In any industry, running successful marketing or promotion is always a challenge, and the independent music industry isn’t an exception. As an aspiring independent musician with the goal to get everyone to get to know you and your music, you’ll need social media on your side.
Everyone that you are targeting as a potential fan can be found somewhere on the internet. Today, an average person spends not less than 2 hours of their time on social media. While there are countless guides on music promotion out there, we believe you can record appreciable success if you channel your energy into social media for music promotion.
In this cheat sheet, we’ll be providing everything you’ll need to become a rock star on social media and even offline. It’s about learning the essential strategies that make you excel as an indie artist in 2021. We will consider three social media platforms and how you can make the most of them; Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.
Before you continue reading, answer the following questions;
- How many social media platforms do you use?
- How often do you post and share content on social media?
- Do you use social media to engage and interact with your fans?
- Have you experienced any observable growth in your number of followers?
Facebook for Music Promotion
Using Facebook has become part of our everyday life. Right now, someone is about to pick their phones, laptops and will check in on Facebook to see what’s going on. Facebook can connect more people than any other company or people. Millions of people rely on Facebook to connect them with friends, artists, and their interests.
Not to bore you with statistics, but imagine if you can gain the attention of just 5% of the 1.73 billion daily active users on Facebook. Facebook is the king of social media and can make a Rockstar out of every upcoming independent artist.
To succeed on Facebook, you need to put in place the following;
1. Compelling description
Not more than two sentences. This is where you can best display your creativity with words as an artist.
2. Interesting Profile and Cover Photo
Find a means of creating a long-lasting impression with your images. Use what you’ll consider as your most striking image.
3. Link To Your Music
Your Facebook profile is not complete if you are not pointing your followers to where they can listen to your music. That’s the whole idea behind your music marketing.
4. About Us
Seize this opportunity to tell your fans about yourself and your music. This should also include your contact information for gigs and shows.
If you have all of this in place already, you can still review it.
Killer Tips on Facebook For Music Promotion
- Thursday and Friday are the most favorable days to post content on Facebook.
- You are likely to have more likes and share by posting by 3 pm and 1 pm, respectively.
- For best results, only upload images in the PNG format, and it’s below 100kb.
- Encourage fans and followers to share your posts directly.
- Do a mix of content types – videos and images.
- You are likely to enjoy more visibility if you share contents that are not shared on other networks.
- When you are running Facebook ads, it’s best to go with Facebook video ads as people prefer video content.
- Don’t stop inviting people to like your artist page on Facebook.
- Strive to create viral content in the form of memes, funny music videos, and relatable quotes.
- Once in a while, you should do giveaways. It can be your merchandise or music CD.
Twitter For Music Promotion
Promoting your music on Twitter is not as daunting as the platform might appear to be. Like Facebook, Twitter is another potent and practical tool you can use to build a fanbase and connect with your audience as an indie artist.
Twitter has about 330 Million monthly active users, and half of this number uses the app daily. Depending on your music genre, you can take advantage of the 37% of Twitter users below 35 years.
This guide intends to help you harness the power of Twitter as an indie artist. Here’s what we think you can do to promote your music on Twitter;
Identify Your Audience
Twitter is a community segmented into different sub-niches based on interests. To succeed on Twitter as an independent artist, you need to know who your music appeals to; this is your target audience.
It’ll amount to waste of time to target people whose interest does not align with your genre of music. The best way to identify the target audience is to search based on a common interest. You can also look for established artists in the same music genre as you and subtly target their followers.
Be Regular and Consistent in Your Tweets
No one will remember you or your music if all you do is tweet erratically. You’ll need to tweet multiple times daily. While there’s no rule of thumb to the number of tweets daily, the more, the merrier.
You’ve got to keep the conversation rolling throughout the day. It may require you to hire a social media manager at a point, and consistent posting of content should be one of the Standard Operating Procedures.
Increase Your Visibility Through Hashtags
Hashtags are the heartbeat of Twitter. By mastering hashtags, you are halfway closer to succeeding in music promotion using Twitter. You also have to be consistent in the usage of hashtags; this will help string together every conversation and interaction.
Aside from your hashtags, it would be best to learn the art of using trending hashtags. Daily, there’s always a trending hashtag on Twitter. Choose a trending hashtag that aligns with your interest and music, and use it to increase your visibility.
Promote Your Tweets
Tweet promotion may not be a regular occurrence, but it’ll boost your music promotion efforts. You can promote the tweets that you think are gaining attention to increase their traction and visibility.
Promoted tweets are not different from other regular tweets; the difference is about expanding the tweet’s reach. Usually, promoted tweets appear on the top of the search result.
TikTok For Music Promotion
According to the BBC, TikTok is giving new artists a chance than any other existing platform. TikTok is helping new artists to get discovered even more easily than ever before. Thanks to Gen Z’ers, TikTok is today one of the fastest growing social media and doesn’t seem to slow down.
In less than five years of existence, TikTok is fast becoming a sub-culture, one that stands to benefit independent artists in their quest to get more people to listen to their music. To better maximize the potentials of TikTok for music promotion, these tips and strategies have been proven to be effective;
Create a Musical Moment
TikTok is about finding the 15 seconds within your song that stands the chance of going viral. One that can inspire your target audience to go crazy and haywire.
Look for a hook in your music and create a musical moment with it. You’ll be surprised at how it’s able to build for you a loyal and die-hard fanbase. Ensure the 15 seconds hook allows people to come up with their dance video or one that can be lip-synced.
Develop a Fun Dance to Your Song
TikTok users love to dance, and you have to give them a song to dance to and the dance moves. One of the easier ways to use TikTok for music promotion is making a dance video for your music.
You can also come up with the dance tutorial, and you’ll be surprised at the traction this will gain once it reaches your audience.
Focus on Them and Not You
TikTok thrives on community engagement than any other platform. It’s a community of people ready to engage in crazy things once they have the push.
Don’t think of TikTok as a place to display your brilliance. You should express your ingenuity and creativity, and if you get it right, your music promotion efforts will be rewarded.
Take Advantage of TikTok Collaboration Tools
With the array of tools and features available on TikTok, you’ll be convinced that it’s a social media platform that suits independent music promotion.
TikTok presents you with numerous avenues to encourage your fans to make their videos. You can also take the lead while your followers make their content based on your content.
Final Thoughts
Social media for music promotion is about taking advantage of the collision of songs, videos, and personalities. If done rightly, social media can bring fame to anyone, including indie artists.
