Research, Plan, Engage: Social Media
These days it is impossible to be a musician without social media. Social media is a vital part of being in music. Gone are the days when all you needed was just a great sound (if these days ever even existed!).
In order to grow your fan base and keep them entertained, you need to engage them constantly and continuously. Dropping a song every few months and then going radio silent just won’t cut it. You need to gain new followers and develop true fans who will carry your career for you.
What makes social media such a valuable resource is the unrivalled access it brings. With social media, you have access to millions of potential audiences and a way to focus down on specific groups of people. But, in order to gain access to these audiences you need to at least let them know you exist.
Many musicians are good at making music (obviously!). There is no doubt that you need an huge level of creative skills and energy in order to create good music. But not many musicians carry that creativity over to their promotion and networking activities, leaving them falling short of success.
We’ve put together a little three stage guide to help you make the most of every opportunity social media has to offer. It covers the three essential stages of improving your social media: Researching, Planning, and Engaging.
Research- Use Platforms Which Work For You
Every artist has a different style and so does every social media platform. One artist might live and breathe TikTok, while another prefers twitter. Spend some time getting to know each platform and assessing which one suits your content style. If you don’t see yourself being able to maintain a presence on multiple platforms, then streamline. Better to be good on one platform than bad on all of them!
If you can manage more than one platform though, then you definitely should. Each platform provides a huge level of reach to new audiences and you don’t want to miss out on maximising all that potential.
Research – Find Out What Your Fans Like
Spend some time following similar audiences and artists to you and researching the content they engage with. Use this to start producing the content. From there, you will be able to engage directly with your audiences and see what they enjoy.
Research- Track Analytics
Every social media platform has their own analytics section. By using your analytics you can see exactly what performs well. This well help you find out exactly what works for you and how to build popular posts into a content strategy.
Data and demographics will also highlight the groups of people who gravitate towards your content, helping you to hone in on your target audience.
Plan- Create A Strategy & Build Campaigns
Planning is essential to gaining success on social media. In order to maximise your potential, develop a comprehensive marketing plan which ties your social media in to any wider marketing activities.
If you have upcoming releases or events use those to create a campaign. Rather than one single post, split it up into a selection of posts to go out over a period of time. If you can hype it up in advance and remind everyone about it, you’ll generate the maximum results when it comes around. Building hype is essential with social media and seeing increase to your music results.
Plan- Schedule Posts
Remembering to share you content is busier times can get real hectic. You’ll get busy making the music, playing the music and being the music. Social Media will rightly slip to the back of your mind. Making content in advance and scheduling it is an easy way to stay on top of things. There are plenty of online tools that can you help you do this and sync up to all of your platforms at once.
Plan – Be Consistent
First things first, posting too much too quick is a sure-fire way to annoy your audience. I have seen many artists who will post ten or more times a day. I usually just hit the unfollow button if I am being honest and I know many other people do the same. Positing too much will lose followers, not gain them. Make sure you post daily, but that doesn’t mean hourly. One post a day is plenty to reach your audience. Planning your content in advance will help you with maintaining the right level of posts. Engage your audience, don’t annoy them.
Remember to stay consistent with branding. When you are nurturing your online presence, providing a consistent image helps you to engage with your audience and produce content that stands out time and time again. Once you choose an aesthetic keep that branding consistent and use it across all of your social platforms.
Engage- Create Connections With Your Fans
Social media was built on one principal: sociability. It is right there in the title. So, use it for what it was meant for. Get social and get connecting with your fans. It is hands down the best way of using social media to get positive results. You can do this with responding to comments, hosting Q&As, doing competitions and more. You need to do things that make your fans feel like they are part of your music and have a connection with you. No one wants to feel like they are just a customer.
Engage- Be authentic
The best thing about social media is getting to connect with your fans. Be you. The most important aspect of building connections to your audience is being yourself. Your audience can easily tell if you are be real or hiding behind a façade. The more personal and genuine you are, the more your fans will enjoy your online presence.
Engage- Interact with other users
It’s not just about creating meaningful relationships with fans. Social media can be a route to some pretty strong partnerships. Use your social media to network with other artists and continuously boost your industry colleagues up to the next level. This could return some wider reach to you in the future and create a variety of collaboration opportunities.
Conclusion
Establishing yourself on social media takes a lot of time and effort. Don’t be discouraged if everything doesn’t take off at first. Stay consistent, keep trying and it will pay off. Social media comes in waves. To see proper results, it is a long game, and the only way to win is to be patient, build on your efforts, and keep at it.
Are you looking to get your music out there? With Identity Music you can get your music all over the globe in order to gain the maximum exposure. By using our distribution and music promotion services, you’ll be able to take control while watching your music reach new heights.
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