Marketing as a musician today can already be tough and, we get it, musicians are busy. But social media marketing can be a cheap and easy blessing in disguise once you learn how to use it to your advantage. It can be exhausting adding your own social media strategies to your to-do list on top of all of your other day-to-day tasks, but as many artists have shown, it can be ever-so-rewarding.
Ready to start your new social media marketing journey? Here are some tips to get you going:
Post videos, and know which types of videos to post
Videos often increase more engagement and interactions than images on Instagram, according to a study by Seach Engine Journal.
Based on this finding, musicians already have a running start because their whole career can be presented in video form. Concert videos, a snippet of a new song you’re working on or a video from the studio can increase fan engagement and ultimately get everyone excited for what’s to come, all with a simple post.
Luckily, Instagram has multiple options to diversify the types of videos you post: in-feed posts, IGTVs and stories.
Show off your life or band in action with an in-feed post that can nurture your followers or directly sell to them. Weezer loves to reminisce on all of their performances on Instagram to the point where their feed almost looks like a diary, keeping track of all of their performances so they don’t forget. This lets the fans see awesome action-shots and full crowds, and they even have the chance to comment that they see themselves in the crowd, even if they don’t.
Got some new merch that you just want to show off real quick and give your fans a sneak peek of? Stories are for you. Take 5 Seconds of Summer, who created a story highlight on Instagram solely to feature their merchandise that dropped with the release of their album CALM. This is common for musicians, and it makes it easy for fans to get a quick and simple look at what the band has to offer. Keeping it in one place, such as a highlight, doesn’t hurt either.
Back in the summer of 2018, Instagram released a new service called IGTV for those special little videos that just too long to be featured in one post or multiple chopped-up videos. Oftentimes, these can be used when musicians just need to sit in front of the camera and talk candidly about an important issue, which lets the fans know the gravity of the issue and why it needs to be longer than a minute.
Recently, Morgan Wallen went about this by posting an IGTV video of him solely explaining his recent actions at a party in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and why he would not be performing on Saturday Night Live. He condemned his actions in the post, and his fans got all of the information they needed from a simple IGTV video that was still only two minutes long, but just the right amount of time.
Keep fans in the loop
A major benefit for musicians in the time of social media is that they can let fans feel as though they’re right there with them – something you couldn’t always do in the 80s or 90s. Fans want to see the late nights on tour, the hard work going into the studio and funny videos of bandmates playing pranks on each other backstage.
That authenticity is what drives a fanbase to have something to talk about other than the music, and it differentiates the musician from the rest and the fans now have inside jokes and entertaining content to look forward to.
Billie Eilish took this authenticity to the next level with this adorable and very green video of her being swarmed by a bunch of kids behind the scenes at a photoshoot for her Billie Eilish Kids collection. Fans loved the smiles and giggles that came with it and felt that they were right there with Billie enjoying that moment.
Optimize all of your social media
Yes, Instagram is a big market for musician marketing, but let’s not forget about the rest of the social media family and sometimes distant cousins. Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube are critical to increasing engagement with different groups of people, but other sites, such as Reddit and Tumblr are important to keep up with, or at least know how to use.
Optimizing your profiles can be a tedious but critical task for social media marketing. Having a clean and optimized look should be a top priority. Start by checking off certain boxes:
- Make sure the links in your bio are up-to-date and correct, such as to a new video you’re promoting, song, album, merch, etc.
- Make sure your content and information are consistent with each other. People love aesthetically-pleasing color themes on an Instagram or Facebook feed, and be sure they translate to other social sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well. For example, Miley Cyrus has a very metro, eclectic look on her Instagram feed currently that represents the style of music she has been releasing lately.
- Put the important info right at the front of the social site, and make sure it’s accurate and correct. Tour dates, release dates and ticket sale links should be easily accessible to fans or first-time visitors of your site. They shouldn’t have to go searching for this information.