If you’re a musician who wants to make a name for yourself, increase your fan base, get noticed by a major label, or even just share your musical genius with the world for the sake of sharing, social media should be your best friend. Long gone are the days when a garage band suffered for years to get a local gig or any recognition. Today you can share your music with the entire world with only a few clicks. But just like any other person or business vying for attention on social networks, you have to be smart about your strategy.
The Basics of Social Media for Musicians
It goes without saying that you should an artist page on Facebook in addition to any personal account, and your should also have accounts on Twitter and Instagram under your artist or band name. Other networks may or not fit your style and preferences, but YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, and Pinterest are worth considering as well.
If you don’t already have them, you need to set up accounts with networks like SoundCloud that are designed for sharing audio. These should be the home base that you share your music from, then you can manage your fan interactions on other places like your Facebook artist page. If you have the time and inclination, check out any music-centric networks out there like Fleeber. Your mileage may vary with these, but anything is worth checking out.
It also goes without saying that if you don’t have decent music to share, this is all an exercise in wasted time. Spend more time honing your craft than you do trying to convince people you’re the next indie sensation.
Don’t Be Annoying
The first thing any social media manager would tell any business is to concentrate more on building brand loyalty than self-promotion, and the same rule applies with social media for musicians. Follow the 70-20-10 rule, which says that 70% of your posts should be about brand-building and creating your image, 20% should be spent networking with and – more importantly – promoting other artists, and only 10% should be self-promotion.
Don’t get these mixed up. Sharing your music is brand-building. Asking people to buy your new EP or come out to your show next Friday is self-promotion. But brand building is more than just a link to your latest recording or video. Behind-the-scenes type images are great brand building posts. So are blog posts that you write about a recording session, or a band you just saw or event you were part of. If it’s something that you would be interested in, share it. Just don’t shove your awesomeness down people’s throats.
Remember the Conversation
If you went to a party and ran around telling everyone that you just wrote a new song, would people sit wide-eyed and interested? Probably not. You’d be that guy. But if you hang out and have good conversations with people and manage to work that information in somewhere after you’ve already got good rapport with them, they’d probably be like “really? I’d love to hear it”. Keep that in mind on social media. It’s a conversation, not a flyer.
Social media management is honestly a good bit of work if you want success at it, even for musicians or artists. Playing around with it here and there haphazardly isn’t going to contribute much to your hopes for success. If you’re serious about it but you aren’t having much success getting noticed or expanding your fans on social media, we can help. Send us a message if you want to find out what we can do for you.
