Social Media strategies are a necessary part of building any career these days. But there is no magic wand for success. It takes daily time and dedication to create quality content, and to attract followers on each platform.
As a music manager, I spend time each day, every day, on behalf of my artist, working the socials. Consequently, here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way.
Use social media to be ‘social’. Show things you like, tell about your successes and failures. Share funny cat photos and dog stories. Make people laugh, or smile. Find things you have in common with your followers. Express your opinions. Be vulnerable sometimes. Be part of your community. Engage people. Engage with people.
Learn how to connect
First and foremost, make your social media strategies about connecting. Minimize messages that are about ‘selling’. While everyone has something to sell or promote, don’t lead with that all the time. Apply the 80/20 rule: 80% of the time be social, 20% of the time make your pitch. Only making posts about “buy this” or “come to my show” will eventually cause fans to tune out.
Rephrase flat statements into questions, to generate conversation. For example, you can post a picture of your breakfast and say “I had a great breakfast today” or you can ask “What did you have for breakfast today?” Or add a fun poll to a post… “What do you prefer for breakfast – bacon or sausage?” Encourage people to comment, debate, and have fun.
Make interesting video clips that reveal something about the personal side of you. It can be having posters on the wall in background behind you, or recording your video in your living room, or outside in your backyard, on your patio, or at a cool spot in your neighbourhood. Choose to selectively share some of your private self with the public.
Make sure you are present on all the social platforms, but only promote your own domain to send people to your website. So when people ask “where can we find you online” you only give out the website domain. If all of your social media buttons are right there on the homepage, fans can easily connect to their preferred social media site from your website.
Make intentional content
Be sure to post different content on each platform, specific to that platform. Rather than ‘auto sharing’ to multiple sites. Each social media site has its own best practices for a reason. Because specific posts work best on certain sites. As part of your social media strategies, find out what is ideal for the site you’re creating content for. Then take a little time to create content specifically for that site.
The downside to all of this is that if you want to be successful at social marketing, there’s a lot of work to do, and it takes time every single day. But the upside is, that it is possible to do! All the tools are there, and available for free. Be willing to invest time and effort into using social media properly, so as to get the most out of each platform.
The social media world is yours for the taking! While each individual post you make may seem like just a drop in the bucket, and it is… over time, eventually, the bucket will have enough drops to allow you to make a bigger splash.
