If you (like me) are a musician that hates posting to social media but still wants to get the benefits of a social media presence without it like taking over your life, I discovered some techniques and strategies for you that you can start using today.
Here are the 3 techniques you need to master to effectively post to social media as a musician or artist, especially if you dislike social media:
- Experimentation
- Batching
- Scheduling
These techniques will allow you to create the best social media strategy for your band, producer, or artist page that allows you to have a growing and consistent social media presence with little stress or wasted time.
To learn more about these strategies and techniques, simply keep on reading, my friend. 🙂
The Best Musician’s Social Media Strategy
The best social media strategy for musicians is to post at least 3 times per week, making sure to post the most effective types of content through ‘experimenting’ and then saving time and frustration through ‘batching’ the creation of content and then ‘scheduling’ that content.
Here is a deeper look into each of the 3 pillars of a solid musician’s social media strategy:
1. Experimentation
Social media experimentation is the act of posting different types of content to find the optimal content for you to post on a regular basis.
Optimal content is any content that strikes a balance between high engagement from your audience (likes, views, comments) and content that you are both proud of and isn’t too overwhelming to create.
Essentially, by experimenting with what type of posts you create, you will confidently know what to post which then makes the next technique even more effective…
2. Batching
Social media batching is the act of creating 5 or 6 pieces of content whenever you sit down to create content, instead of just creating 1 piece of content.
Because it takes time to set everything up and get in the mindset of creating a particular type of content, this technique makes the best use of what is called ‘switching costs’ to save you time and effort.
With a batch of content created and edited, the next technique becomes even easier and more effective…
3. Scheduling
Social media scheduling is the act of taking a batch of content and scheduling it to automatically post throughout the week so that you do not have to manually post each piece of content.
The idea here is that once you have those five or six videos, you schedule them out to go so that you don’t have to worry each day about what you need to post.
Why This Is So Effective
These techniques are incredibly important because it makes social media management very relaxing and stress-free, allowing you the time and energy to focus on more important things like making or marketing your music.
This also allows you to much more easily focus on community-building tasks like replying to messages and comments.
For an even deeper dive into these 3 techniques, simply keep on reading. 🙂
Social Media Experiments
Social media experimentation is the act of posting different types of content to find the optimal content for you to post on a regular basis.
The first thing you will want to do is experiment with your social media content so that you can:
- Gather feedback on your social media posts
- Find a balance of what works in your social media strategy
- Learn what to double down on
P.S. Because you’ll want to know what experiments you should do, I’ve also included some ideas for you to get started. 🙂
Gathering Feedback On Your Social Media Experiments
The more you post the more you will be able to gather feedback on your experiments.
When looking for feedback, you are simply looking to see the quantity of engagement you get in addition to the quality of engagement you get.
Examples of engagement quantity on a single post include:
- Likes
- Views
- Comments
- Messages
Beyond quantity, you may want to also consider quality: did anyone reach out to you via comments or messages saying that they loved your latest post?
That is the best sign of quality right there and proves that you are on the right track.
Remember to judge people’s reactions to a type of content after posting a type of content several times, just in case you happened to post at a bad time or if that particular post wasn’t a hit.
Finding A Balance Of What Works In Your Social Media Strategy
When you’re experimenting here you’re going to want to find something that your audience likes and enjoys in addition to what gets you the engagement: the views, the clicks, and the comments.
However, you also need to balance your own mental health and make sure that these posts are something that you’re actually proud of and are something that you can consistently produce more of without burning out.
For example: if you are doing performance videos and it takes a lot out of you because it’s so much work to get one performance video and you find that having to do that every single week is draining you, it may not be worthwhile even if it gets lots of engagement.
Similarly, if it is not something you are proud of (like doing TikTok dances or something lame) then it is not worth doing it just for the likes and engagement.
It’s a balancing act of doing this experimentation process to find:
- What your audience likes
- What you like and
- What you can like feasibly actually do and keep doing for years and years
Remember that it is a marathon and not a race, and you will be fine my friend. 🙂
Learning What To Double Down On
Ultimately, what you are trying to do here is learn what you can double down on.
What are the posts that you can make a lot of, without burning out, and that your audience loves?
Once you find that out (through experimentation), you can start turning into a content creation machine.
…so what are some experiments you can actually do?
Social Media Experiments You Can Do
- Pictures of you chilling
- High quality like promo shots
- Pictures of things you like doing (bike rides, walks, video games)
- Animations with your music behind it
- Live performance style videos (whether it is on stage, in the studio, or at home)
- Videos of you playing your instrument
How To Find More Ideas For Social Media Experimentation
Need more ideas, my friend?
Go and look at other content creators and see what they are doing and look into how you can put your own spin on that.
A simple, but effective tip. 🙂
Social Media Batching
Social media batching is the act of creating 5 or 6 pieces of content whenever you sit down to create content, instead of just creating 1 piece of content.
Instead of making and posting a piece of content each day, the idea is to create multiple pieces of content in that style once a month so that you get more ‘bang for buck’ from that content creation setup.
Because it takes time to set everything up and get in the mindset of creating a particular type of content, this technique makes the best use of what is called ‘switching costs’ to save you time and effort.
…what are switching costs you ask?
Let’s find out. 🙂
Content Creation Switching Costs Explained
Content creation switching costs are what it costs you in terms of effort, time, and mental energy when you switch your focus from one task to another.
For example:
When you are focused on setting up all your camera equipment and gear for a content creation setup, you are focused on that particular task.
Switching to performing or actually creating the content, means that you need to shift your mindset, time and energy to be focused on performing.
If you only create 1 piece of content, you will need to waste time and energy setting up your camera gear again later, and then again getting prepared to perform, and then again when you are getting the content, and then again when you are posting.
