Social media is [literally] a job in itself. Balancing a music career with your engagement efforts online can be more complicated than many are willing to admit.
There is a moment in every superhero origin story where the protagonist fails. Maybe there is a bomb in an amusement park or a plane falling out of the sky two-thousand miles away, and for whatever reason, the hero cannot save the day. These moments are viewed as character building events because the hero’s response to failing often signals how they see their responsibility to protect others moving forward. Some double down on the heroism, but others choose darkness.
The lesson is always the same: No one can be everywhere all the time, nor can anyone expect to do everything. Even the strongest and most gifted among us are incapable of perfection, including you.
The music business tells us something different. Music industry experts often say that every artist is a business and that every business needs social media to survive. You need to tweet your specials, post Instagram updates featuring your product, and offer timely responses to fans who comment anywhere you have a presence. The music industry also tells us that we need to create original content for every channel that utilizes the space allotted to us on each platform. That means vertical videos for Instagram Stories, 280-character bursts of genius for Twitter, and something ‘Likeable’ for Facebook, and so on.
Experience teaches us that the music industry experts are mistaken and that our culture’s current obsession with social media is not a good enough reason for artists to become update slaves. No artist, but especially no up and coming artist, can hope to build a lasting music career when they are throwing away countless hours trying to develop a following online.
Don’t get us wrong. It would help if you had fans, and having a presence online can be essential to engaging with your audience. It can also help build an audience in places artists cannot travel themselves and open doors that may otherwise remain off-limits. However, if making a following online comes at the cost of doing something artistically rewarding that brings joy to those whose passion is music above all else, it may be time to rethink how we view our relationship with social media.
On the season premiere of Music Biz, host James Shotwell explores the cost of social media versus its impact on a musician’s bottom line. There is an easy way for any artist to how much time they should focus on social media, as well as where those efforts are most effective, and James reveals it in this video. Check it out:
Though its popularity among young consumers has waned in recent years, Facebook welcomes more than 2 billion monthly users.
The music industry loves to complain about Facebook. The social media juggernaut boasts more monthly users than any other service, but algorithmic changes made in recent years have severely limited organic post reach. So much so in fact that many believe the only way to ensure fans see their content is to pay for increased exposure (to people who already asked to see your content).
There may be some truth to that. Organic reach is undoubtedly down, but there are still tricks users can implement to help posts get in front of their fans without spending any money. It’s all a matter of timing, and thanks to the team at ShareLov we now know the best times to post text and video content to Facebook in 2019. Check it out:
Social media is more important for brands and bands now than at any other point in its existence. The vast majority of conversations and consumer engagement taking place online today happens across the numerous social media platforms that have risen to popularity over the last decade, and those numbers are likely to increase in the years ahead. If newspapers and town halls were the hubs of community and discussion one-hundred years ago, Facebook and Twitter are their modern replacements. You probably have several social media accounts right now, and you probably feel a slight shiver run down your spine every time a new service begins gaining a lot of popularity. We feel the same, and while we never want you to feel like you need or even can be everywhere at once we do feel you need to position yourself to handle whatever the quickly changing digital landscape throws your way. The following tips should help any person or group familiar with these services improve their digital marketing efforts, but only if you make them your own. Find what works best with your audience and use that knowledge to build a community around your art.
Real-time posting is for people who can afford to spend hours online every single day. Schedule your content in advance and lose the need to be constantly connected.
Manually posting updates to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the like in 2016 is the digital equivalent to rubbing two sticks together in hopes of creating fire in the new millennium. Both approaches eventually get the job done, but they are far from the easiest way to handle your business. Services like Hootsuite and similar social-delivery systems allow you to schedule your content several days, sometimes even weeks, in advance. You can set your latest song premiere to hit your blog at a specific time, as well as set all your social networks to link to the track, all long before the day of the premiere arrives. This allows you more time to work on outreach to publications, songwriting, or anything else you desire without having to sacrifice an ounce of your marketing efforts. You should still log on to see how people react to your news, of course, but you can do that whenever time allows instead of creating space in your already crowded schedule to dedicate to sitting on social networks hoping for engagement.
Incorporate concert listings wherever possible
Every artists hopes that by making their music easy to find online that they will be discovered by the masses in time, but history tells us there is no faster way to build a relationship with music fans than by getting them to see you perform in person. To do this, setup an account with Bandsintown or a similar concert listing application and connect it to all relevant social media networks. Services like Bandsintown will maintain your concert listings, as well as tweet out relevant performance information in advance of your gigs. Like the scheduling tools listed above, these services cut down on the total amount of time artists need to spend focusing on things outside their music, which in turn allows for more creativity.
Want more engagement? Ask questions.
Only a fool would approach their digital presence with the belief people online a looking for one-sided conversations. As much as fans may follows your accounts in hopes of hearing what you have to say, the real reason anyone follows anyone online is the hope that a deeper connection may be formed. Fans don’t want to simply hear about your career, they want to know about you as a person, and they hope you want to know about them as well. The quickest way to appease this desire and raise engagement for your digital presence is to pose questions to your audience. Who has the new album? What is everyone’s favorite song? What tracks do they want to see you perform on tour? Who else are they listening to? These questions and more can help you not only retain fans through engagement, but they can also help you understand your audience in ways the simplify future promotions efforts. If your fans like Song A more than Song B, play Song A last. If they keep comparing you to another band at the same level in their career, consider touring with that group so that you can both help one another by sharing listeners. Again, it all comes back to building and retaining a community around your art.
Update your profile as often as you do laundry
Most profiles have an incredibly short shelf life in terms of offering unique information or media. When was the last time you changed your profile picture? How about the link in your Instagram profile? Have you updated your bio in the last year, or ever? Making small changes to your profiles on a regular basis can give the appearance of being busy even when you’re scraping together change to get to your next gig. Profile updates tell fans there is a reason to continue checking your pages and activity because you’re being active and working toward the future. Stagnate pages give the illusion of death, and you definitely do not want that kind of attention.
Try new tools and platforms as they become available, but only stick with what works for you
Have you tried Facebook Live yet? What about Periscope? Have you created a geofilter on Snapchat so fans can brag about being at your next gig? There are new tools, tricks, and platforms to help raise awareness for your efforts going public every week. We do not support attempting to use all in addition to your current channels, but we do encourage you to try everything that makes sense for your band. If you try something and see no results, delete your presence and move on. When you find something your fans enjoy, add it to your ongoing marketing efforts.
