Promoting Your Music With Snapchat

Jack McCarthy is a contributing writer for of WeSpin, a growth training platform and community which offers a free Fan Engagement course available at: box.wespin.co.

If you or your band have been steadily growing a fanbase and seeing increasing engagement online while touring and releasing music, then you know all about the constant demand for content on your social media networks. If you are not sharing photos on Instagram, tweeting and direct messaging your fans, and getting comfortable using YouTube regularly then you are probably falling behind in taking full advantage of the social platforms where your fans live their daily lives.

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The 5 Most Annoying, Ineffective Ways That Bands Seem to Always Promote Their Music

This article originally appeared on the Sonicbids blog.

We wholly recommend promoting your band on social media (duh). It’s easily the best way to maintain and grow your following, and it’s arguably eclipsed flyering as the most reliable way to announce a show and reel in a crowd. What we can’t advocate, however, is being obnoxious about it. We’ve all had our nerves grated by someone’s promo. No matter how alluring or special the artwork, there are certain marketing moves you just shouldn’t make online.

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What Artists Should Know About Next Big Sound

Perhaps you don’t sell too many albums on iTunes, or have that many SoundCloud plays or YouTube views. But maybe, just maybe, your music is really popular in some far off corner of the digital universe you never even knew about, and all that “exposure” you’ve racked up over the years is paying off behind the scenes.

Next Big Sound provides detailed online music analytics to measure the growth of bands on streaming services and social networks. It doesn’t cover everything, but it casts a wide enough net to shatter an artist’s dreams with cold, hard data. I know it did mine! <sniff> Cidney at NBS agreed to give me an artist credit for one month so that I could write this article, way back in April. Hopefully she’ll forget to downgrade my account.

Features

The screenshot above shows a dozen “key metrics” of my choosing. It’s an easy way to focus on what’s important to me, and not get bogged down in all those numbers. So for example, I could replace Rdio plays with Vine loops, Last.fm shouts, or unique pageviews of my website.

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Swimming Upstream

Since releasing my first digital album back in 2002, technology has played a crucial role in the distribution of the music I create. At that time, CDs were still the way folks listened to music but sales were definitely well in decline. Napster had scared the crap out of the music industry and was shut down for good. Mp3s were all the rage and there were these things called iPods that were changing the way people consumed their favorite songs and albums.

Thanks to archive.org and Creative Commons, I was able to distribute my music free of charge to my listeners without fear of the music being used for commercial purposes. I’d release a concept album that could be downloaded and enjoyed around the world. At the time, this was a novel idea for an independent artist.

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6 Artists Who Are Amazing At Twitter – And What You Can Learn From Them

Let’s not beat around the bush: tweeting is easy. Even the most cursory glance at the Twitter feed of just about any celebrity will prove this point. For example, it probably didn’t take Ashanti very long to come up with her classic “Hey yalll!!! What do u think about face book??” So it’s true that tweeting is easy, but using Twitter as an effective tool to engage with your fan base and build your career - is hard. Lucky for you, there are a few musical artists who have Twitter figured out so why not learn from them and see what you can apply to your own future tweets.

1. The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy (@ColinMeloy) 

You could choose to forgo basing your Twitter identity on your music at all. Seems counterintuitive but some people make it work for them, like Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy. He tweets almost nothing about what he sings about, but tirelessly about political and social issues he cares about.

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Why You Should Consider Non-Traditional Marketing

Let’s face it: when it comes to sell whatever we do, most of us feel uncomfortable. That is very true for musicians, too. Virtuoso jazz violinist Christian Hows address this problem in this interview with Jonathan Fields at 25:40 as “fear of self-promotion”.

What do we do to overcome this fear?

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6 Ways to Get More People to Your Shows

Do you sometimes feel that your band’s draw is languishing? Are you tired of seeing the same people at your shows and want to play to a new crowd, even in your hometown?

If you’re like most musicians, you know that you absolutely can do better, that you have more fans out there than who actually show up at at the venue, and despite always receiving positive feedback, you don’t know why more people aren’t showing up. Here are some tips on building some momentum back into your tour dates so you can increase your band’s draw:

1. Find a Different Angle for The Show: It’s easier to get more people to show up if it’s your band’s first show, when you’re releasing a new album, it’s a tour kick off, or when it’s your final gig. Obviously, it’s because your fans realize those as special occasions and want to be there.

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Online Band Marketing & Social Networking Crash Course

In our current society we are constantly glued to our tech devices and continuously downloading massive amounts of data through both our personal computers and mobile devices. In fact, over 488 million people use Facebook over a one month span with numbers growing everyday. With evidence like this it is no wonder that it is so important for artists to “put themselves out there”. Gone are the days of searching the Yellow Pages for a phone number, or buying a map to plot a course for vacation. These tasks and more are easily and efficiently carried out over the internet.

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Social Media From The Aussie Perspective (Guest Post)

Ariel here…

I got back from Australia last week after an amazing 2 week journey on the 3 Wise Monkeys Tour with Ralph Murphy & Tom Jackson. Along my journey I re-connected with artist and social media coach Rose Wintergreen, who guest tweeted my entire 6 hour presentation with gusto. She and I got to chatting after the seminar and she gave me some great insights on her experience as an artist and coaching artists in Australia.

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Twitter #Music Is a Dud… But Twitter is Still Critical To Your Marketing

Now that Twitter’s new music platform, #Music, has been available for public use for almost two months it is safe to make the following assessment.

It is one resounding dud.

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Easy Ways to Rock Your Personal Social Media When You’re Totally Swamped!

Hey you!

Yes – YOU the artist manager/label owner skimming through this blog. Have a hard time keeping up with your personal social media platforms when you’re in and out of meetings all day or on the phone? I hear ya! I’ll keep this short and sweet. Here are my tips for managing your social media when you’re mega busy, you’re not alone!

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The Musician of Oz

The great and powerful, Wizard of Oz, presented himself as a supernatural, omniscient being.  However, he was revealed to be a much different individual, operating a complex facade of smoke screens and holograms, without any real power.  Musicians can put themselves in the same position as Oz did, by abusing the gap between the digital and dimensional worlds.

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The Weekly Batch

Musicians are expected to be everywhere these days. We’re interacting on social networks, following up on blog comments, keeping our profiles on countless music sites up to date, and checking our stats and analytics with a variety of online tools. It’s enough to make a lifelong indie yearn for a label - one with a marketing department!

Most of these items don’t need to be addressed daily, but they do need to be performed on a regular basis. Tasks that have to be done on a given day, I schedule. Everything else is relegated to The Weekly Batch™ (note: not actually trademarked). I tackle the entire list as a single to-do item on Friday afternoons, when I find it hard to do much of anything else. Here’s my latest iteration:

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How to be a Rockstar at Social Media: What Every Band Should Be Doing

Are you listening?

Are you really listening?

I’ve mentioned it a few times before: treat social media more like a telephone and less like a megaphone. I’ve written about it when talking about the best social media sites for bands too. However, after talking to a few artists, I realize that some might not know how or where  to listen. This is important because like any business or organization, you want to know what’s being said about you and where are they saying it. You’ll also want to know how to respond.

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