an indie musician. The number of users is just a bonus for exposure.
It’s best if you also make a YouTube channel. It’s possible to get more exposure since a lot of people are discovering music through YouTube due to its algorithms.
Since more people discover music through YouTube because of its algorithms, why not make a YouTube channel to get more exposure?
How do you start developing your social media marketing strategy?
Start by Optimising Your Profile.
People who discovered you from music platforms such as YouTube and digital streaming media will likely find your other social media accounts. Make sure that you have content on those accounts because potential fans will learn more about you.
You can start optimising your social media profiles by following these steps:
- Put any links to your latest promotion. The links can lead to your new songs, albums, or merchandise sales.
- Choose correctly-sized photos for your profile pictures and content posts.
- Ensure that all information is accurate and up-to-date.
Visual-wise, you can use Canva to create your designs. You don’t need to hire a designer for this because you can make simple but beautiful designs for your upcoming singles or albums yourself!
Please take note that you must build attractive social media profiles. A cluttered, disorganised profile can drive people away because it might leave them confused about what your brand is
What’s next?
Set Your Social Media Campaigns
Social media campaigns include anything related to your content. Let your music be known through effective campaign plans, so more people will know about it!
These steps might help you manage your campaign efficiently:
Plan and organise your content
Planning and organising posts will require you to think ahead of time. Give yourself some time to figure out what content will suit the type of image or brand you are going for.
Other than figuring out the type of your image, you will need to stick to one niche as much as possible.
Switching topics too quickly will not give your audience enough time to digest what you try presenting to them. This move will only leave them confused about what your music brand is.
Schedule your post
You should schedule how often you post other than deciding your content topics. Learn about the effective timing for each social media, so you can generate a higher engagement rate.
Scheduling your content also comes with posting automation. You can use any social media automation tool to help you publish your content on time.
Here is the list of tools that you can pick:
- Hootsuite
- Sprout Social
- CoSchedule
Don’t post too much or too less.
Create a balance. Posting too much content is the easiest way to lose followers as it might come as spamming and annoying. While posting too little will make you lose numbers, as people assume your account is inactive.
We recommend you post three pictures on your Instagram feeds per day. If you have some more information to share, you can use the Instagram story feature and place them in the highlight later.
Find your audience
If you are a novice, you will need to find and expand your audience through these factors:
Location
You can focus on getting attention from a local audience. Social media features such as geolocation and local hashtags can help you raise people’s awareness. Another option is connecting with other musicians within your area and letting them notice you.
Age
Marketing to different age groups will require you a distinct approach style. The same principle applies when you wish to market your music tracks.
Setting your target audience’s age range can help you build a strategic plan based on their interest. You can choose to attract the younger generation who is more adept at social media.
Genre preferences
When composing your music, you don’t always have to stick to only one specific genre, as you can still attract an audience by associating your persona with certain types of genres.
Observe and gauge how people react to your music, so you can use that information to present more music aligned to your and the audience’s preferences. It will strengthen your self-branding.
Set your personal branding
Besides composing innovative tracks, as a musician, you will need to make a unique identity to set you apart from other artists. Your branding must stand out through a distinct feature, so that people will affiliate you with that.
Personal branding is a method to market one’s image or career through the appearance you want to portray to the public. Here is a list of personal branding approaches that you can use to increase your brand awareness:
Font
Font helps you build your identity by selecting a specific type of font that reflects your personality. Since font appearance will give people a certain mood, choosing a distinctive font that people can associate you with can help your brand personality.
Visual representation
Visualisation is the strongest element of creating a brand. Attractive visual design can incite curiosity from your audience that pushes them to learn more about you.
Logo
A logo is the most crucial part of creating your identity as a musician. It’s ideal making a logo that portrays what your identity is.
Colour scheme
Since people are bound to connect a popular personality or influencer with a specific palette of colours, stick to a distinctive colour scheme to reflect a strong musical personality.
Overall aesthetics
The benefit of creating your social media marketing strategy is you still have the freedom to choose your aesthetics. Your overall aesthetics will reflect your whole brand image.
Show off your talent.
When you follow someone on social media, you probably want to see them show off their talents. And if you think that way, you can start posting about your knacks to your profile, too!
Showing off your talent is the best way to tell people about your capabilities. You can start by posting photos or videos and adding solid captions. That way, you can generate engagement from your followers.
