A Musician's Guide to Social Media Marketing (How To Get Started)
Marketing your music and yourselves as a band is a challenging task that can seem overwhelming at first but it is ultimately very rewarding. It definitely doesn't come easy, but with hard work and consistency you can form the foundation of a very successful band.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is the use of various social media sites to promote your business, gain new fans, and create content that engages your fanbase.
Why is Social Media Marketing Important?
Billions of people are using social media every day. This is a huge opportunity to reach people that you would never have been able to interact with otherwise. Social Media allows you to connect with fans across the globe and if done correctly can help you grow exponentially.
What Social Media is right for you?
There are a ton of different social media sites and apps and ultimately you have to find what works for you, but we will focus on the most popular and necessary ones.
Monthly Users: 2.9 billion
Age Demographic: Over Half of users are between 18 and 34
Overview: Facebook is still the most used social media platform to date. Facebook uses a "friend" system unless you use a business profile that allows people to follow you, similar to Instagram. Facebook is much more personal being that you can only have 5,000 friends, but this allows you to cultivate relationships with fans better.
Instagram:
Monthly Users: 1.4 billion
Age Demographic: Over 61% of users are between 18-34
Overview: Instagram is the "newer" and "younger" version of Facebook that is focused on photo and short-form video content. To thrive on Instagram you need to regularly post high-quality images (like band photos) or engaging videos. Try to figure out what your fans want to see. There is fierce competition on Instagram as there is on most social media, but if you stay consistent with your content you can start to gain a lot of followers.
Tik Tok:
Monthly Users: 1 billion
Age Demographic: 47.9% of users are under 30
Overview: Tik Tok is one of the newest social media apps and it has skyrocketed in popularity over the last few years. It's very different from the rest since you have to post videos. With a video limit of 3 minutes you should prioritize content that will catch users' attention (make it funny, informative, a video of a song...etc). Videos on Tik Tok have been known to go viral randomly and this possibility of spontaneous fame is what makes the app so alluring to creators.
YouTube
Monthly Users: 2.1 billion
Age Demographic: 81% of Adults use YouTube (1/3 of the Internet)
Overview: YouTube is the 2nd most visited website in the world—after Google. Obviously, this gives it a HUGE reach of people that might not even be on social media. On YouTube, you can and should be posting your music, creating lyric/music videos, and even band practices or live shows on your channel. You don't need to be as consistent with YouTube as with social media but you should aim for a video around once a week.
Monthly Users: 1.1 billion
Age Demographic: 44.2% of users are between 20 and 40
Overview: Reddit is basically a collection of communities (aka subreddits) where you can join a specific niche you are interested in and can make written, link, or photo posts that prompt conversation in the comments. There are a ton of music-focused subreddits and you can post in many of these about your music and experiment to see where you personally get the best results. Be wary of self-promoting in some subreddits as certain communities look down upon it and others are designed for it. Be sure to check each subreddits "rules" to find out if this is allowed.
Which Social Media Platform Should You Use?
There is no limit to how many social media platforms you can use so basically, as many as you can find time for. The essentials are Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube so definitely prioritize these 3, but Tik Tok and Reddit are great platforms as well that you do not want to miss out on.
Other Ways to Market Your Music
Email Newsletter
Why: Starting an Email Newsletter can be a great way to keep your fans up to date on everything coming up with your band, such as ticket pre-sales, merch, and upcoming shows. Make sure you give fans an incentive to sign up—like hearing new music early or a merch discount.
How to make an Email Newsletter? We recommend using an email service like Mail Chimp, it has the best benefits that let you set up 1 newsletter completely free!
Website
Why Start a Website: A Website is an incredible tool for musicians. Having a website allows you to increase your overall internet presence and creates a place for your fans to find all information on merch, streaming, show dates, and whatever else you want to share! This is also a great place to put together an EPK (electronic press kit) and to list all of your band's accomplishments for media outlets or music journalists.
How to Make a Website: If you search"how to make a website" on YouTube you will find tons of helpful videos but some of the most used website builders and places to start are Wix or Squarespace, or if you are tech-savvy and want a more customizable website you can try WordPress.
Spotify
Overview: Obviously Spotify is a very essential platform for artists, being one of the most popular streaming services. Spotify for Artists allows you to pitch your music to playlists and this is a great way to grow on the platform and gain more fans. You can also create your own playlists and sprinkle your music into them, then if the playlist gets popular you will be driving more streams to your band.
Press
Overview: News articles, interviews, music reviews, or any other form of press is a great way to stay relevant and help more people find out about your music. Pitching your music to music journalists and bloggers is a great way to market your band. Creating a media kit is also very helpful and will make you look much more professional.
How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Band
Spend Time creating content
Stay Active: Make sure that you are spending time creating engaging and interesting content. Have band practices, new songs, or even a funny meme about the band lined up to post on social media. You want to make sure that you are posting consistently to keep fans commenting, the last thing you want is for people to forget about you!
Message Fans, Create Relationships
Send Messages: Talk to your fans personally, creating a good relationship with your followers is incredibly important! Talk to other musicians about your niche and ask them to check out your music or give a follow. Many of them will support you because they are working on the same thing, mutual support is so important!
It's vital to send out messages to your followers after a new song release or something of that caliber. They might have missed your social media post and this is a great way to reach people in a more personal way that might not have checked out your song otherwise.
Try Ads (If you have a Budget)
Overview: If you have a budget it's definitely worth trying out ads. Social Media algorithms are notoriously hard to get the hang of but running ads guarantees that lots of eyes will see your posts. Test out ads on Instagram and Facebook and see if you are getting results that are worth the cost of running the ad.
Collaborations and Sponsorships
Overview: Collaborations and sponsorships are an excellent way to gain more exposure. Working with other musicians to create a song will reach your audience as well as their audience, benefiting both parties and gaining new listeners.
Sponsorships are very similar in that it is mutually beneficial. Find companies that work with independent artists and have an audience similar to yours. You can help the business reach more people and in return, they will give you some of their products and shout you out.
Follow Similar Bands or Creators and Engage with Their Posts
Overview: Research other accounts and bands that are in your niche. Next, give them a follow and start to interact with their posts. Commenting under their posts not only helps support them but also will make them and fans who see the comment interact with your posts. This is a great method especially when you have a newer account and are looking to gain some more followers that will go out of their way to comment.
Conclusion
Social Media Marketing is no easy feat, it takes lots of time and experimentation to figure out what works best for you, but it's well worth it once you do. Thank you for reading and hopefully, you implement these methods into your marketing strategies!
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