HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA AS A NEW ARTIST

Let’s take a moment to be real.

Building up an online presence as a musician is difficult, and once you have it all set up where do you go from there? How do you engage with your fanbase? How often do you post?

Having been a musician myself for the last 6 years, I’ve found myself scratching my head asking the same questions. But fortunately I’ve developed my own tips, tricks and strategies that I’m going to share with you today to hopefully get your own pages up and running as soon as possible.

BRANDING:

I know, if we were musicians in the sixties our job would have been to create the music and play the shows, while somebody in an office worried about advertising us to the world. However within the modern music industry we have this amazing readily available tool known as the internet. Most people’s first exposure of you as an artist is going to be on the screen of a smartphone or laptop, this is why it’s important to have striking and consistent visuals on all of your social media platforms.

In terms of finding your own brand, you can try looking at other bands around you for inspiration. Try and scope out what has worked for other people whilst bearing in mind how you’re going to make yourself unique. For example, you can try sticking out from the crowd with a bold colour palette that you use in all of your content, or bringing a unique dress sense into all of your press shots.

CONSISTENCY:

Leading on from the previous point, consistency is potentially the most important advice one can offer about social media to a new musician.

The objective for online presence as an artist is to make yourself both easy to remember and easy to find. The first place you can start with this is with a consistent social media handle on all platforms. If you find the perfect account name on instagram but it’s taken on twitter, start again until you can find one that is free on every platform that you want to use. Synergy like this across your accounts makes you easy to discover, and will help to grow your multiple accounts.

Consistency with how you post can make a big difference too. It’s a good idea to make sure that you’re posting content at similar times of the day and that the content is similar in tone and style. This way your fan base will come to know what to expect from you and when to expect it, maximising potential engagement.

POSTING:

Now you’ve got your branding consistent, you want to make sure that you’re posting regularly. Creating content to post can seem like quite a daunting task in itself, but this can be something that’s fun in itself. If you have bandmates, take lots of pictures of them so when the time comes to post, you’ve got an asset to use. Remember you’re an artist too. It’s very easy to think of managing these accounts as a business and nothing else, feel free to get creative and post yourself playing your instrument or singing a song for example.

Different types of social media allow for different kinds of content, each of which have their own merits. For example, Instagram is a great place for visual content whereas twitter allows you to develop more personal relationships with your fans by engaging with them more directly. Don’t sleep on TikTok either, it may be the home of those funny dances but it’s growing at a very fast pace and is a great place to grow a fanbase at the moment. You can also cross-post across your multiple platforms, allowing your content to reach the maximum number of people available to you.

Just be careful no to post too much, you don’t want to overexpose yourself to your audience or even worse, burn yourself out. Set up a post schedule, stick to it and you’ll have a successful account running sooner than you think.

ENGAGEMENT:

Engaging with fans and with other artists is one of the primary reasons to run social media accounts as an artist, after all they wouldn't be very social without other people to interact with.

Make sure that you reply to your comments and messages when they start to come through. These accounts allow you to build unique and real relationships with people worldwide that you wouldn’t have been able to do before without the internet. Building a community is one of the most important things that you can do, as it will get more people listening to your music overall.

Feel free to follow, like and comment on the profiles of other artists too. Remember that on social media every artist is in the same boat and many of them will want to offer you the same support you show them.

If you play a show with, co-write a song, or even hang out with another artist, be sure to post about it. In doing so, you’ll expose each other to your respective fan bases allowing you both to grow from the interaction. This is often referred to as ‘cross-pollination’ and is a great tool for growth among fledgling and experienced bands alike.

FINAL TIP:

Be yourself. As an artist the biggest marketable asset you have is you, so be genuine in your content and your interactions. People online are more likely to want to engage with another person than a faceless brand, so feel free to put a personal touch on everything that you do.

Hopefully you find some of these tips useful and can apply them to your own pages. It may seem a daunting task at first, but once you have these accounts up and running you’ll find it easier to promote your art to a wider audience and be reaping the benefits in no time.