Table of Content
Are you struggling to come up with fresh and engaging content for your social media pages? In this article, we'll share top tips for creating and sharing content that will keep your followers coming back for more.
If you are just looking for some quick content ideas for musicians, you can skip to the bottom of this article. However, if you want to gain a deeper understanding of musician content marketing strategy, we invite you to read the full article.
When you are not on stage, social media and your website are almost the only way you can communicate with your audience and promote yourself. This is especially true for young artists who are just starting out.
It is important to post regularly to build a strong online presence, which can help you build and maintain a successful music career by:
Whenever you post something online, be it a photo from your concert, announcing your upcoming events, or sharing news, you want it to have a specific positive outcome - boost your reputation, bring more people to the live performance, sell a CD etc. From a business point of view, with every published post you participate in content marketing.
Content marketing is a type of marketing strategy that involves creating and sharing content to attract a clearly defined target audience and drive profitable action.
This means creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content that meets the needs and interests of your target audience in order to achieve specific marketing objectives. For musicians, these goals could include introducing yourself to new audiences and growing your fan base, promoting your music, establishing yourself as a leader and expert in a particular genre, selling tickets, CDs and sheet music, finding new students, increase traffic to your website etc.
To come up with valuable content ideas for musicians, we should consider the types of content we can create and the audiences we create it for.
In general, content can be broken down into a few categories - promotional, informational, educational, inspirational, and entertainment. Each of these types should also start a conversation and build a connection with your audience.
In order to have a successful online presence, you should try to mix different types of content to ensure your followers have a reason to visit your profiles frequently.
Check out this infographic by Red Website Design for ideas for your content.
Who visits your website and who are your followers on social media? What information do they want to find when they visit your profiles?
You should create any content with a clear audience in mind. Promoters and your fans have different interests and expect to find different information about you. For example, your fans would love to see behind-the-scenes photos and videos of your concert, while the booking agent might be interested in reading the story behind your latest program or seeing you in action.
Your audience might include music lovers, music students, fellow musicians, music business professionals such as managers, agents, booking agents, festival directors and so on.
By considering the type of audience you are creating content for, you can diversify the things you post, appeal to a broader audience, and increase your chances of reaping real benefits from your digital marketing efforts.
To become a successful content creator and still have the time to make music, you can start by creating a small number of in-depth, high-quality, comprehensive pieces of content ("pillar content") that covers a specific topic in detail. This can be a blog post, video, podcast, or other long-form content that provides valuable information to your audience.
Pillar content is designed to be evergreen, meaning it remains relevant and useful over a long period of time.
Once you've created this main content, you can turn it into several smaller pieces of content that can be shared on different platforms.
One of the best ways to create unique, authentic and valuable content today is podcasting. You can make a solo podcast on a topic you are passionate about or interview your friends and colleagues. Most of the musicians love exposure and will gladly join your podcast.
In our experience recording Classical Music Career Podcast, every conversation lasts at least one hour. After recording one episode focusing on a specific topic, we have enough interesting, valuable and engaging content to share every day throughout a week on our website and every social media platform we are on.
Here is how we do it:
By recording one podcast episode per week, you can create unique and valuable content that can be shared on dozens of platforms.
Ever wonder why almost every website (including this one) has a blog? Well, there are over a billion websites on the Internet right now. Unless someone types your exact name into Google, no one will discover you.
If you write about a topic that is interesting to your target audience (classical music lovers, booking agents or managers, prospective students looking for a teacher, etc.), chances are they will stumble across your article on Google while searching for information. If your article is interesting, they may follow you on social media, sign up for your newsletter and become your fans.
Blogging is a great way to create unique and valuable content for your audience. You can write one article a week, post it on your website to be found on Google, and then repurpose it to create content for your social media marketing.
Not every article can make it to the first page of Google (and if it's not on the first page, very few people will read it). You should do topic and keyword research, create great content and optimize it for search engine algorithms to give yourself the best chance of ranking high in Google searches.
