Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Specific Social Media Tools For Marketing Purposes

If you're wondering which social media tools are the best ones to dedicate your time and efforts to, I have broken down the benefits and drawbacks of using specific social media networks for marketing purposes. There are no doubt reasons to use each one, but it is not realistic to think that as a beginner in social media marketing, you will have time to maintain each and every site. Use this as a guide to deciding which ones are worth your time. 

Facebook
Benefits

• It is extremely easy to connect and build relationships to people, including fans and music professionals. Facebook is great for networking and spreading word of mouth about you and your music. 
• Facebook is one of the quickest ways to gain a large audience. 
• Facebook helps build credibility around your brand and helps raise your brand recognition. 
• Facebook is great for visual content. It is easy to post photos of your band's logo or photos from your live shows. This also helps with raising awareness. 
• Facebook helps greatly with steering traffic to your actual website (which you should have!). 
• Great for announcing events of any kind.
• Option of free advertising. You do not have to pay to create a Facebook page. 
• Facebook is easy!

Drawbacks

• Maintaining a Facebook account can be time consuming, and can represent you in a negative light if you are not constantly updating it.
• One downfall to having a public profile is that anybody can comment. This means you will probably encounter, at some point, someone who does not like your music. It happens! What matters is how you respond to negativity or criticism. 

Twitter

Benefits

• Twitter is extremely personal. Your fan base can engage with you directly very easily. 
• Twitter is immediate, which is preferable for most things in our generation. 
• It is easy to locate users with similar interests on Twitter, which is great for target marketing. You can do this by searching hashtags or mentions, either anywhere or specifically in your area. 
• Twitter is great for market research. Rather than doing surveys or questionnaires, using twitter allows you to easily see how people are responding to you and your music.
• Twitter is not expensive. Enough said. 
• Twitter updates are comparable to press releases. You can get the word out about changes or updates right away, and Twitter word travels extremely fast. 

Drawbacks

• Twitter is not the ideal place for visual content. Sure you can link to a photo, and recent updates have made it possible to see a preview of a photo, but it is not the same as seeing a full-view photo right when you come across it. 
• Twitter is extremely busy and people get distracted very easily. It is easy to get lost in the mix. 
• You have a limited amount of characters to get your message across. 
• You cannot freely advertise. You must get approval before you can use Twitter's promotion features, which can be a hassle. 

Spotify

Benefits

• It is not very difficult to get your music on Spotify, especially if you already have your music on iTunes. 
• You get to create an artist profile page, which again can allow fans to get to know you more personally. You can also link back to your website from here which, if you haven't figured out yet, is extremely important. 
• You can make playlists and help other artists out, which in turn will help you out. Connecting with other artists will only benefit you in the long run. 

Drawbacks

• If you are an unsigned new musician, don't expect to make much money from Spotify. Royalties are very low for indie/unsigned artists. 
• Spotify may discourage legal downloading of your music. If you can stream music for free online and download it as an offline playlist to your phone, why would you need to pay for the song somewhere else? 

Pinterest

Benefits

• Very easy to integrate with other sites using Pinterest.
• Awesome way to link back and drive traffic to your website.
• Great for market research. You can easily track and follow peoples specific interests and find out who to reach out to. 
• You can convert browsers into buyers by posting where they can go to listen to/download your music. 

Drawbacks

• Pinterest takes a lot of time and devotion to maintain. Don't begin unless you have the time to stick to it. 
• Not as much user interaction on Pinterest as on other social media sites. 

Hopefully after reading this you can decide which social media networks will be best for you to use to promote your music! If you would like some tips on social media marketing, read my previous post here. 

Social Media Marketing: What NOT To Do

Previously I posted Social Media Marketing Tips For Musicians. To look at the other side of that, there are definitely things that are highly suggested for social media marketers NOT to do. It is important that you do not become counterproductive in your goal, and here are some ways to avoid that:

1. Don't be a pest. 
Even though it is important to respond to fans, nobody likes to be swarmed with messages about the same thing. Doing this especially as an up-and-coming musician, you may decrease your fan base simply because you were annoying. Respond, interact, but don't pester. 

Counter to the above tip, 2. Don't be absent. Have an active online presence including updates about gigs, new music, and so on. When you don't update...fans think you have nothing to update. This may also turn away any music professionals who may have been following you. 

