The Future of Music: Dos and Don’ts of Promoting Your Music on Social Media

Love or hate her, no one can deny that Lady Gaga is as enterprising as she is entertaining. The eccentric icon has a record 10 million Twitter followers and a whopping 30 million plus Facebook friends–maximizing social media in a way that few have. Gaga sold 1 million of her new album, Born This Way, the first week it was released, marketing it on platforms like FarmVille and a mobile game app, Born This Way Revenge. Now, the savvy entertainer is creating a new social media platform, Backplane, a network specifically for artists and celebrities looking to build their own brands through social media.

But to be even a fraction as successful as Gaga, today’s fledgling artists need more than just a Facebook fan page and Twitter handle. As part of our continuing coverage of the business of music for Black Music Month, we asked Social media strategists Wayne Sutton, who writes technology blog SocialWayne.com, and William Moss, founder of Lee Moss Media HBCU Connect, the largest historically black college online social network, to share the do’s and don’ts of promoting you and your music online.

DO
Engage and Reward Fans
Sutton says exclusive performances and perks keep fans and followers dialed-in. “A couple things that we’ve seen a lot of artists do recently is live shows on UStream or LiveStream.com,” he says, citing Snoop Dogg as one example of an artist who regularly hosts live chats on UStream.

He also recommends showing appreciation for supporters, interacting through social media. “There [are] tools now where we can reward fans for attending the shows and then reward them with virtual goods–you can work with platforms like FourSquare,” Sutton says.

Mobilize Fans
Both Moss and Sutton suggest using fan-based campaigns. But before doing that, both say indie artists must target and mention who they want to work with.

“Do some research to see who are some other members of their label who are actively using Twitter,” Sutton states. “I may start something where I talk with my fans to have them to reach out to the label to say ‘oh, you should sign this artist, you should work with this artist, because they’re awesome’.”

Moss agrees.

“If people make the demand known and people hear it enough, and it’s not just coming from the artist–it’s coming from a large following of people–then people see dollar signs, and then they take action,” he says.

Set Yourself Apart
A band from Washington D.C., the Bluebrain, released their album as an app via iTunes. But this is no ordinary app. Listeners can only play the music in a downtown D.C. park called the Mall. Each song on the album-app coordinates to a different part of the Mall. If you stand in different spots in the park, different songs will play. Sutton says unique innovations like this are dynamic marketing tools that make performers memorable.

Stay Relevant
Relevance, says Moss, is paramount. With so many messages coming from so many different platforms, he says, it’s important that entertainers marry their messaging to their music.

“One of the dangerous things about Twitter is it can get pretty irrelevant pretty quick,” Moss says. He encourages music artists to stay away from minute-to-minute personal messaging. Fans want to know when the next performance is; not what you’re having for lunch.

Read the DON’Ts on the next page

DON’T
Air Dirty Laundry
Sutton cautions against Tweet beefs and blog battles ‘a la Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa or Khia on Nicki Minaj‘s latest album. He says the same applies to the press.

“I wouldn’t attack the media or blogs because you’re gonna need them at some point, even though they may come at you wrong,” he cautions

Staying positive gives artists the upper-hand.

“If you use your social media channels correctly then you could often say, ‘No, that was incorrect, this is the truth, here’s my statement,’ and move on.”

Inundate Fans
Moss stresses the importance of deciding what you want to send, like performance dates or snippets of a new song and how often you want to send it.

“The more frequent it is, the less likely people are to pay attention. I think that’s just one of those things where you just have to see how much people are responding to gauge how often you send things out,”  he argues.

He advises starting weekly and gradually increasing based on fan response

“The great thing about social media tools is that you can monitor the engagement,” he says.

Mix Work and Play
Moss says sending personal messages, not consistent with the brand, is a sure way to lose fans and followers. Sutton seconds that and also warns against publishing inappropriate photos on official sites and commenting on businesses or other performers that could be potential partners someday. Always keep the bigger picture–and goals–in mind.

Stop at Setting Up Accounts
Moss, who was at one time an aspiring rapper, says not to expect the Web to do the work for you.

“The same hustle that people have on the streets pushing their mixed tapes and their CDs at different events, the people that are successful online have that same hustle,” he says. “Just because you have social media doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically blow up, I think you still have to get your hustle on and you gotta study it a little bit see what works for other people and then follow those best practices.”