To give yourself the best chance of being discovered, and to make sure you do not waste your time writing articles that no one will see, you should research and find the topics that can find their way to the top of Google search results.
To give ourselves the best chance of success and save time, we use Lowfruits for researching topics (keywords). This tool helps discover topics that are not yet fully covered by other websites, and if you write a good article on that topic, it could find its way to the first page of Google search results.
For example, if you want to give violin lessons online, the keyword research tool shows that the probability of your website appearing on the first page of Google when people search for the keyword "violin lessons online" is very low. However, it will suggest you to write an article on "How long does it take to master violin" - potential students might type this phrase into Google, read your article, browse your website and book a lesson with you.
It's also important to optimize your article for search engines. Search engine algorithms are now very smart and can tell if your article is really good or not. However, you should also use the right keywords in your text so that it has a greater chance of appearing on the first page for certain search terms.
For article optimization, we use the tool MarketMuse. You write a title that you want to optimize an article for, and the tool gives you the keywords and the frequency with which you should use them in the article. It also suggests how long your article should be.
Since English is a second language for us, we use instatext.io to edit our texts. This tool rewrites the text to correct errors and make it sound like it was written by a native speaker.
Youtube is the second most used search engine in the world, so creating a Youtube channel is a must for every independent musician and arts organization.
Creating music videos is great for your music marketing. As a music artist, you should not limit yourself to just recording your music. You can post videos of you teaching, giving tips on practicing, performing, touring, talking about music pieces and composers - anything you are passionate about that's interesting to your audience can (and should) be made into a video.
Making videos, whether you are playing or talking to the camera, is a time-consuming process. However, if you have the ability to do so, it's one of the best ways to grow your influence online these days. Not only can you post your video content on YouTube, but you can also use it to create short videos on social networks. Every social network now promotes video content and shows it more compared to text or images.
Be sure to include subtitles in your video. Often videos on social media are watched without sound, so subtitles are important to keep viewers' attention.
Make sure to make short videos to engage your TikTok followers and share them on YouTube shorts, Instagram and Facebook reels. Don't be afraid to share your videos multiple times and promote them in your stories.
You can also turn your videos into blog posts to drive traffic to your website via Google search and use short quotes to share them on your social media.
It is very important that you keep your calendar of events up to date. You should also use each performance as an opportunity to create content that will remain relevant even after the event.
Writing program notes or an interesting story about your event will not only convince more people to attend your concert, but this content will also stay on your website forever and have a chance to show up on Google and bring new visitors to your website.
You can also use these program notes to promote your upcoming events on social media. Write short excerpts and quotes and share a link to your event. You can also turn these program notes into blog posts, videos and podcast episodes.
Share personal stories and experiences that give your followers a deeper understanding of who you are as a person and an artist.
Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your life as a musician, such as photos or videos from the studio, rehearsals, or other moments that aren't typically seen by the public.
Share quotes, stories, or experiences that inspire and motivate your followers.
Create tutorials, online masterclasses or how-to videos teaching your followers about your instrument, performance, music theory, songwriting, or the music industry.
Share their thoughts and opinions on current events, issues, or trends in the music industry.
Share your creative process and ideas, such as the inspiration behind your music or the gear and equipment they use to make it.
Share photos or stories that give your followers a glimpse into your personal life and interests outside of music.
Share your thoughts on the history of music and how it has evolved over time.
Collaborate with other musicians or artists to create new music or other types of content.
Create content that encourages interaction with their followers, such as live streams, Q&A sessions, or trivia games.
There are many different types of content musicians can create and share online. From educational and inspirational content to behind-the-scenes insights and interactive Q&A sessions, there are endless ways to engage your audience and build your brand.
By creating and sharing engaging content on social media and other platforms, you can increase your visibility, reach a larger audience, enhance your reputation, and attract the attention of audiences and music industry professionals.
Understanding your audience and the unique features and conventions of the platform you use can help you create content that is tailored to that audience and help you achieve your goals as a musician.
So do not be afraid to get creative and try different types of content to see what works best for you and your audience.