Promoting Your Music Independently Part II: Profile and Content
In Part I of our guide, we covered EPKs and gave a general overview of your social strategy as an independent artist. In Part II, we focus on content, diving further into the strategies and tools at your disposal to help build an engaged community of fans. Let’s get right into it.
Choosing a handle
For some artists, choosing a social handle might be as easy as plugging in your name. If it’s free, congrats! If it’s taken, time for plan B. You can always go in the direction of Wolf Alice and add ‘band’ or ‘music’ to the end of your name. Another option is playing with underscores and period placement like Jamie XX.
The final option (our favourite option) is to get a little creative. Look at what other artists are doing for inspiration; Twin Peaks, Thee Oh Sees and BICEP are some good examples.
Instagram bio
Your bio only gives you 150 characters to work with, so make them count. You want to give visitors an idea of who you are and what makes you unique. Let your personality come through.
Your bio is the only place on your profile where you can include a direct link. If you’re active on multiple social channels, use Linktree as a hub for your website, Spotify and social media. When visitors click the link, they will be able to access everything in one place. No need to swap out your link-in-bio every time you release a new track!
If Linktree doesn’t have all the features you want, check out these 6 alternatives.
Profile picture
Just like your Instagram bio, your profile picture should reflect your personality. You want to be taken seriously as an artist, so avoid low-quality images. If you’ve had professional photos taken, or have a favourite photo from a show, these can be good options. Alternately, an album or EP cover will do just fine.
Content Ideas
As you (hopefully) remember from Part I, a key takeaway was being mindful of your self promotion. Followers quickly tire of seeing the same self-promotional content being plugged over and over. Social media is all about building community. Whether you post 3 times a week or 7, consistency and quality are key. Make a schedule and stick to, or test different frequencies of posting over a month to gage the effects on engagement.
One way to build community is by sharing music from other artists. Supporting other musicians in your industry doesn’t just diversity your content and show that you’re community oriented, it’s also an opportunity to network with other artists, which can lead to more exposure for everyone.
Another way to foster community through content is by reposting User Generated Content. Once your social media starts to gain traction, encourage your followers to tag you in merch and photos from your shows for the chance of being regrammed. Repost any feed-worthy content, tagging and thanking the source.
Instagram Stories are another good channel for reposting UGC when you don’t want to make a permanent post. We’ll get to more Story ideas in a minute, but first, a few more strategies for diversifying your feed. Remember, you’re trying to connect with people on a personal level in multiple ways. That’s what community building is all about.
More content ideas:
- People love behind-the-scenes content. Instagram is the perfect place to give people exclusive access to demos or a teaser pic of you in the studio.
- Incorporating relevant meme content is a great way to relate to your followers, making them laugh and keeping them coming back for more.
- Research what hashtags other successful accounts in your industry are using and test them out.
- Host a giveaway. Even better, partner up for a giveaway with another artist or brand to double your exposure.
- Use geotags as much as possible.
Take advantage of IG Stories
As we touched on earlier, Instagram Stories are a great opportunity to reach your followers without permanently posting on your feed. You should be using it. Here’s how:
Go Live. Until in-person shows are the norm again, virtual concerts are all we have. Luckily, the Stories Live feature is the perfect place to do this. In addition to virtual sets, you can also use the live feature to host a Q&A session. Don’t forget to save it and upload it to IGTV after!
Best practices for IG Stories:
- Post Stories that encourage fans to engage via the poll and Q&A feature.
- Use location tags when possible to increase your reach.
- Use product stickers to link to your merch or website if you have them.
- Stream live sets on Twitch and promote on IG Stories. If you’re in a position to charge for tickets, you can use platforms like Stageit or Crowdcast.
If you’re lacking inspiration or direction, take a look at what other successful artists are doing on social media.
That’s all for now! Stay tuned for our next blog in the series — we’ll be covering content-planning platforms, so you can focus on producing great music instead of your social media.
