I was asked a few days ago what are good ways to promote music. And of course people automatically start thinking of promotion as Facebook sharing, tagging, tweeting, Instagram posting and whatever your platform choice may be. But when you dig really deep into it your promotion technique depends on what you're promoting. I want to outline some definitions and really go in depth about the topic. I'm going to focus on more of what you should do rather than what you should not do. So let's get started on How to Promote Your Music Effectively.
Definitions
Marketing: On the first day in many Marketing 101 courses, professors often define "marketing" as "all the processes involved in getting a product or service from the manufacturer or seller to the ultimate consumer." It includes creating the product or service concept, identifying who is likely to purchase it, promoting it and moving it through the proper selling channels. The Balance.
Business Promotion: Promotion, as a general term, includes all the ways available to make a product and/or service known to and available to purchase by customers. The word promotion is also used specifically to refer to a particular activity that is intended to promote the business, product or service.
With these two definitions let's combine the two and focus on music.
A music marketing strategy is a marketing plan designed to increase knowledge and sales of an artist's music. Usually an artist has many marketing strategies over the course of his career because music trends evolve and because an artist does not need to promote all of his events or songs at the same time. Biz Fluent
I know, I know. You just want to know what to do to get views, likes, shares etc. You may even want to know how to go viral. But I'm not writing this to tell you that. I'm writing this to give you techniques on how to promote with a purpose and to gain a loyal following. When you're promoting your music you're focusing on more than just selling a product. You're selling yourself. You're selling your brand. Your brand is your image, your music, how you present yourself and who represents you. When you're promoting your music all of this falls has to be considered. With that being said let's pretend that your brand is already in tact. Let's get you're following together with some promoting!
Let's say you have all original music and you own the rights to your beats and lyrics. If this is the case you have many options of promoting your music. First you need to choose where your music will be uploaded to for sharing purposes. There are many different options. Just starting out many people use Soundcloud, Reverbnation or Bandcamp. But if you're much further along artists may choose to Digitally Distribute to iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon and places like that. You can even just work solely off of your own website. Some Artist just use youtube. Some use all. But the decision is yours to make. You just need something that can be shared like in link form for social media. If you're building your fan base just choose one or two and start to build a fan base and direct them to your other platforms. Once you have chosen where you want to upload your music let's discuss where you can now share some links.
Social Media Platforms:
YouTube: I name YouTube first because my theory is. If you can conquer YouTube Everything else will fall into place. On YouTube you can communicate with your followers in all types of ways. Music Videos, Cover Song Videos, Tutorials, Vlogs and more. The key to YouTube is being different and tapping into a niche market. If you're releasing a song, take the follower behind the scenes. Take them on the journey of the creative process. Every now and again you may want to upload a video of what you've been up to if you're on tour or doing a lot of shows. The follower is more than likely to engage with videos of you as a real person rather than you just posting your music 24/7. It's good to stay on the subject of music but always try and be creative when doing so.
Video Tagging: Video tagging on youtube is very important. If you do not tag your videos properly you will not get views aside from the views from sharing the video. When you're tagging your video DO NOT SPAM. This means do not tag Chris Brown in your keywords if the video has nothing to do with Chris Brown.
Title: You want to always make sure you always have an engaging title. Also the main keyword you're using for your video should always be in the title.
Description: Another very important component in using YouTube to Promote is the description area. This is your chance to let the follower know what the video is about and also "Promote" yourself by linking them to the song you are promoting in the video. Even if it's not a music video use your music in the video and then put the links to the music in the description. Also link the follower to all of your social media accounts. Make sure to copy and past all song links and social media links so they become clickable.
Thumbnail: Always choose and interesting an engaging thumbnail. Something your fans want to click on, something that catches attention yet is unique.
Do this for every video! If you want to know more in depth checkout this video by Sean Cannell (Think Media) ultimate YouTuber. He has some amazing tutorials on boosting your YouTube channel.
YouTube is amazing because it's not all about uploading a song mp3 or recording a music video. You can use this platform in many different ways. And the more content you create via youtube the more your audience will grow through faithful youtube watchers and your social media following.
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram: I'm not going to spend much time on this. Social media sited like Facebook Twitter and Instagram are mainly for interaction. Once you choose where you're uploading your music you can use these platforms to share your links with your fans. This is the most popular form of promotion social media sharing. But you don't need to make these your sole platforms for sharing your music. When you do share from one of these platforms the best way is to purchase ads. Each network offers an ad purchase option. The purpose of the ad is to reach more people that are following you. On Instagram and Twitter you can use hashtags to target your audience and get more like and engagement but again like YouTube do not spam hashtags either. If the upload is not about Kendrick Lamar DO NOT hashtag Kendrick Lamar. You will lose respect and it won't get you many followers. Facebook hashtags don't work the same. Only people that are following you can initially see your post unless someone shares the post to be seen with their friends. I would personally focus on platforms other than facebook.
There are many different social media platforms to choose from. But these are the most popular people like to choose. The most important thing to remember is to be creative, engage your audience and constantly create new content to share. There is no such thing as "old content." It may be old to you but think of how many people are in the world that have not heard your music.
So to conclude. To start promoting your music
1. Pick a platform (YouTube, Bandcamp, Spotify)
2. Share your content on Social Media
3. Purchase ads
4. Use hashtags
5. Don't Spam hashtags and keywords
6.Engage your audience
7. Keep making new content.
Please Join Me for Part2 while I get into a promotion process that is a bit more difficult. See you soon! #CymphaniSpeaks
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