The rise of social media during the last decade has confirmed to be a boon for a lot of professionals, together with these within the arts. It has opened quite a lot of alternatives for them to current and promote their work to a bigger viewers. At first look, social media marketing for musicians who’re simply coming into the fray might sound daunting.
In case you are a type of musicians, this information will provide help to higher perceive the platform and higher use it to let the general public hear your music.
Social media marketing for musicians: Be heard on-line
What social media has for musicians
You may need already examine the advantages that social media has delivered to professionals like medical doctors, legal professionals, and companies. However what about musicians such as you? Let’s have a look at a number of the issues that social media can supply your music profession.
It can be DIY marketing for brand spanking new acts
Earlier than the arrival of social media, musicians had to spend so much of time creating demos to woo producers within the hopes of getting seen. Or they needed to play dozens of gigs to draw a following. Whereas these routes are nonetheless very a lot current right now, social media has given up and coming acts a neater means to introduce themselves to music lovers.
It may be so simple as importing your songs to the Web, and ready for somebody to find them. This was the street taken to stardom by the likes of Justin Bieber, Fetty Wap, and Arnel Pineda of Journey as he was discovered straight by means of YouTube:
Even for those who don’t land a recording deal like them, social media nonetheless provides you the possibility to share your music as an indie act. This setup really affords you quite a lot of benefits, resembling having full artistic management of your work.
It can provide you a large audience
Attracting listeners is arguably the most important problem for any new musician. Throughout the days earlier than social media, getting even a dozen was onerous …except you had the promotional equipment. With social media, you might have that promotional equipment. Social media websites, significantly the extra fashionable ones, have appreciable audience bases. YouTube alone has over a billion viewers every month.
Even for those who don’t get the people these numbers to hearken to you, the audience base on social media is extremely different. The worldwide attain of social media may also show you how to increase your attain additional than the native bar ever might.
Social media provides you more marketing opportunities
Bear in mind these days when the one approach to get your music out to the general public is to actually beg the radio stations to have it played? The arrival of digital music and the Web has just about completed away with that. Now, you possibly can have your music played and promoted on-line without begging.
Social media provides more to that, because it opens new marketing alternatives on your songs and sounds. With the best platform, you may promote in quite a lot of channels, all on the similar time. You may as well get inventive with learn how to promote, comparable to doing particular performances by way of stay streaming.
All of those assist push your music to more people, and are nice shares to maintain your audience .
It will get you closer to followers
As you already know, followers are the lifeblood of any musician. Whether or not it’s just some dozen, or a number of million, they’re there to help you. You wish to get in contact with them as a lot as potential to point out your gratitude.
Being on social media allows you to just do that in actual time. You additionally get new methods to work together with them, such because the aforementioned reside streaming. There are additionally actual time chats, replying to their feedback, and polls like this one:
All of those assist carry you even closer to your supporters, constructing a fair stronger fanbase.
The most effective social media marketing websites for musicians
One widespread query with social media advertising for musicians such as you is the place to start out. As there are dozens of web sites on the market, this may be actually complicated. You don’t must be on all of them. As an alternative, it’s worthwhile to know those that offers you the perfect advertising mileage to your music.
SoundCloud marketing for musicians
With round 175 million users a month, Soundcloud may not be as giant because the more common social media websites. Contemplating that the positioning is a devoted platform for musicians to share their sounds, that is definitely the place you wish to begin.
Whereas you need to use the positioning with a free account, paid accounts give you extra options that you may reap the benefits of for distributing your music. A Professional account:
- Provides you more detailed statistics underneath plays, likes, feedback, and downloads.
- Gives you statistics by nation on what songs are being performed.
- Doubles your add time, which implies you’ll be able to add more songs.
A Pro Limitless account gives you:
- Entry to higher analytic instruments to trace performs even closer.
- Music play statistics by metropolis, in addition to country.
- Information on which apps and social networks you’re gaining performs from.
- Limitless uploads.
After investing in both of these plans, the subsequent step is investing just a few dollars into shopping for SoundCloud followers. This service will assist enhance your account’s quick affect on followers, develop your account quicker, And maximize your funding into your Professional or Unlimited account.
The following factor you must think about is your branding. You wish to make your self stand out even earlier than listeners get to listen to your tunes. A superb profile image will assist tremendously. It ought to present your face, or your band brand, clearly. Additionally, you will wish to use your header picture as a possibility to convey extra details about what you’ve got happening. Right here is an efficient instance from James Bay:
Upon getting your account arrange and your music able to be uploaded, your subsequent query is the place to share them. Until you have already got a following even earlier than leaping on SoundCloud, simply having your songs in your account web page received’t do. It’s a must to unfold them out.
Right here’s one little enjoyable trick from SoundCloud themselves. This comes courtesy of their close ties to Twitter
Twitter could also be a very powerful social media advertising avenue for musicians. A fast strategy to popularize your tracks is by buying retweets for them whenever you share them on Twitter. This may immediate extra of your followers to retweet your SoundCloud songs, and it’ll immediate strangers to hear once they see what number of retweets they’ve.
