Becoming a Musicpreneur: How to Build Your Social Media Strategy

broken glass media becoming a musicpreneur social media strategy

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You’ve built your website and joined social media platforms, but now you’re stuck.

What platform do I use? How do I get followers? Why do I need to use social media?

Social media can be overwhelming: from the platform to choose to how to optimize your profile, gain followers, and effectively engage with your audience.

Before we dive into it, I do want to make one note: you don’t have to be on every single social media platform. If you defined your target audience, you’ll know exactly what platforms they spend their time on and where it’s best to reach them. While many people, bands, and brands have a presence on every platform, you might see them much more engaged on one rather than another. That’s because it’s where their fans engage with them most, and where they can have the most impact.

Take the time to figure out where you should be first, and then develop out from there.

Why use social media?

I’ve heard from a lot of people that they just don’t like social media and don’t want to have to use it to get ahead.

I get that. Social media can be overwhelming. It can be a burden. It doesn’t feel real or that it creates genuine connection.

Half the time you end up mindlessly scrolling through your feed, or you find yourself seeing a lot of negativity and anger, or you might even hate having to find time to write a caption, know the best time to post, or just find it hard to figure out what to post about to begin with.

Here are a few reasons to utilize social media for your brand, band, or business (or even for your career!):

It helps build brand awareness and customer loyalty
It meets the audience where they’re spending their time, and communicates your personal or artist brand in a positive and authentic way
It complements other marketing channels you may be using
It helps with email marketing, as you can gather information through a form, or use social media posts to drive traffic to your opt-in page, which drives leads that can eventually turn into sales
It establishes your business, brand, or band as an authority in your space and builds social proof by growing your following
It showcases what you stand for, what your mission is, and what your opinion and advice is on related topics by providing engaging content that is relevant to your target audience
It starts conversations with your audience and then leads them somewhere, whether it’s continuing your conversation on another marketing channel, bringing them to a free opt-in, or to a paid offering such as merchandise, your product, or your service

Our corner of the world is connected 24/7 and it isn’t going away any time soon. Fans want to engage with their favorite artists and see them behind the scenes. Customers want to learn more about their favorite companies and brands. Employers are looking for employees to make sure they either fit into the company culture, that the personal brand they portrayed in the interview is legit, or that they actually know their stuff.

Social media platforms can be an excellent tool to speak to your audience or to show your knowledge on a subject. If you have little music industry experience to showcase on your resume then you can use social media to show case your knowledge, provide value to an audience, and show potential employers that you really do know your stuff.

But before you set up a YouTube channel and hit record or post 20 times a day on Instagram, give some thought to what you’re doing and develop a social media strategy.

What’s a social media strategy?

We talked about marketing strategy in Becoming a Musicpreneur: Marketing Basics, and a social media strategy is kinda like that. Really, the two are intertwined because social media strategy should be part of your overall marketing strategy.

But a social media strategy is a plan for how you’ll use your social media in particular. It should contain the following pieces:

Your why for using the platform
Who you’re posting for (aka your target audience or ideal customer avatar)
When you’ll be posting
Where you’ll be posting
What you’ll be posting

First, I would suggest creating an overall strategy for your social media. Then, since all platforms are unique, break it down to a strategy for each platform you’ll use.

I know, that can be a lot. But defining why you want to use social media (or a platform in particular) and the who, what, where, when, why of it will help you to create an authentic and incredible user experience for your audience (and will make your life a heckuva lot easier!).

Take a pen to paper, log into Evernote and create a notebook, or sketch it out in Google Docs. Draft a strong social media plan that you can reference back to each time you want to create content or use the next hottest platform.

And that leads me to the next part of social media…

What platform do I choose?

Instagram. Facebook. YouTube. Snapchat. TikTok. LinkedIn. SoundCloud. MySpace. Friendster…

Okay, I’m getting carried way, but you get my point. There are so many unique social media platforms out there that all have a different content focus, and it can be hard to keep up with each and every one of them (trust me, I tried). Even if you have a clearly defined strategy, trying to post and engage on multiple platforms a day or week can be absolutely exhausting.

But there is a way to keep the energy and excitement in your social media.

When you did research on your target audience, where did you find they spend their most time? This is the platform you should start with first. You can slowly add more later, but to be completely comfortable and effective with using social media and attracting the right people to your profile, feed, and page, you want to focus on just the one.

There is a school of thought is to be available on every platform so you don’t miss anyone, but if you’re using and updating all I can guarantee you’re going to completely burn yourself out. Each platform needs a different strategy, a different tactic to draw your audience in and it’s not just based on algorithm, it’s partially based on your audience’s preferences and how they react. We can’t just post the exact same copy on every single channel we use (though that would certainly make it easier!).

When should I post? And how many times a day or week?

Ah, the fun stuff. Now that you’ve chosen your platform, it’s time to get to work!

But, aren’t there particular days of the week and times of the day I’m supposed to post?

Yes, there is a strategy around the days and times of posting on social media.

Each platform has unique days and times that users are most active (and it definitely changes!). There are platforms out there that will help you schedule your posts and choose the best time of day (Tailwind for Pinterest is perfect for this), but sometimes it can be down to when you know your audience is online.

Here’s a rough sample of when to post for which platform (and notice, there’s a difference for your audience if you’re targeting them as business-to-business or business to consumer:

B2B: 8 am, 1 pm, 9 pm
B2C: 12 - 1 pm, 5 - 6 pm, 8-9 pm
Days: Fridays

B2B: 9 am - 10 am, 12 pm - 1 pm, 4 pm - 5 pm
B2C: 9 am, 3 - 4 pm
Days: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

I know, that’s a lot to remember, but if you’re using a scheduling tool you can plan ahead and schedule posts for the times you’ll be at work, in rehearsal, or out on the road. That’s not to say you can’t post outside of these times, because you totally can.

Again, there are different schools of thought as far as how much you should be posting. I went to two separate Instagram sessions at NAMM, and each Instagram expert had wildly different ideas of when you should post: one posts three times a day (a day!) and one suggested posting only a few times a week (but she only posts once a month to her channel). See how this can get confusing?

What I typically suggest is posting however much works for you, your schedule, and your audience. The key though, is to be consistent in whatever it is you choose to do. If you want to post two times a week, make sure you’re posting two times a week each week. If you’re posting two times a day, always post two times a day. Don’t haphazardly post here and there when you feel like it, because that’s not a well thought out and strategic social media marketing plan.

Be strategic and consistent, and watch your engagement grow!