Marketing Your Music through Social Media
By B.L. Barbour
Using the most productive and cost effective tools for band promotion is what every artist should employ. The first and most important tool you should exploit is your own talent. Create great music and develop your band so that you are always at your very best in performances; promotional themes: t-shirts and buttons; podcasts; and recordings. This includes social media marketing which reaches a very wide audience and for the most part is free to use liberally. Every musical artist should have at least the following social media at their disposal: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
YouTube can provide a wide range of promotional capabilities increasing your fan base significantly. Build a YouTube channel for your group. Your fans will use it as a resource for access to your videos: concerts, interviews, music videos and exposes that can be viewed from their Smartphones, tablets or computers. As an artist you can use it to promote new song releases, behind-the-scenes videos and other related videos that are available from your YouTube channel. The goal is to build up both your subscriber and view counts for your YouTube videos.
Another marketing strategy is to post photos on Instagram shared between your website and/or blog. In the last few years artists have utilized Instagram to quickly post messages and photos. Use this media to start a photo contest between your fans by asking them to share their favorite photo of you or your group and send it via Instagram with a hash tag so it is easily categorized. Give the winner free tickets to your next concert or an opportunity to win a copy of your next album. Because of the wide range of possibilities Instagram is a great way to generate participation in a social media campaign.
Through YouTube and Instagram your fans have a social media access to your music and can communicate visually with you, now give them an additional verbal platform to use for communicating with you and other fans. That would be through Twitter and/or Facebook. Tweet on any number of topics and wait for the almost instant response from your followers. When your fans sign on to receive your Twitter feed, they’ll be able to follow you for every step you take. Launch an online contest and have your fans enter through Facebook. By following your Facebook profile fans can stay informed about your every move from new releases to concerts and have access to all your promotional materials.
Social media is the answer to staying plugged-in with the public. It’s a great resource for communicating with your followers and disseminating information about upcoming events. Take advantage of the instant round-the-clock communication you’ll have with your ever growing fan base by mastering the use of YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.