I’ve noticed that over the past few years, it has become increasingly hard for new artists to be signed or recognized by labels.
Fortunately, unsigned artists don’t need to rely on labels anymore and they can independently release their music online on Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms. If you’re an artist or you have work that you want to promote online, then this is a good plan to use to help you achieve your goals.
Define your intent
Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start, so let’s simplify the process. The goal can only be defined, once you know what you’re working with. The following questions will help you out.
What are you promoting?
Who do you think will be receptive to your work?
Why will this group be interested?
What is unique about your work? Think of your favourite artists, what do you like about them? What makes them different from other artists?
Where do think you’ll be able to find your target group?
These questions will allow you to refine your goals and help you to think about the right people that will engage with your work. If you find it hard to answer these questions, you can use someone who is successful as an example. Picture them starting out all over again and ask yourself how would they answer these questions?
Define your S.M.A.R.T goals
Now that we know what we’re working with, let’s put it into action. A great process that will allow you to do this is the S.M.A.R.T method, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.
So what does S.M.A.R.T mean? Let’s define it!
Specific: asks for a clear goal that you want to achieve
- Your goal may be to promote your work and to increase engagement.
Measurable : here you’ll need an indicator to show that you’re achieving the goal
- For this keep it simple, create an excel sheet to record the posts engagement, clicks, hashtag performances and followers. Once your social media accounts are changed to a business page you can see your post’s insight.
Assignable: allocate the budgets and who will do the work.
- This can be you or if you’re in a team then know who will be best person to assign certain tasks to, additionally, you can also use freelancers to achieve the results that you want.
Realistic: what results are you expecting?
- You may plan to consistently post 4 times a week, gain 500 followers a month and increase engagement with your followers.
Time-related: create a timeline of when you are expecting the results
- Excel will be your best friend, creating a timeline will help you record the actions and results to help you improve your performance.
If you haven’t already…
Create all the Social Media accounts
- This includes Facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter. Ask questions and engage with people on these platforms, even if you get no response, set your pages up to be engaging.
If you’re a musician then you’ll need to check out more platforms such as Spotify and Apple music so you can effectively promote your work.
Additionally, you will have more than one link to share, therefore, you can use Link fire to group all your links together. So when people visit your social media pages, then you can direct them to that link, which will provide them with numerous options of interacting with your content.
Drake also uses link fire, check his page out for some inspiration!
Social media tools that you’ll need:
- Schedule posts: use later.com or buffer to schedule posts.
- Youtube: use Videolytics for tags, thumbnail and title suggestions.
- Keyword research: use Ubersuggest, Keyword Planner, Google Trends & Sistrix.
- Trending content ideas: use BuzzSumo & Feedly.
- Free editing platforms: Canva is a great platform!
- For editing videos: iMovie, Animoto & Final cut pro are great ways to make and edit videos.
- Free video editor, compressor and converter: Clipchamp
- Free images: use Pixabay and unsplash.
Influencer Marketing Strategy:
- Research influencers for this field and try to secure a collaboration with them so you can maximise your reach.
Organic ways to grow your platform:
Focus and Assess your Search Engine optimisation (SEO)
Even if the main source of advertising your work is through social media, your SEO is still important. You’ll need to optimise the on-site for search, by tailoring each page to the keywords that you want the site to rank for.
If you’re using instagram, you’ll need to do your research on the keywords that best represent the work that you do, so that you can alter your page’s name to those words. Therefore, when people search that word then your account will appear.
Additionally, in the bio, you’ll need to add those relevant words too, so that instagram knows what your page is about and it will correctly suggest your page to people who are interested in your content.
Additionally, to organically grow your channel, you’ll need to do the following:
- Highlight your best work.
- Research the target audience.
- Establish the important metrics to measure your progression (e.g. clicks, reach or performance of hashtags).
- Learn from your competition.
- Create and curate engaging content that has a theme.
- Engage with your followers and be reachable.
- Stress the use of timelines to action work that needs to be done and to record changes.
- Assess results and optimize.
Paid ways to promote your platform
I know, no one wants to depart from their money, but think of this approach as an investment! If you’re a new artist, at first I would suggest using paid promotions to maximise your reach.
- Set up a Facebook business page & link instagram. Since facebook owns instagram, you’ll need a facebook business page to advertise on instagram.You can use Sproutsocial’s page guide to set up your page or you can watch youtube videos on this topic.
- To know how to successfully create a campaign on facebook, check out this free Udemy course on facebook ads. In this course he explains how he used facebook ads to help him get more exposure on instagram. It’s a very short watch and it’s helpful.
- Research competitors approach when it comes to advertisement, use Facebook AD library to see what campaigns have been effective.
- Youtube ads have recently become a useful way to engage with the right audience; to learn how to do this, click here 👉🏾 how to set up a successful campaign on youtube.
- Now let’s talk about Email marketing! It’s still relevant and the quickest way to update your supporters directly. You don’t even need a website, you can add a sign up button on facebook using a google docs form. Alternatively, you can use mailchimp and link it to your facebook page. Mailchimp is a great platform that’ll help you collect and automate emails to update your contacts.
Now it’s your turn!
Open up google drive and get started! Everything great starts somewhere, through consistent research, consistent theme, consistent posting and consistent revision, your page will grow. It’s all about faith and consistency! If y’all have questions, please let me know in the comment section.
