I have helped several music centred organisations including Most Entertaining, one of Scotland’s foremost music tuition companies and the world renowned Scottish National Jazz Orchestra led by saxophonist Tommy Smith. I’ve brought focus to their thoughts on how social media might be harnessed to their advantage.
I have already posted on social media for music, and music venues in particular in my blog for the ‘Social media for industry x’ series – see ‘Social media for music venues’ .
In this post I want to draw attention to the many good ideas already developed in respect of social media by musicians, orchestras and other players in the industry.
First off take a look at an article Brian Thompson wrote for The Songwriters Association of Canada. It’s a real ‘down to brass tacs’ approach to social media Brian calls The 30 Minute Daily Strategy and includes great advice like
10 minutes
– Use Twitter Search to find and follow music industry professionals who are relevant to your goals (music bloggers or journalists, music supervisors, agents, managers, labels, publishers).
The advice Brian gives can be valuable to social media marketing novices not simply in music but across all industries.
Chase Farmer (that’s a name, not an instruction!) focuses on the social media platforms custom made for Musicians.
As a musician or manager of an orchestra you’re about sound and spectacle so what could be better than Youtube for attracting attention and worming your way into the rhythm of peoples lives? Well maybe the answer to my question is TubeMogul which Chase tells us ‘allows you to upload your video one time and it will send it out to a vast array of video networks across the web.’
Check out Chases article and think multimedia!
Zach Pentel dances to the same tune as Chase and has published 5 Superb Social Media Tools for Musicians on Mashable and talks about sharing tracks via Twiturm on Twitter. He also draws attention to something called Band metrics which is analytics for musicians – ‘ a measurement platform built just for musicians [which] measures the ways that fans interact with artists to pull out real-time — and more importantly, actionable — information that gets to the heart of what your fans respond to.’
Hmm? This is all beginning to sound like a lot of work! Is there any point? John Paul Titlow thinks there definitely is, and he has the evidence to prove it in his article Yup, Social Media Really Does Drive Music Sales
Mr Titlow writes ‘If there’s a key takeaway for the music industry, it’s that maintaining an active Web presence and utilizing social media are every bit as valuable to the business of music as everybody thought.’
Providing the base line to this positive vibe Cyber Pr outlines 3 mistakes musicians make in social media that you will do well to avoid including
‘Mistake Number 1: Self-Promotion is the Only Form of Communication (Or, Content is NOT Varied!)’
The answer to monotone marketing is apparently ‘…that only 1 in every 10 posts should be self-promotional, with the rest focusing on mixed media content focused on sharing your interests and passions with your fans and followers.’ Take a look at the social media pyramid for musicians the article links to for some sage advice.
Do you have a band, orchestra or just yourself struggling or succeeding in music promotion via social media? We would love to hear your experiences so comment below.
Finally, how about a little music! Here’s something I love. Trumpet!
If you want practical help getting your social media going or with a specific campaign give us a call
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