Each time you switch tasks, you lose a bit of energy and flow, so it makes sense to make the most of each task by getting as much of it done as possible at that moment to reduce your switching costs.
Focused attention
The idea is if you can film five or six while you’re all set up and you’re in that ‘setting up’ mindset.
The content creation process will go by a bit faster and then you’ll have five or six pieces of content that you could then cut up and then schedule later.
I’ve found that it’s a lot better of a process for me and, hopefully, if this is the first time you’re hearing this, it is a light bulb moment because you now know how to dedicate your time to one thing at a time with the result being a whole batch of content instead of just 1.
Create long form content to edit short form content
Another technique that is similar to batching is creating long-form content (10+ minutes) and then cutting that long-form content down into multiple short-form content pieces (30s to 60s each).
This way, the act of creating a 10-minute piece of content, could yield 10 smaller pieces of content that you can now use as part of your social media strategy.
Examples of Social Media Batching
- Filming a video podcast on a few topics and breaking down the highlights into clips for Instagram
- Filming a full live set and breakding down highlights or songs from the full set into smaller clips
Save Time & Effort With Social Media Batching
Ultimately, batching your social media content will save you plenty of time and effort, but it is important to make sure you experiment first before going all-in on creating a lot of any type of content.
Without experimenting first, you may end up with 10 pieces of content that get low engagement and may have just wasted your time and effort.
Figure out what content people like and what content you like to create first, then double down on that by making loads of that type of content with the batching technique.
Social Media Scheduling For Artists & Musicians
Social media scheduling is the act of taking a batch of content and scheduling it to automatically post throughout the week so that you do not have to manually post each piece of content.
Most social media platforms have a built-in or third-party method to schedule posts to the platform without having to manually do it – Facebook has a free version called the Facebook Creator Studio that can post to both Instagram and Facebook.
The idea here is that once you have those five or six videos from the batching process, you schedule them out to go live at the exact time you want them to so that you don’t have to worry each day about what you need to post.
The 4 reasons that scheduling is so important to a musician’s social media strategy are:
1. No More Waking Up Early To Post To Social Media
Instead of having to wake up at the optimal time and take out your phone to create and post content, you can simply make it in advance and schedule it to go out.
The content, the caption, the hashtags, and all the other bells and whistles can be pre-made so you don’t have to worry about it on the day the content is meant to go live.
2. Easier To Plan Your Content Out Visually
It’s so much more relaxing to plan all of your content out and visually see what you are going to post and when.
You can also see patterns from this bird’s eye view to create a flow of content (ie: a video 1 day followed by a photo the next) making sure that there is variety in what you post or a common thread from post to post.
This particularly comes in handy when you are scheduling your content around an upcoming release.
3. Save Time and Effort By Scheduling In Advance
You can save massive amounts of time and effort by scheduling all of your social media content weeks or even months in advance.
The way I personally choose to do this is to have months of content batched out but will schedule my content on a weekly basis so that I can stay flexible and current with what gets posted.
Even weekly scheduling is still not a huge time suck because all the content is there and it takes me only 15-20 minutes to schedule my post for the upcoming week.
4. Being Adaptive With Your Social Media Content Scheduling
The main reason that I like to schedule content for the next week at the end of the current week is so that I can strike a balance between having all my content done for the upcoming week and being flexible with what I chose to get posted.
This way I can be adaptive by seeing how people are reacting to the previous week or paying attention to any kind of world events that are happening that may make particular content inappropriate to post.
New Release Social Media Strategy For Artists
Whenever releasing new music, I will set up animated versions of the song’s artwork with sections of the song playing behind it, and post these on the first 4 Thursdays of the song’s release. This way there can be a potential boost in listens before each Spotify algorithmic push consideration.
In addition to this, I make sure to have non-promotional content surround the promo content to make sure I am not pushy or sales-y about the promotion of my new song.
It’s simple and it works.
Marketing your music doesn’t need to drain you of your time or money
It wasn’t too long ago that an artist could not dream of reaching real fans without spending anywhere between $10,000 to $50,000+ on paying a team to promote just 1 release through advertising and PR.
Marketing music in 2021 is much more reasonable… But that doesn’t stop basic website and “automated” Facebook ads tools to charge you at least $720 per year, on top of your monthly marketing and advertising costs.
Thankfully, all you need to successfully market all of the music you make for the rest of your life can easily be learned yourself.
Plus – with an experienced mentor on your side, you’ll save $1,000s of dollars (& 100s of hours) that would have gone completely wasted on mistakes, accidents, and failed experiments that could have been easily avoided.
How To Get Fans To Stream Your Music (By Building A Fanbase)
Finding success on Spotify is more than just increasing stream counts, I’ve found that the best way to increase Spotify streams is by building a fanbase of fans who want to stream your music.
To get fans to stream your music, you need to build a fanbase from scratch by releasing music monthly, tripping the Spotify algorithm to give you more listeners and free streams, and have a place to foster a community for your fans on and off social media platforms.
…the reality is this:
It’s not just about Facebook ads or playlisting promotions.
It’s also about branding, social media, web presence, building momentum (or “buzz”), and most importantly – having an active and growing fanbase of real, genuine music lovers that actually care about you and what you do.
The 4 fundamental components of creating a thriving and active fanbase that you can call upon to stream your new releases and support your latest projects are:
- Brand-building and world-building
- Respecting the Fan’s Journey
- Omni-channel platform presence
- Touch points and return paths
Without a fanbase, you have no chance of learning how to find Spotify Success and a music career in general, really.
To learn more about this, check out my article on How To Get Fans To Stream Your Music. 🙂