A novel SoundCloud function you wish to reap the benefits of is Stations. Stations is a brand new characteristic launched by the positioning that lets customers create their very own digital radio station from tracks they like. From there, they will uncover new tracks that they may not have heard earlier than. Reap the benefits of this by encouraging your followers to create stations primarily based in your tracks.
Twitter marketing for musicians
One frequent query with regards to Twitter is how do you even promote your music with simply 140 characters. Some useful tips to recollect when writing your tweets are:
- You don’t have to make use of all 140 characters: Go away house in your followers to retweet them and make feedback.
- Use extra verbs and fewer nouns: Motion phrases will make your tweets learn extra vigorous and seize the emotion of your followers.
- Put your hyperlinks initially of your tweets: Persons are extra prone to click on on the hyperlink if it’s the primary one they learn.
- Add a “pls RT” notice at the end of the tweet: You can be shocked how briskly followers will reply to calls to motion.
All of those will make it easier to create tweets that aren’t solely consideration grabbing, but additionally retweetable.
One other facet of Twitter and sound cloud integration this implies you could now embed tracks and playlists straight into your tweets. Right here’s Nervo embedding a podcast they joined:
Use this to do previews of your upcoming songs and albums. You can too be a bit more beneficiant and hyperlink the entire tune. Or you could possibly create a SoundCloud playlists of choose songs and tweet about it. Don’t overlook to encourage your followers to retweet that playlist.
Read more: 3 Video Storytelling Tools for Social Marketers
YouTube for musicians
Youtube will be considered the Web incarnation of MTV (again when MTV performed music videos). What units it other than MTV is that you just don’t have to attend on your video to get played. All you must do is create your account, add, and promote.
As is with any videos uploaded on Youtube, you need your music videos to be simply searched. For that you must:
- Put the complete music title within the title part, And to incorporate the names of featured artists in brackets.
- Use tags that greatest match the video, equivalent to your individual identify as artist, and style-particular tags for the precise track.
- Fill within the description field with particulars about your music or album.
- Put hyperlinks to your different social media accounts and your web site within the description.
All of those will assist not solely make the movies themselves be extra seen, but additionally direct your viewers to your different on-line areas to get more of your music.
Playlists are additionally one thing that it is best to put out usually. Create one in your albums, cowl songs, and singles, in addition to your tour videos and different actions. Moreover, you may create a particular playlists for different artists’ you want. This final one might enable you be a focus for the artists you characteristic such that they could return the favor and have you on their very own.
If Eminem wasn’t already well-known, this playlist that includes various different artists in his style would assist him get their consideration:
Talking of different artists, collaborating with them can assist increase your attain. In actual fact, this can be a nice technique for brand new acts to assist one another out. Collaborations can vary from co-produced items, to total albums bringing collectively a number of acts. You may even make the most of YouTube’s live streaming characteristic and do on-line concert events.
In the event you select to use our YouTube Views Service, make sure to have nice ways in place for what you’re going to do afterwards. Usually occasions, this can be a nice option to go viral on different social media platforms by mentioning how standard you’re on YouTube.
Facebook for musicians
You received’t be utilizing Facebook simply to advertise your music. As an alternative, your web page can be used as an interplay instrument. You wish to be as lively as you’ll be able to to get them hooked.
Posting quite a lot of content is likely one of the methods you possibly can maintain your web page lively. As movies are the best ranked sort of posts, you’d need to have lots of these. Nevertheless it shouldn’t be simply your music movies, you should use:
- Behind the scenes footage of your music videos and gigs.
- Previews for brand spanking new singles.
- Bulletins for upcoming excursions and appearances.
You can too go additional and provides them a good higher fan expertise by posting private movies.
Additionally, you will need to use photographs in the identical means, you should definitely use one if you find yourself not sharing a video.
Your subsequent stage of fan engagement is to take the time to learn by means of the feedback in your posts and reply to them. Tag the particular person you might be replying to for them to know you answered. It will definitely get all of them excited, since followers find it irresistible when their favourite artists reply again to them.
ReverbNation for musicians
ReverbNation may not be as in style because the above websites, however in terms of social media marketing for musicians you undoubtedly need to benefit from new platforms that emerge.
Very similar to SoundCloud, ReverbNation is a platform that’s oriented in the direction of music creators. It goes additional and offers customers with particular instruments for managing their music advertising. This consists of:
- A gig finder you should utilize to find the closest efficiency venues.
- The chance to make use of it to cross promote your social media.
- The Join program that allows you to get in contact with business leaders.
- Limitless track uploads.
- The possibility to promote your music, together with by means of iTunes and Apple music.
The pricing for ReverbNation varies from a free account, to $9.95/month, to $19.95/month for the Premium version. The more you pay, the more features you get.