5 Steps To Get Your Followers To Listen To Your Music

If you have a Twitter account and work in the music industry, the chances are that you’ve been the victim of Twitter spam, where an artist/band invades your mentions with a copy and pasted message in the hopes that you’ll check out their new song/video/project. This promotional method is usually ineffective and time-consuming. This guide will show you five simple steps you can take to get your Twitter followers to listen to your music.

1. Get Your Social Media Strategy In Shape

Are you using Twitter effectively? Make sure that your tweets are more than just music promotion. Engage with your followers and try to provide them with some sort of value - this could be through funny memes, recording tips, insight into your life etc. depending on your audience. If your social media strategy isn’t up to the job, there is little use proceeding with the rest of the steps. 

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2. Engage

There are many ways to engage with your social media following. You can post content that they can engage with (funny pictures, wise sayings, questions etc.) or you can go looking for ways to engage with them (replying to tweets etc.). I suggest engaging in a mix of both of these ways so you’re not always putting it on them to make the effort to engage with your content, you’re making an effort too.

3. Have Conversations

While this is part of engagement, we’re now talking about more than just a one tweet reply. However, replying to tweets can be a good way to start this step, especially if your reply warrants a response from the other person. Be careful not to drag out conversations for the sake of it - you want them to enjoy the experience, not come away thinking “Thank God they finally shut up.”

Engaging with tweets about music (especially music similar to yours) is also a good idea. It gives you the opportunity to get an idea of that person’s taste and hint towards your own music if it feels appropriate.

4. Introduce Your Music

While you’ve been engaging with your followers, you should have been promoting your music in general tweets (NOT by spamming people) as part of your social media strategy. Now your followers are more engaged, they’ll be more likely to check out your material without needing you to prompt them. I find people are usually more receptive to music that they’re listening to of their own accord (rather than because they’ve been asked to listen to it)

You can also engage with tweets about music (particularly tweets about your genre or artists like you). After a little conversation, you can either subtly hint towards your music or straight up ask them for some feedback.

5. Be Consistent

Just because you got someone to check out your music doesn’t mean your job is done. You need to keep them engaged. The goal is that they become so engaged and that you no longer need to tell them about new music, they’ve already checked it out and retweeted it before you can bat an eyelid. This level of engagement will take time, but you can and will get there.

While you’ll have to invest some time and effort in order to see results, this guide is a great starting point for musicians with no social media plan in place at all. However, if you feel like you’d benefit more from a custom strategy and help managing your social media, drop me an email: work@ayshbanaysh.com.

About Aysh Banaysh

Aysh Banaysh is a freelance social media manager for music artists and businesses. Check out her work on her portfolio or her blog for more music marketing advice.

Twitter: @AyshBanaysh