3. Don't be upset about criticism. And if you are, don't show it publicly. If someone saw you live and tweeted at you about how it was the worst show they had ever seen and couldn't believe you even call yourself a musician...don't respond telling them that they must have a terrible taste in music and that they should F*** off. Maybe tweet back saying you'd love the chance to prove them wrong and offer them free tickets to your next show. Maybe say you're sorry they didn't have a good experience. Maybe ask them what they didn't like. Maybe just ignore them. Whatever you do, don't draw the negativity to yourself. It will only represent you in a bad light.

4. Don't be boring with your posts. Don't repeatedly beg your fans to watch your latest video because you "promise it's really cool!" Be engaging and fun and creative, maybe reference a specific moment in the video where you almost fell during shooting and you're wondering if any of your fans can notice. True or false? It doesn't matter, they are now watching your video.

5. Don't keep things surface level. Even though your main objective is to promote your music, show your fans who you are as a person as well. They will feel like they have a more personal connection if you keep them updated on your life as well as your music. But again, don't be annoying about it. They don't need to see twenty-five pictures in a row of your favorite dog. Nobody does. 

Celebrity Post: Jack White Bans Social Media While On Stage

Although the majority seem to agree that social media has helped the music industry, there are still some who long for the old days. The days when fans went to a concert and simply experienced the show, without needing to record and share and tweet every moment of the show. An example of someone who feels this way is singer/songwriter Jack White of the White Stripes. At his shows, you will see an unusual sign telling the crowd that the use of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media is "strictly prohibited" during his show. Ideally he would like it if everyone in attendance kept their phones away and just be present and enjoy the show in person. 

Unfortunately for Jack, even though he may have the right idea, this goes against the nature of digital natives. We are programmed to be reachable at all times, and present on social media. What's going to a concert worth if you can't even show your friends what you got to see? Unfortunately just saying we went to a concert nowadays doesn't seem to be enough...we find the need to "prove" we were there. As a generation, we are almost completely unable to actually ever be present. 

While I do believe that social media helps improve the careers of musicians by spreading word connecting to fans, I would have to agree that in regard to live shows, they aren't what they were intended to be anymore. They should be captivating, they should be an experience. I admit that I am guilty of this, I find myself needing to record as much of the show as I can so I can relive the experience. But what experience was I really living while my eyes were glued to my iPhone the entire time? 

Celebrity Post: The Xx Release Album By Sharing It With One Fan

The development of social media has made it possible for an individual to connect and communicate with thousands of people with just a few clicks. In the traditional sense, marketing enabled companies to talk to their customers, while now customers can interact directly with the marketer and with others. Because of this, it has gotten easier and easier for musicians to get the word out about their music by using blogs, social media tools, and promotional tools to engage people. 

An example of this is how the English band The Xx released their album, Coexist, by sharing it with only one fan and letting it spread. The band wanted to recreate how they got their start, which was by word of mouth. Here's what happened: The band teamed up with Microsoft to build a website that would track the path of the digitally distributed album. Then, a few days before the worldwide release, they released it to a single fan - then watched it spread. The beginning was slow, but then 24 hours after it was shared the site crashed due to millions of streams and so much traffic. The website showed that the stream spread slowly at first, then began to spread more rapidly among the Xx's online community, and then once media outlets got a hold of it, it was unstoppable. A day before the official release, the stream made it to the site Reddit, where fans made a campaign to make the stream available in every country. 

If that doesn't prove the value of social media marketing, I don't know what does. Social media and music downloading have made pre-releases an integral part of the modern music marketing process. 

Social Media Marketing Tips for Musicians

Looking to begin marketing yourself as a musician? Here are the most common tips suggested to become successful!

• Once you have created your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, etc), take some time to follow other similar musicians and their fans, because chances are if they like other music similar to yours, they will become a fan of yours as well. 
• Always respond to comments! Creating connections with followers will result in word of mouth about you and your music, creating more fans. 
• Follow and reach out to any music industry professionals who may be able to help you get to where you want to be. These could include journalists, bloggers, labels, publishers, managers, agents, etc.
• Always ask friends and family for help in getting the word out about you. It may be scary at first, starting to market yourself as a musician. Taking advantage of the support from friends and family will help you in the long run. 
• Create a website and promote it. It doesn't have to be anything fancy or high maintenance, but giving people a place to go to learn about you and your sound will make your followers feel connected to you. Promote this website by tweeting or blogging about it semi-regularly. 
• If you have a gig coming up, have contests for prizes such as free tickets or T-shirts. Someone who has never heard of you will probably attend your show if they can go for free, and once seeing you live they are much more likely to become a fan. 
• Engage with your fans - ask for their feedback. Having conversations and valuing your fans opinions will spread positive word of mouth about you and your music.
• Make sure your content is up to date. Don't tweet about your awesome website when you haven't updated it in two years. 
• Be someone worth following! Stay connected to people and don't send spam to anyone. It won't work. 

