Creating Your Online Brand for Bands (Beginners) #1: Organic Social Media
Right now, a band or musician’s online presence is everything. There’s little to no opportunity to play live shows, so online promotion and posting is about the only way to reach their audience. However, musicians are musicians - they’re brilliant at playing music, but transitioning to a 100% online strategy can be hard for some. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my tips and tricks to marketing your band online for begginners. Today, I’m going to give an overview of creating your online brand on social media, organically (without paying).
Why put all of this effort into social media? The goals are to grow your following in ways that you can’t with live shows (think out of state or different countries, or people who may not have heard your music otherwise that become fans), create engagement with your fan base to increase their investment in your project, and to create an online presence that’s impressive to bookers and promoters once live shows make their return.
Make Your Online Brand Consistent
With all of the billions of minutes and millions of photos out there, it’s important that your brand is recognizable across all social media outlets. It’s helpful for people searching for you if you have the same profile photo, whether is a photograph or a logo, the same cover photo, and the same handle (name) on each of your band’s social media pages. That way, they immediately know its you and they don’t have to continue searching. Making it as easy as possible so that searchers can spend as little time searching as possible is super important to getting views and engagement on your posts.
Establish Your Brand Voice
Before you start posting, plan your brand voice with intention. Your brand voice is is how you communicate with your followers - the tone, language, and energy of how you talk to people. Your brand voice should be consistent not only on social media, but also in emails and at live shows or meet and greets. To establish your brand voice, it can be helpful to visualize your brand as a person. Who are they? What do they look like? What do they wear? Are they a rocker? Playful? Intellectual? Kind? Fun? Humble? Once you visualize who your brand is as a person, it becomes much easier to speak in that person’s voice. Then, use your voice in every single post so that your audience can get to know who you as a musician or band are.
Understand Your Audience
While you’re establishing your brand voice, it’s essential to understand who you will be talking to with that voice. You want to be relatable to your audience. To understand who already digs your music and follows your pages, dive into your analytics on each social channel. These analytics always have a “demographics” section that shows you where your fans live, how old they are, what language they speak, and when they engage with your posts. Knowledge is power, and once you know who it is you’re talking to, it becomes much easier to tailor your content to receive more engagement and be more relatable.
Use Your Analytics
On the note of analytics - use the rest of them too! The built-in analytics on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and other social channels can show you which of your posts are most successful (so you can make more like them), how long users watched your videos, your total post reach, your follower growth, how your events performed, and much more.
To find your analytics, here’s what to do:
Facebook:
Business Suite App (Previously Pages) - In the Facebook Pages/Business Suite App, you can find your page analytics by clicking the dot and line icon on the menu on the bottom of the app. From there, you can click into each data point to learn more.
Desktop - While you’re viewing your page on desktop, you can find “Insights” on the left hand menu. Once you’ve clicked into it, you can see all of your data and explore it in depth. The desktop insights are much more robust than the ones on the app.
Instagram App
If you have a business account on Instagram, you can find insights by going to your profile, clicking the three lines in the top left corner, and selecting “Insights.” Instagram just redesigned their insights a few weeks ago and they are much more helpful than they used to be!
Desktop - Currently, I believe you can only access insights through the desktop version of Twitter. Once you’re on your homepage, you should see a button with three dots labeled “More” on the left hand menu. When you click this, it brings up a separate menu where you can select “Analytics.”
YouTube
App - To view your YouTube Analytics, you must use the YouTube Studio App. Upon logging in, your dashboard will have some overview analytics. To view more in depth numbers, tap the three lines in the top left corner and select “Analytics.”
Desktop - From your YouTube homepage, click “Your Videos” on the left-hand menu on the screen. Once the new page loads, select “Analytics” on the same left menu.
Strategize for Each Social Channel
While the idea of using most social channels is the same, the way they work, including their algorithms, is much different. Your followers engage on different social channels in different ways and expect to see different types of content on different social channels. If you’re not marketing your band online full-time, its doubtful that you’ll have the time to make different content for each social channel and post on a consistent, regular basis. It’s ok to use the same content across your social media profiles, but make sure you post at the appropriate times, use the correct image and video sizes, and adjust your captions for each.
Post Consistently
This is one of the most important parts of building a successful social media presence and online follower base. Regardless of how often you post, post consistently. For instance, if you post 3 times per week, then make sure you post three times per week at the same times every single week. If you post once per day, try to post at the same time each day. If you do, your followers will begin to know when to expect new content from you, making them more likely to engage. When you’re deciding when to post, make sure you check out your analytics to understand the days and times when your posts have been most successful (in terms of engagement). You can also research the best times to post overall for the most up to date information. The algorithms change often, so staying informed is key.
Keep Your Website Up to Date
Though technically your website doesn’t fall under the “social media” category, it should be connected to all of your social media accounts. When fans or potential fans are looking to find out more about you, chances are that they’ll Google you and land on your website. This will be your first impression on new followers, so it’s important that all of your shows and music are up to date on your website. This is also one of the first places bookers and promoters will land when checking you out. When they see a finished, current, and thoughtful website, it goes a long way in establishing your credibility. From there, visitors may click on to your social media outlets, which should be an extension of your website in consistency, professionalism, and recency.
Cross Promote
Let’s say that your Facebook page is doing really well - gaining followers and garnering comments and shares on posts - but your Instagram just ins’t gaining that same traction. It’s time to do a Facebook post letting your followers know you also have an Instagram page they can follow. Many people may simply not have looked for you yet on Instagram, and this is a great reminder for them to do so. This works with all social channels. You can remind your YouTube followers to like your page on Facebook in your videos or tweet out an awesome new video from YouTube with a note to subscribe.
Instagram: Hashtags, Engagement, Response, & Stories
On Instagram, there is no way to directly invite your friends to follow you. However, there are several ways to get your posts to reach people who have never heard of you before. The best way is to use Hashtags. You can use a maximum of 30 hashtags per Instagram post and 10 per Instagram story. I usually find myself using all of these, because…why not? That’s 30 chances to get your content into a category that people are viewing. There is no right or wrong number of hashtags to use and it’s worth experimenting to find what works best for your particular band. Hashtags are just a way of grouping posts to show users the most relevant content to their searches or interests. For instance, if you’re trying to reach people in the local music scene, a great tag to use is #DenverMusic. Then, your post will appear on that hashtag page so that those interested in Denver Music can see it. On top of using the most relevant hashtags, there is a science to how you should use them. Some hashtags have millions and millions of photos tagged with them. I would avoid these, as new posts are coming up so fast that yours will be buried almost as soon as you publish it, plus it attracts spammy comments and messages.
Social Media Examiner has a great breakdown of how you should select hashtags:
“Choose three to five popular hashtags. Popular hashtags have around 300,000 to 1 million posts for a specific hashtag. Anything over 1 million generally is irrelevant to you because it’s so saturated with content that the only thing you’ll attract are spambots. And you don’t want that!
Select three to five moderately popular hashtags. These are the hashtags that fall in the 80,000 to 300,000 range.
Pick three to five niche-specific hashtags. These are super-targeted specifically to your industry, what you do, the solution you provide, and what your customer is looking for.
Include one or two of your branded hashtags.”
You can expand these ratios as your number of hashtags increases.
The science of hashtags is incredibly deep and can take a long time to master. Here are some great guides for using hashtags effectively and understanding the Instagram algorithm:
Hootsuite: The 2020 Instagram Hashtag Guide—How to Use Them and Get Results
Later: The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Hashtags in 2021
Eintstein Marketer: How the Instagram Algorithm Works (2020 Update!)
In addition to making regular posts on Instagram, it’s also important to create Instagram Stories, reply when someone comments on your posts, and engage with others’ posts. Liking and commenting on the posts of other people is one of the best ways to get new, engaged followers. They will notice you engaging and many times, will follow you and engage with your media as well.
Create Fresh Content
No matter which social media sites you’re using, it’s imperative to create fresh content. It can be difficult to constantly come up with new ideas, so here are a few for you:
Always Include a Visual
When you’re posting, always include a visual element. This can be a photo, video, or a link preview populated from a link in the caption. With everyone using these visual cues, often users will just scroll right by text-only posts.
Avoid Over-Promotion
So you have a show or important new release coming up. Of course you’re going to promote it, but beware of overpromoting and annoying your audience. Every single post should not be encouraging your fans to buy tickets to your next show. That can come across so impersonal and can start to wear on your followers after a while, until they finally tune out. Balance out your promotional posts with other content types to keep it fresh, and to keep your audience engaged without asking them to buy or listen to something.
Get Personal with It
When I say, “Get personal with it,” I don’t mean to post your personal rants, what you had for breakfast, your vacation plans, or any other personal information on your band profile. What I do mean is to let your audience get to know you personally. Followers love getting to know the faces that they see on the stage. A great way to do this is to introduce each of your band members with a photo and the answer to a question like “What is your favorite part about a live show?” or “What is your pre-show ritual?” This is like a peek behind the curtain for fans, and they’ll feel more of a personal connection with what you’re doing. It’s a thin line to walk between professionally personal and too personal, and if there’s any question, just don’t post it.
Go Behind the Scenes
Speaking of behind the scenes, giving your fans a peep into the green room , sound check, or the recording process with photos and videos is an awesome way to make them feel more personally invested in your band’s development. Most people don’t get to play music for a living or go on tour, so its really cool to get to see that life from the outside in.
Promote Your Fellow Artists
One of my favorite things about the Colorado community is that it is a community. For real. The majority of people in our music scene are so invested in the scene as a whole that they build everyone up so that we can all rise together. Does one of your favorite local bands have a new release out? Has a band you’ve played with just reached a huge milestone? Celebrate with them by sharing their success on your social media pages. This builds up all of the good feels on both sides and encourages musicians to work together in the community. We need this now more than ever, when musicians and bands feel isolated and alone. We have such a great music community and together we can make it grow into an even more succesful scene. Your followers will also love to see you supporting others - and they may discover a new local band they love through you too.
Share Other’s Content
You can also share interesting content from local music publications, radio stations, recording studios, and others that don’t neccessarily directly tie to you, but tie to the music scene that you’re a part of. By sharing this type of content, you can work toward becoming a thought leader - someone regarded as an authority on what’s going on in the local music scene. Plus, just like above, it’s always just a good idea to support all of the parts of the local music community.
Invite Followers Directly
Just a note - on Facebook, you can invite your friends directly to like your band page. To do this, go to your band page on desktop or on the Facebook Business Suite app. On the app, view your own page, then just below your number of likes, there’s a button labeled “Invite friends to like your page.” Click it, and invite away. On desktop, once you’re on your page, find the button with the three dots underneath your call to action button. Click it, and select “Invite Friends.” This method allows you to “Select All,” but I’d warn against it as inviting all will put you in Facebook jail for 24 hours and you won’t be able to invite anyone to anything.
Think Outside the Box
This is just a very basic beginners guide for makreting your band on social media. I encourage you to get super creative with it. Come up with new post ideas that no one else has. There is no limit to what your imagination can come up with to post, and there is no defined “ladder to fame” that you must follow to make it. Make it your own, be kind, and watch it grow!