I often see artists who just post and push their new album or EP and not much more. Let me ask you a question. If an EP/album cover from an artist you have never heard of, continually pushed their picture of the cover in front of you, would it be enough for you to go and take a look and listen? 

Let’s look at business, perhaps a business that sells a product. If you hadn’t heard of that product and they just posted a picture up and an explanation of what it is, would it be enough for you to engage in? However, if you saw a video of this product in action, showing you exactly what this product does, and it interests you, you would check it out and would think about it for a while. 

So, what other content can you create as an artist to create interest? Put our latest music release aside for a moment and focus on the ‘SOCIAL‘ aspect of social media. Аs a rising artist you want to be known and seen preferably by those people who already like and buy the major artists in your music style. But how do you create an engaging story that sparks their attention, so they can hear music and believe it is just as good? 

Have you ever heard the marketing term, ‘Content is king’? It is the content that will bring people to you…… or not. Video content has already taken over a stand-alone picture or text as a type of post that grabs more attention. So, get your Instagram stories and Snap Chat going and create stories of what you do behind the scenes! This could be going out for a concert of another band, sharing a quote from a favourite book, moments from your band’s last rehearsal or live streaming from an event. It can be anything, but not just your music.

People like to be entertained and they like to see different things. Use every possible opportunity to create content. It doesn’t have to be with an expensive camera, your phone will do the job just fine. It’s more important to capture a quality story, than a quality video. 

Use national holidays, events and news within your country or globally to create your own unique content around it. For example record a Christmas carol with your own spin on it, and place it up on YouTube and share it around on your social media channels, record your story of you buying your Christmas presents or video, and have your own music playing in the background while you talk to people. The more controversial and curious your content, they more likely people to comment and engage. 

Share your story about your life on a video with the captions and photos of those life events as it brings people to the current time in your life. What you think is not relevant, others find fascinating. The more you share, the more you will know what works and what doesn’t. 

There are so many ways you can create content and use that to engage people outside your current circle and to help build your audience. See what the popular hashtag is going on twitter for the day, and find something you can post and record around that hashtag to create more engagement. 

On Facebook, try a boosted post to a similar artist to yourself, because their audience may very well be yours too. But don’t post your music to begin with, post your story, post something that creates interest in which people can relate to. Funny, sad or interesting – the more you play with people’s emotions, the more likely you are to get a response. 

Scale yourself up first, then on approximately the 5th post, post your music. But not an EP cover or a still. Create an engaging video instead! When posting to Facebook, remember to place any ads with your correct objective. Do you want people to engage, or do you want to create a lot of video views? People don’t quite understand why use the video views objective, when the video views objective doesn’t get the engagement…..I’ll tell you.

Video views are there to help you create your target audience and to be able to save all the people who watched your video, whether they liked and commented on it, or not. Your following ads and posts can then be re-targeted back to those who watched your first ad. 

There is a whole lot more as well, so start thinking outside the box and start entertaining people. Create stories, share video, use retargeting and grow your audience through engagement.

You can find more information about video, the tools and apps to use in our ‘Essential Indie Guide’ and take a look at what we can help you with to make your video content stand out with ‘Professional Video Animation’.  

Guest post by Tracey Arbon / Music Talks (https://www.musictalks.xyz/)