Social media is more than a place where you can post your gig photos and t-shirts. Social media is an important tool and a source of interaction between your brand’s audience and you. It’s possible to gain a lot of fans or lose them all through various interactions on different platforms. Therefore it is important to learn how to best use each platform. Before we get into the specifics of each network, we’ll briefly cover social media in general.
Consistency is your central hub. You must be consistent. Cross-linking social media platforms must be done with current and accurate links. It is a good idea to Google search for your brand and then follows all the links to see how you appear to the public. Next, make sure that each network links back to your central hub. The central hub can be your website if you’re serious or a place that serves as your primary location for future gigs, links, and a link back to your store. You will see dead links and no contact information or email addresses more often than you realize. If they cannot contact you, it is not worth inviting media or fans.
Things to Consider
Before you hit ‘publish’, focus on specific posts. What is the focus of the post? Is there anyone in your company who has posted something similar? It’s not a good idea to bombard your fans with all marketing. So it’s important to find a balance between entertainment/things similar to your brand and actual brand marketing, thus the 80(entertainment)/20(marketing) guide. Most people will respond positively to a video of a famous band if they’re artists. The question could be, “What’s your favourite song (band)?”. Social media is primarily about people seeing your brand. Keep in mind that not every post needs to be about you. For a personal touch, you could end each post with the poster’s name.
Statistics
It might seem excessive, but you may want to use a link shortener like bit.ly. These provide real-time statistics about which links are being clicked. This is an excellent research tool that allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of each social network. You can learn more about the people who are clicking on which posts through social media networks by keeping an eye out for what they like and how you can use it to your advantage.
Paid vs Free Posts
It has been getting harder and harder for your posts to be seen since Facebook removed the most recent style feed. A $5 promoted post can get more than 2000 views depending on how many likes you have. It is best to pay for great marketing posts and keep the public’s attention with interesting posts that encourage interaction (behind-the-scenes photos, anecdotes etc.). Your post will be seen more if it has ‘interaction’ (likes, comments).
All Your Information
Reiterating: Make sure all information is correct and links to any future gigs. If you don’t have a current gig guide, you should link to your website. It should take less than 30 seconds for someone to find your gigs and contemporary music on your social media networks (email, not Facebook messaging).
Professionalism
You can easily like your band post on Facebook as your page. This means that you shouldn’t like the posts of your band unless you are certain you’re commenting/liking only as yourself. This ensures that your brand doesn’t like its posts. It sounds silly, but this happens all the time.
Schedule posts to help keep your brand professional. You can keep your brand professional by scheduling posts for your week. This will allow you to stay on top of Facebook marketing and your fans’ minds (and Facebook feeds). You should also note that you can share their review or write up when other companies mention your brand. This will help your fans to see the positive press and show appreciation to the person who wrote it. This could increase their likelihood of covering your brand again.
Twitter can be used in many ways to make it a quick and easy social media tool for your company. It can be linked with other social media accounts such as Instagram. We recommend that you do not link your Twitter to Facebook as it has such a small letter count that your Twitter will soon look like a mashup of unfinished sentences. Twitter is, obviously, for brief snippets of information. Could you keep it simple? Twitter can be used to keep you updated with what’s happening. Perhaps you are in rehearsal for tomorrow’s gig, or you see a poster for the gig. See what others like and retweet. It is important to @ mention everyone you can. Mention the venue if you are at it and other bands if they are there. They’ll see it immediately and may even retweet or retweet.
Etiquette
Please do not overdo it with the mentions. @ mention people who are related to your tweet. Don’t mention them if they aren’t. The same applies to messaging anyone or DM’s. Join the conversation if they are talking to you! Don’t spam them trying to promote. Too many bands do this, and they don’t gain any fans.
You can schedule tweets just like on Facebook by using a Twitter service like Hootsuite. This can be a great advantage.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a great tool for creating websites. We won’t get into the details, but we will tell you that it’s easy to do for just $10 per year. Its blog layout and customisation ability make it a popular choice for bands. Even if you don’t want to upgrade to a domain, Tumblr is a great way to interact with your fans. Tumblr offers many options to help you build a relationship with your fans.
Conclusion
These are some things to keep in mind when you look at your marketing strategy.
1. Don’t spam. Spamming is not fun, and it will lead to you losing fans.
2. You should strike a balance between entertaining and marketing posts.
3. Connect to all your networks to see how your brand appears to fans.
4. The week’s posts should be scheduled at the beginning of each week. Once they are done, you can continue to be in people’s minds/feed/stream.
5. Try different pages to see what works.