
This post is part two in a series about marketing your music online, and building a fanbase starting from scratch. If you missed part one, click here to read about which networks you should begin posting your music on and how to get your first few listeners. This post covers the other standard social media networks and how to start driving fans to your music.
Once you have your music online, it’s time to start growing your fanbase on other networks. Traditional social media is helpful for keeping your fans interested in what you do. No band can release new music or videos all the time, but only connecting with your fans every few months makes it difficult to keep in touch. The idea behind these networks is to engage your fans frequently, and have another way of reaching people to send them to your music.
Facebook: Home Base for Marketing
Facebook is by far the easiest network for bands to use, and usually the best place to start your marketing efforts. The reason is simple—almost every person you know has a Facebook account, and you can use your personal friends and family to start out, and let your network grow from there. As soon as you start a page for your band, begin inviting people to like it.
There are a few key things to understand about running a Facebook “like” page that are different from your personal account. First, not everything you post will be seen by the people who like your page (unless you buy ads – more on that later). Your reach is based on how your previous posts do with your fans. So if your posts get a lot of likes and clicks, it will be shown to more people, as will the next thing you post. If it’s not well received, your next posts will be shown to fewer people. This means you need to focus on everything you write, include lots of images, and try to really connect with your fans. In general, Facebook video (not YouTube links) get a lot more reach than anything else; image posts, links, and shares from other pages also do a lot better than regular text posts. Also be careful not to post too often, or Facebook will limit the reach of each post, even if they are getting more clicks and likes.
Your best bet is to write content that encourages fans to share your post, then you don’t need to rely on Facebook’s algorithm to get your post in front of more people.
Although it may be out of reach for some bands, buying ads on Facebook really works. If you have any marketing budget, Facebook ads are a worthy investment. You don’t need a lot, a few bucks a day is enough to make sure your fans are engaged with the things you post, or to gain a few fans a day. These ads can also allow your post to be seen by the people who already like your page.
The most important thing about getting the benefit you want from your ads is to target them, or specify the location and demographics you are looking to reach. For instance, if your band is from Texas, you can choose to target the entire United States, just the state of Texas, or even individual cities, like Austin, Dallas, or San Antonio. You can also target people by genre, other likes, and countless other things.
Event pages should be made for every public show that you do. Organize this with the bands sharing the bill or the venue, you don’t want multiple listings for one event. Facebook allows you to individually invite all of your friends or the people who like your page, which easily allows you to connect with a good crowd. If you are running an ad, targeting is especially important, and can help limit the amount you spend while maximizing the number of people who are likely to come to your show.
Insights are the analytics of your Facebook page, and are accessible to page managers and owners. Here, it’s easy to see what the age range, sex, and interests of your fans are for future marketing, and to see a list of all your posts and how many likes, comments, and shares you got. Check in on this every few weeks to shape what you are going to post about next.
Twitter: Expand Your Network
While most bands start a Facebook to engage their local fans and personal friends, Twitter is a great platform for connecting with people you don’t normally come into contact with. It’s easy to find other bands and musicians of any genre, and stay on top of what they are posting about. That said, it requires a little more work than Facebook, and it’s easy to get lost in the mess.
Extending your network on Twitter is actually relatively easy. Following someone else gives them a notification, people check their followers often and follow back if people seem interesting. Don’t do this by the thousands, but adding a handful of people a day to naturally grow your network is a great idea. Growing your own following will come slowly at first, but the more often you post and the more people you follow, the more will follow back.
What scares bands about Twitter is finding content to post about all the time. It’s not as hard as it seems. Focus less energy on what you are doing as a band, and more about what others in your network or genre do. You can post other band’s music, shows that are in your area, and interesting news from around the web. Retweet others and reply to their posts. Twitter is all about conversation—the more you talk to everyone, the more attention your page will get. Of course, post your own music and videos also, but doing it too often will make your followers disinterested.
There are a few no-no’s on Twitter that are unfortunately very commonplace. In general, don’t direct message people unless you have something personal to share with them. Messaging or mentioning people and asking them to listen to your music can seem desperate or spammy, and while it may send a few people to you in the short term, it can get tiring pretty quickly. The key is simply to provide value to your followers or fans. Post things that interest people, hopefully your music, videos, and shows are part of that information.
Because there are so many people and so much content posted on Twitter, you can make more than one tweet for a big announcement. For instance, if you have a new single coming out, you can do a post a few weeks in advance during the recording or mixing process, another announcing the release the day before, and then one the day of. Again, your posts shouldn’t all be all about you, but it’s okay to highlight the things you do well.
Setting up Twitter to automatically share from other networks is okay if you don’t have enough time to post constantly, but it’s not really engaging for fans. The so called “set it and forget it” doesn’t do much to encourage conversation or expand your network. As mentioned before, the most successful people on Twitter are commenting and sharing other’s posts, not just releasing a feed from another network.
Instagram: Promoting Your Image
Marketing professionals in recent years have been hailing the newer networks like Instagram and Snapchat as the way of the future. Indeed, these networks have very high engagement. They are incredibly popular right now, and have a lot of active users. While they are great for staying connected with people, they are more difficult to use, and even more difficult to get fans to your other networks.
The focus here should be posting beautiful and interesting content that shows your band’s image in a great way. Instagram is a great place for behind-the-scenes shots from rehearsal or recording sessions, quick clips from live shows, and teaser videos from your other releases. Make sure you look professional! Don’t post ugly or blurry photos, pictures of empty rooms at your shows, or video that sounds bad.
The reason Instagram is so tough to use is that it doesn’t allow links within posts. So no matter how many fans like or comment on your pictures, very few are going to visit your other pages or music sites. One workaround is to change the link in your bio often, and mention in each post that it has changed.
Don’t be afraid to use longer text with lots of hashtags along with your posts. Tell a story along with your image, explain to your fans what is going on in the photo or some information behind it. It’s okay to use a lot of hashtags, up to 10-15 per post. They are hidden by default, but make it much easier to find your account online.
Conclusions
In all, make sure you are using each network for a purpose, and you have a strategy for each social page. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have very different user bases, and different types of fans will be on each one. If a network is not working for you, drop it and focus your efforts elsewhere. It’s better to run one or two networks well than all of them without much activity.
Remember, marketing is a long process. It takes time and effort, but you will get out of it what you put in.
Does your band use any of these networks? What strategies do you use to find fans? Comment below with your thoughts!
Hello,
Do you sell advertising space?
We are interested to launch the ad banner on your site.
Waiting for your reply.
Regards,
Hi Jackie,
No – We’re an ad-free site and keep this purely for the benefit of our members.
Thanks for your interest anyway.
Robert