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Three strategies for promoting your music online

Writer's picture: instrumentalityinstrumentality

Every musician today, irrespective of the kind of music they make, will find that their audience has moved online to some extent. According to Q4 2021 research by Global Web Index, European GenZ now spend 3 hours each day on social media and even the Boomer generation occupy an hour each day on social media activities.

As a musician, you need people be aware of your work if you are going to be successful, so digital promotion has become an essential part of our business.

The first strategy is to be easy to find online. Your website is the lynchpin of your online presence, and it should have a domain name that is professional, relevant, and memorable. Even so, most people will use a search engine when looking for content and it is important that your site is featured near the top of the result set. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comprises a set of steps you can use to make sure your site is indexed correctly and appears when a relevant search term is used. There are some design techniques and content choices involved, and a resource such as the Wix Beginners Guide to SEO can guide you through the process. Technology aside, perhaps the most important aspect is to identify which keywords most strongly associate with your music.

The second strategy is to understand your audience and have a digital presence where they tend to be. There are some demographic distinctions when it comes to preferred social media platforms. If your audience base tends to be younger, you will want to make sure you are targeting Instagram, whereas an older audience will be more active on Facebook (Source: Global Web Index). However, these preferences are not exclusive, and can change. For example, the fastest growing platform with the Boomer generation is TikTok where use by this demographic increased by 65% in 2021. To have a better idea of which platforms will work for you, examine the social media activities of other musicians of your genre, or explore the social media engagement from other media outlets such as radio stations that tend to play your type of music. It is unlikely you will target one platform exclusively but researching this information will help determine where you should lead with your content.

The third strategy is to build connections by providing something that your audience wants and encouraging them to keep following you. Authenticity is key, and you should be prepared to give people an insight into your musical life. A mixture of casual and high production content enables your followers to get to know you and what you do. Your bio is an important part of your presence, and you should optimise the space you have – be clear about your type of music and recent activity. You can also use smartlinks in your bio to take followers to a more comprehensive account if space is limited. Try to diversify your posts, mixing images, videos, and text. Remember that most people will scroll with the sound off so use captions with images to refer to accompanying music. Consider what others will value but involves little cost to you – likes and follows, comments, reviews, tags, reciprocal links. Remember also that your network includes your supply side as well as your demand side – tag venues and instrument manufacturers in your social media and they may reciprocate, expanding your network further. While you want to be active on social media, it is important that you don’t bombard people, or they may stop following you. Pace your content posts and use platform scheduling tools so that you maintain an appropriate level of activity and preserve your focus on music-making. The blog section on mention.com has a great section on maximising engagement on Instagram, while Ditto includes more generic advice.

Having planned and executed your strategies, you need a way to understand how effective your efforts have been, then adjust accordingly. Website builder sites such as Wix provide some basic data and integrate with Google Analytics for more detailed insights. All of the Social Media platforms provide an analytics capability with ‘Reach’ and ‘Impressions’ being common metrics. Reach is a wide measure, but it is also estimated. It gives a sense of how many people were exposed to some information about your content. Impressions captures the number of times your content was displayed in a feed but note that it may include multiple views by the same people. There may be further data available, such as the location of users who viewed your content.

Promotion online is not difficult, but neither is it an exact science. Try things out, measure the results, then alter as necessary to find what really works for you and your music. Good Luck!


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