5 Ultimate Hacks to Grow Your Music’s Social Following

Social media has revolutionized so much of what we do and how we build connections - including within the music industry. As an independent musician and solopreneur, social media is a vital tool for exposing your craft to the world. Without it, organically reaching new fans would be a daunting and time-consuming task. In the past, artists would go out into the world and give out physical CDs and mixtapes to gain more ears on their music. Live performances were a frequent and necessary part of music promotion to reach interested artists. With the rise of the internet, handheld devices, and social media, the convenience of mass exposure is now only a tap away. As we dive deeper into the world of social media and uncover the algorithmic structure behind some of our favorite platforms, the simple task of clicking ‘Post’ can become an overwhelming task requiring strategic timing, caption writing, and engagement. Fortunately, we’re here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be as daunting as it seems. Whether you’re an avid Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or Twitter user, we have essential and evergreen tips that you can use to boost your music’s social following across all these major platforms. 

Consistency is Key

There’s a middle ground between posting eight times a day and posting once a month. While you don’t want to be a feed-clogger, it’s important to keep your channel healthy and alive through consistent posting. Here’s a good rule of thumb for how often you should be posting:

• Instagram: 3-7 times a week
• Twitter: 1-5 tweets a day
• Facebook: 1-5 times a day
• TikTok: 1-3 times a day

It’s called SOCIAL Media For a Reason

Engaging with your audience should be a no-brainer. Many companies have entire teams that are dedicated to engaging daily with their social audience. Social media engagement is more than just accumulating followers and putting your brand out there. It’s also a measurement of how many people are engaging and interacting with your content on a daily and weekly basis. Your social media audience are not just numbers in a follower count...they are living, breathing humans who have a network and interests of their own. Daily engagement has been shown to increase ROI, brand awareness, and customer service across platforms. It’s called ‘Social’ Media for a reason, folks. 

Pro Tip: Set aside 10-20 minutes a day to respond back to DMs, comment on posts in your Explore feed, or discover new creators that you can engage with. 

Schedule and Forget 

Life happens and busy schedules dominate our time and energy. Unless you’re glued to your phone 24/7 (which, if you are, please stop and go outside), you’re going to have days where you forget to post about your latest single drop or upcoming collaboration. Try setting aside a day of the week to schedule your posts out in advance, that way you can spend more time living and less time in the digital realm. 

There are a number of social media scheduling tools that offer free plans such as:

• Buffer
• SocialOomph
• Later 
• TweetDeck
• Hootsuite
  

Hashtags: When To Use Them and When Not To

Utilizing relevant hashtags is a useful and FREE way to optimize your posts to get found by new people. Similar to keywords on a website, hashtags are used to help your social posts perform better in search results. Studies have shown that proper use of hashtags will increase your post’s engagement, however, it’s important to know how many to use with which platforms, and which platforms should avoid hashtags altogether. 

• Instagram: 11+ Hashtags Per Post 
• Twitter: 1-2 Hashtags Per Post 
• Facebook: 0 Hashtags Per Post
• TikTok: 2-5 Per Post
  

Run a Giveaway 

Giveaways are becoming more and more popular on social media. They’re a great way to engage with your audience and incentivize them to help promote your work or channel. If you have fire merchandise, unique mixing services to offer, or are willing to give away a few beats for free, then use those goods in your giveaway! 

To run a successful giveaway on Instagram, do the following:

1. Choose the prize(s) for your giveaway
2. Determine the entry criteria for your giveaway. For example, you can encourage people to:

• Like your giveaway post 
• Tag two friends on the post 
• Follow your account 
• Share your post in their story for extra entries
• Put a time limit on your campaign. For example, try ending the giveaway after one or two weeks.

3. Launch your giveaway and promote it on your social channels 

If you’re interested in learning more about how to grow your music’s social following and your business, follow the BeatStars Studio Instagram - a go-to source for music entrepreneurship resources, expert advice, and more.