Celebrity Post: Avril Lavigne Uses Spotify to Promote New Album

Over the past 10 years, social media networks have increasingly been becoming the most popular platforms for people to share and talk about their favorite music and artists. The number of musicians using social media to promote their music gets higher every day because it makes it so easy for them to connect with their fans. Social Media Marketing helps the music industry by:

• targeted marketing
• marketing campaign optimization
• discovery of emerging artists
• identifying and targeting fans

So how do we know when Social Media Marketing is working? I'd say when relevant information is spoken to us directly through our headphones, it's doing something right. While at work today, I was listening to Spotify as always. During one of the advertisements, I hear Avril Lavigne (who happens to be one of my favorite childhood artists) talking to me about her new album, which is to be released tomorrow, November 5th. I hear her telling me that she has put together a special playlist which includes exclusive content. This immediately makes me want to know what this awesome exclusive content is! I imagine it made other Avril fans feel the same. While I couldn't do much research on it at work, I looked up more about it when I got home. I believe this was an effective way to market her new album. Not only does she get listeners excited about her new album, but she invites you to connect with her and listen to some of her favorite songs in the meantime. As it turns out, the exclusive content consists of handwritten lyrics to one of her brand new songs, and a special cover of husband Chad Kroeger's song "How You Remind Me". I was definitely pleased that I heard this ad. 

What Social Media is Doing to Music (Hint: It IS Good)

I recently read a post that really surprised me, talking about how social media is actually negatively affecting music. Before I read the post, I tried to come up with any reasons on my own on how social media could possibly be harming musicians…I couldn’t even think of one. After reading, although my eyes were opened to a few new ideas, I would like to respectfully disagree with some of the points made by the author, Tony Hymes, in this post.

It begins by reminding us of the “Glory Days” of social media, when we could genuinely connect with interesting new things on cool platforms while receiving awesome content that we enjoyed. Right away, I don’t understand how that has changed. In fact, I believe we’ve been introduced to more and more interesting new things on even cooler platforms. I am not positive what the “Glory Days” consist of according to Hymes, and maybe that is why this article does not make sense to me. I cannot think of a time when social media was better than it is now. Things like Myspace were great in their day, but now we have so many ways to personally connect to artists and for them to connect with their fans. The most obvious one I can think of is Twitter, of course, where we can follow our favorite artists just the same as we follow our friends, and we can interact with them as though we know them personally. A couple less obvious examples that come to mind are Spotify and WhoSay. Spotify is not only great for just making awesome playlists, but you get to share them, which means you get to see what others share. This is a great way for fans to know what their role-model musicians are listening to, and is a fantastic gateway to finding new music. WhoSay is described as a “social celebrity magazine – brought to you by the celebrities themselves”. Celebrities create a WhoSay account and connect all of their social media channels to it, so fans get to see all of their content, videos, photos, tweets, and other media, all posted onto one app.

Hymes continues by saying “We are limited to twenty-four hours a day. The more things we have to pay attention to, the less time we can spend on each one. If you follow only a few people on Twitter, you see everything they post, you can learn about them, their interests, their personalities; when you follow 1,000 people, do you really follow anyone anymore?”

While this makes sense from that point of view, I would like to contradict it by saying that following only a few people in depth on Twitter is not the point, and never has been the point. Jack Dorsey, a creator of Twitter, says this on how they decided on a name for Twitter:

“…we came up with the word ‘twitch’, because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But ‘twitch’ is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.”

I think that many musicians would argue against this article, because social media is helping boost their careers in ways that never used to be possible. They enthusiastically use social media to connect with their fans and promote their new music by creating buzz, asking fans directly what they want, having contests to get fans excited, and so much more. Hymes says “Anyone today can create a song and broadcast it to the world.” But how can you broadcast anything to the world without things like “followers” and “subscribers”? It just would not be possible if social media didn’t exist the way it does.

Links:

Tony Hymes: What Social Media Is Doing To Music (Hint: It's Not Good)

Jack Dorsey on Twitter