The #1 mistake musicians make on social media

At FieldWork Social, my social media for music agency, we prepare a lot of case-studies and have the opportunity to observe how musicians interact with their fans using their social media channels.

Do you remember that popular video where two robots were talking about their show and how great it was? (if not, click here)

This is exactly what happens on social media all the time.

#1: BE HUMAN!

Musicians clearly do not use a language that everybody can understand most of the time. And please, even if you are on mobile, write in plain English! People do not know what a gig is: make easier for them to understand what you are talking about. Don’t be a robot, be human!

Example: 

I feel bad picking up on Jason Crane, who actually does a great job supporting jazz. He does also a good job on Twitter, but for some reason this tweet has more than something wrong:

• I don’t know what a gig is;
• What’s ASA?
• One link does not redirect properly;

Results? No engagement, only one comment from a musician, who is also mentioned in the tweet.

#2: LISTEN!
 

Listening should be easy for musicians, but actually they don’t do a great job at it when it comes to social media.

Ok, we know most of musicians are kind of selfish, they really love to talk about themselves…but sometime it is too much! Social media is really about others, NOT you. Engage with others, don’t talk about yourself all the time.

Example:

As a musician myself, Herbie Hancock is one of my heroes.

But I mean, I’ll overlook the fact that the text of the tweets is often incomplete, but look at his stream: his tweets are always about himself: “I am..”, “Herbie kicks..”, “See Herbie..”, “We’re very excited..”, “I was..”.

Now, of course he CAN do that, because he’s a legend. But I wonder if only he (or whoever runs his social media) was more human, more engaging.. how much better would it be?

He also does not post photos on Twitter, but he tries to redirect people from Twitter to Facebook to see them. To me that strategy is wrong, because you want to drive people from your asset with more people to the one with less. Since he has 663K followers on Facebook and 68K followers on Twitter he should try to go the other way around.

To recap, don’t act like the vast majority of musicians on social media: be human and listen!

Thanks,

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If you are a musician, a record label, or music magazine & you need help with social media visit http://social.fieldw0rk.com and contact us.