Keep your followers entertained by posting content that showcases other talents or hobbies. You can post your daily activities such as gardening, hiking, and cycling.
You can also post throwback photos and videos to show what other activities you were involved in back then for your fans.
Post some sneak peek content
Posting sneak peeks content will keep your fans in the loop and anticipate your upcoming projects. This strategy can also see your fans’ opinions and excitement for your following releases.
Another important aspect of social media is authenticity. You can show your true personality and work ethic while composing the tracks by sharing your sneak peek content.
Behind the scenes, content focuses on your journey as a musician. That’s why you will need to tell a story through the images or videos.
Collaborate with other musicians
As a musician, it can be challenging to grow without any help from other established artists. If you are new to the industry, try collaborating with other musicians.
Increasing your promotion rate can be done by politely asking other musicians to collaborate with you. That’s why you need to have strong networking skills.
However, musical collaboration is not a quick way to be famous. Your career continuity will still rely on your music and self-marketing skills. That’s why persistent efforts in practice and effective social media strategies are two essential elements in building your career.
Interact with your fans
Social media is the best place to interact with your fans. Engage with your fans by letting them ask questions, and you can give them an immediate response on chat or stream!
Another option is to light a discussion with your followers. The topics are not limited to only talking about music. You can open current affairs issues discourse if you wish to as long as it generates more engagement.
Here are examples of various forms of interaction you can use with your fans:
Quizzes
Using quizzes can be a fun and unique way to interact with your fans. Test your fans’ knowledge regarding the topic you chose for the quiz!
Polls
Polls are a helpful feature to see your audience’s preferences about a specific topic or question. For example, you can ask your followers to pick the best guitar brand from two options available. That way, your fans will feel noticed and participate in your decision-making process.
Instagram Live
Instagram Live is one of the exceptional features to interact with your fans. When you are holding an Instagram Live, your followers can ask you questions that you can answer later directly.
This live broadcast innovation can make your audience feel connected personally with you. However, it’s best to have easy-going and open-minded personality traits to keep your viewers interested in watching your IG live.
Understand social media trends
The main purpose of a social media marketing strategy is to generate more viewers to your profiles. Update yourself to the latest trends on social media, and you can jump into the wagon to expand your reach.
If you are an amateur musician and still struggle to build your fanbase, you can build your personality around the social media niche. Spare some time to research what’s currently favourable on the internet.
Here are the different ways that you can apply to extend your exposure to your potential audience, even when they don’t know who you are or are not an avid fan of music:
Funny memes
The fastest way to win someone’s heart is through jokes. You can make funny memes that resemble your identity as a musician because more people are into memes – making it a helpful way to accomplish your marketing strategy.
Once your funny images go viral, many people will give reactions that increase your engagement rates.
Furthermore, memes can also come in visual-auditory forms. For example, TikTok and YouTube use music or video clips to make people laugh.
Instagram Reels
The future of social media is video-based content, and Instagram has adopted this strategy through Instagram Reels. You could use this approach by creating unique and creative Reels videos.
Conduct research around the trending sound, moves, tips, or even memes to increase your view number. If you have successfully pulled this off, your engagement will increase accordingly.
TikTok
Before Instagram Reels came into existence, TikTok was created and became incredibly popular. You can benefit by learning the TikTok strategy and researching the trend on the platform.
You can start a TikTok challenge using your track to increase your visibility, especially to the younger generation who often engage and love searching for this kind of content on social media.
Hire a creative team
Once you have become an established musician with a bigger audience, you can hire a creative team to handle your work. This way, you don’t need to worry about your marketing strategy anymore as there will be a third party who manages your current and upcoming projects.
You will have more time to focus on your music composition if you have a creative team, one excellent way of hiring one. Your team will handle your brand’s campaigns, promotions, and collaboration projects while you create more music and publish ideas online.
Conclusion
Many musicians possess the excellent ability to compose tracks. However, exceptional skills will not do much without promoting themselves on social media, whether through an audio track or a video.
With the increasing number of social media users, mastering this strategy helps musicians increase their chances of exposure. Another benefit from this approach is getting as many people as possible to listen to their music clips or new release tracks.
Start by promoting yourself on social media now and strive to succeed. Make your music known to the world to show your true potential as a musician!
