The musician’s business guide series continues with further discussion on social media marketing. In any competitive market it is important to stand out if you want to have the competitive advantage. The music industry is no exception. Millions of great musicians will never get noticed because they don’t have a proper marketing vehicle in place to generate exposure for their music.
For the do-it-yourself musicians, social media is a necessary component of your music marketing plan. However, many still don’t understand the true power of their social network. Let’s review a few statistics.
So with so many people online using social media, how do you begin taking advantage of your social network as a musician?
Establish A Competitive Advantage
The first thing you must realize as a working musician is that everyone is “different”, “fresh”, “innovative”, and “unique”. Using these words to describe yourself or music will get you no where fast. Dig deeper than these surface level descriptions. Work to truly understand what you are bringing to the table.
Things To Think About
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- Do people love your somber, lyrical tones and cadences? Do your filter heavy music production choices draw their attention?
- Are your fans attracted to your high energy, instrumentals and constant Youtube rants?
- Do your fans know you for your philanthropic efforts and empowering vocal performances at shows?
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As you can see, figuring out your competitive advantage involves critical thinking about your brand. You should be able to provide detailed information about why people should or already choose you versus another recording musician.
Develop Your Elevator Pitch
Social media allows for new, independent bands to share their music effortlessly online. If every other musician is doing the same thing, there is more competition.
See how you can easily become nothing more than just more noise?
This brings us to the elevator pitch. A DIY musician should ALWAYS have his/her elevator pitch prepared.
An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The name “elevator pitch” reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.
You never know who you will run across networking within the music business (especially online) so you should have this memorized and ready to give at anytime.
Do not give generic statements to people when you are trying to sell” yourself or music. Things like, “I’ve been singing since I was 3″ or “I’ve enjoyed writing songs since I was little” will not cut it anymore.
Get to the point. If your story is compelling enough, the person in question will usually ask more about you.
Actively Engage Others Online
Common sense would tell us that a big part of being on social networks is being social. Unfortunately common sense isn’t always so common. Too often musicians get caught up in the plethora of online distractions and forget that in order to market your music through a social network, you have to be social.
This doesn’t mean just messaging someone 1 time on Facebook.
2 @ mentions on Twitter won’t cut it either.
Marketing your music online with social media entails strategically building relationships with fans and other music industry contacts. Take the time, effort, and energy to properly develop these relationships.
Get A Social Media Management System
If you don’t already have a social media management system in place, you are wasting precious hours of your day. A platform such as, Hootsuite, provides you with the ability to schedule your social profile updates saving your most valuable asset, time. It also provides a host of analytics tools to monitor your social activity. When you’re promoting your music, these types of tools will prove beneficial in letting you know how effective your efforts are.
4 other social media management tools:
Source: facebook.com via Zee on Pinterest
Final Thought
Social media is essential to all DIY musicians. It allows you to effectively engage with fans and directly interact with them, as well as get noticed by music industry professionals.
