socialmedia | Solveig Whittle

2015 Social Media Checklist for Musicians

January 20, 2015 38 Comments

Featured image by scottchan for freedigitalphotos.net

I began teaching a social media certificate class this month to 31 adults in downtown Seattle at the University of Washington’s Continuing Education Program. I’m really enjoying it – the students are enthusiastic and operating all at different levels of social media expertise and experience. Creating material for a three hour class on a weekly basis is no walk in the park, but I love it so far! It’s an exercise in visual, rigorous, accountable, consistent long form weekly content creation.

At the same time, I’ve also been working with some fabulous musicians as a marketing consultant, helping them develop their marketing plans, define their music career business goals, and then execute against those goals.

AND I’ve also been trying to keep up with the fast paced and ever changing worlds of both social media and music. Oh, and then there’s the new set of songs Stevie and I are working on for 2015 release.

I got to thinking a few weeks ago about how to distill down the things I see as vital for musicians – and any small business owner – to attend to as part of their social media for the coming year. [Tweet “Here is what I would tell you to do in 2015 if you were my client”] So here is what I would tell you to do in 2015 with your social media if you were my music marketing client:

Understand your primary social media business goals. Don’t jump into social media just because you feel you “need to be on social media.” Are you promoting a new album release, an event or tour? Is your primary goal to increase followers or Likes? Or are you trying to get the attention of bloggers, press or industry influencers? Are you trying to win a music contest or raise money via Kickstarter or Pledgemusic or some other platform? Is your goal to promote coupons or discounts to encourage fans to buy your music or merchandise directly from your website? Your goals will help determine both what social media channels to focus on, and what kinds of activities (posts) to engage in. Set some reasonable, concrete, realistic, numerical social media goals for 6 months and for a year from now – goals with numbers and a timeline. It’s easy to get lost, sidetracked and overwhelmed in social media. If you’re not aiming at something, you won’t know if you’ve succeeded. [Tweet “It’s easy to get lost, sidetracked and overwhelmed in social media.”]
Know who your target market is. What are the basic demographics (age, sex, location, artists they like) for your super fans? If you don’t have a big fan base, research the demographics of bands you consider your competition. I also wrote a blog post on identifying your super fan that includes some great online research tools.

Marketing, Music, Social Media

What Makes Jason Webley and Friends’ “Margaret” So Brilliant

December 23, 2014 1 Comment

As 2014 winds down, I find myself both excited and bemused to write a final music marketing blog about a Seattle indie artist I first met a few years ago. His newest project, Margaret, hot off the press this month, impresses me both musically as well as promotionally (although I hesitate to use that word, and he would probably cringe at it, too). One of the things that characterizes this artist is a fierce allegiance to the creative much more so than the commercial, but perhaps that is a large part of what makes this music project such a great example to discuss.

Watching the way the marketing and promotion of this album has unfolded since I first heard about the project in April of this year has taught me a lot, and I hope you take something from my analysis.

[Tweet “Good music and creativity are at the heart of successful music marketing. “]

Good music and creativity are at the heart of successful music marketing. I have never seen that embodied so clearly. The marketing is important, and executing well is important, but without good music, marketing only takes you so far. First and foremost, I believe that what drove Jason’s project was making good music that was meaningful to him.

What is good music? Ah well, that is a subjective thing. All I can say is, I know it when I hear it. And I know when I don’t. And so do you, and so do fans. Marketing is just the icing – it doesn’t disguise a bad cake, but it sure makes a good one taste better. Now, it is true that music is subjective, and there are many tastes, many genres, and many niches. However, some music is just well written and well-performed, and even if you don’t like the genre, you can appreciate the musicianship. Most importantly, good music moves the audience emotionally. Passion, combined with creativity and craft, make art that is magical.

[Tweet “Passion, combined with creativity and craft, make art that is magical.”]

The second most important thing to get from this article is that being flexible and listening to what your fans want from you will go a long way. If you start with a great live performance, and then get a clear message from your fans to release a CD, do what they say and they will buy it.

There’s a bit more to what Jason did with this project, however, so I’ve outlined below the 10 elements I think were most effective at propelling the project forward at such speed and with such success.

Marketing, Music, Social Media, Thoughts

12 Reasons We Want You To Stop DMing Us

August 23, 2014 1 Comment

I recently participated in a group discussion with Christine Infanger (@norabarnacle) and a few other music industry people about musicians who send automated Direct Messages (DMs) on Twitter when someone follows them.

The result was a light-hearted compilation of all the reasons we all hate it when musicians Direct-Message us. It was posted on the CD Baby DIY Musician Blog, and I thought you might want to read it if you haven’t already. There’s some good advice here!

I cannot restate this enough- Do Not send bot/automated DM's. It's spam, everyone ignores them, & it's annoying. Trust me, musicians.

— Christine Infanger (@norabarnacle) July 29, 2014

It began innocently enough; a tweet was sent which read “I cannot restate this enough- Do Not send bot/automated DM’s. It’s spam, everyone ignores them, & it’s annoying. Trust me, musicians.” From there, an onslaught of musicians and others involved in the industry in various capacities got to retweeting, favoriting, and corresponding.

This innocuous tweet touched on a subject which seems to have been gnawing its way to the top of many pet peeve lists as artists are becoming further removed from personal engagement and replacing it with automated direct messages.

What transpired was a fascinating two day conversation amongst a group of people all very active in the music industry and all very knowledgable about social media and the common sense behind using social media to interact. The conversation then necessitated more than 140 characters and moved to email where the group decided to compile a list of what to do, and perhaps more importantly, what not to do when sending direct messages on Twitter. [Read more here…]

Interviews, Marketing, Music, Social Media

How Musician @PollyBakerMusic Got 49K Twitter Followers

August 4, 2014 2 Comments

I recently came across a young female country artist, Polly Baker. I checked out her music, and her music videos, and it was good catchy stuff – nice. Then, as I am wont to do because I teach social media, I checked out her Twitter profile. Okay… She’s been on Twitter since March, 2012. Wait, wow – 49.3K followers?

I was immediately curious to see how many of Polly’s followers were fake. I ran her Twitter handle through the SocialBakers FakeFollowersCheck tool.

This is a free app promotion so, you can use to check anyone’s Twitter handle to see how many suspicious, “empty” or inactive followers someone has on Twitter. It’s a pretty reliable indicator of whether someone has bought Twitter followers (I wrote a post about How To Grow Your Twitter Following and explained why buying Twitter followers is a bad idea for musicians).

To my surprise, Polly’s Twitter followers were 97% good. That is an amazing number. 49.3K Twitter authentic followers? In just over two years. Impossible to do organically.

I have friends who have been on Twitter for 6 years or more, and they tell me it was much easier in the beginning to grow a following of tens of thousands in the early days. Now? Not so easy without buying followers, using automation tools, or hiring a social media agency with a college intern to sit and follow people for hours a day.

Now I was intrigued.

Curious to know how Polly got this large authentic Twitter following in such a relatively short time, I emailed her and asked her to share a bit about herself, her social media practices and perhaps also some of her Twitter secrets. She graciously agreed.

Here’s our interview: