Social Media Marketing Archives | Gigmor Blog

How to Succeed on Social Media with Consistency

Originally published on Indie Band Blog (IndieBandCoach.com)

Whether you are posting the latest link to your music, uploading pre-recorded video, or livestreaming this week’s concert, there are a few things to consider to help your content stand out.

I believe that the most basic three things that will help you develop an awesome online brand are — being engaging, being consistent, and being yourself. In this blog post though, I want to highlight ˆconsistency” and what that looks like.

“If content is king, then consistency is the key to the castle.”

— Leonard Patterson

CONSISTENT MESSAGE 📣

What’s your personality? How do you communicate in person? Often your band (i.e. brand) will be an extension of your own persona. Not always and by no means is it a rule, but just be sure your messaging is clear so that you are attracting the right audience.

If you’re a naturally warm and welcoming indie folk artist who performs acoustically at fairs and festivals, you probably have a similar vibe when posting. It might be a little jarring to see you using profane language on comments or promoting with overly-aggressive messages.

Think about your music, your personality, and the words you use to communicate them both.

Looking for some inspiration?

Visit Words -to-Use.com for some ideas. You’ll see a set of tabs at the top of the music menu. Click on phrases and adjectives and explore!

++ 7 Virtual Tip Jar Options You Need to Know

CONSISTENT AESTHETIC 🎨

Almost as important as the words you type, are the visuals you use. How many high-end restaurants do you know who’s decor is bright yellow and red? Until “McDonald’s McSteakhouse” opens up, I’m not sure there’ll be one! 😜 Take some time to think about and be conscious of your visual branding – font, logo, color scheme, emoji’s, etc.

Outsourcing: If you need some work done, don’t be afraid to check on sites like Upwork.com or Fiverr.com. As a word of caution though, do some research. Sure the newer contractors may have lower rates, but without a good sampling of reviews to read, it’ll be hard to assess what you’ll actually be getting.

Before you potentially get started or hire someone, one thing you might consider would be creating your brand kit. A brand kit is a short, easily digestible guide to your brand’s visual identity. It’s a quick reference to understanding the logos, colors, fonts, and messaging that represent you and are usually shared as downloadable PDFs.

Don’t skip over color meanings, or color psychology. You may not think of colors as sending specific messages in your brand, but they do. Again, it’s not a hard rule, but looking at the hidden meanings behind colors may help inform some of your branding decisions.

What visual message are you sending? What psychological triggers occur with each color? Take a look at this infographic to see examples of big brands.

image credit: huff post

You can use a site like https://coolors.co/ or http://colormind.io/ to help you create your color scheme.

Other visual considerations could be anything from the font you use for your logo, the way you dress on stage (or online), the layout of your website, to the filter you choose for Instagram photos.

++ Turn Your Audio Into Visuals with Wavve App

CONSISTENT SCHEDULE 📅

Social media is ALL ABOUT showing up. The more consistently you show up, the better. But notice that it doesn’t say FREQUENCY. The frequency in which you post is a little less important than the schedule you keep. If your fans respond to 1x/day on social, 1x/month in email, by all means, milk it.

Most social channels have insights that will let you know approximately when and how many of your current audience is online. Use that as a starting point and don’t take it for granted.

If it looks like 3PM on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are when most of your audience is showing up, be sure to schedule some value-added content for those times. Give your posts the best chance at success.

It’s the difference between consistency and convenience.

Want some help coming up with ideas on what to share on social? Maybe this will help…

We recently shared a blog post: How to Get More Fans Tuned In To Your Band. In that blog post, we shared 6 things to consider when planning out your series or weekly content with your audience.

There was such a good response from the blog that we created a free Recurring Content Checklist that will help you put your new, consistent posts to the test. For example – is your content easy to make? Does it inspire you (i.e. are you motivated to create)?

If you’re not excited about your content, it’ll be that much more difficult to maintain interest and keep a schedule.

++ How to Start Streaming

FACEBOOK’S CREATOR STUDIO ⚙️

Want to keep a consistent schedule and not have to post every day? Watch the YouTube tutorial on Creator Studio and plan your Facebook and Instagram posts from one place.

Creator Studio brings together all the tools you need to effectively post, manage, monetize and measure content across all your Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts.

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Leonard Patterson is an avid fan of all things New Edition, an indie-focused booking agent, a frequent hi-fiver (currently practicing safe “air fives”), and a certified digital marketer. Since stepping off stage as a band manager/front man of a 6-figure party band, he launched Indie Band Coach with a mission to help indie bands reach more fans and book more gigs through livestreaming and social media. When he’s not working, he’s most likely at a live music event, analyzing Marvel movies, or soaking up vitamin D at the beach with his wife and son.

Building Traffic Channels – the spokes of your hub.

Learn to get online traffic to your website. This section will guide you through proven techniques for getting subscribers to your sight.

Getting traffic is easy. Most people struggle with this because they get too much of the wrong kind of visitors. For example: Let’s say you have a company that sells lamps. You can purchase a bunch of google advertising that will direct traffic to your site for the word lamps when someone types the word “lamps” in Google. You can spend all the money in the world. Unfortunately, you won’t sell too many lamps. Why? It is because the customer might be searching for “freestanding lamps” or “street lamps”. These are two totally different products and you might only sell Table Lamps. Long story short, if you are not targeting the correct types of terms or people, then you will waste a ton of money.

So, with this new knowledge lets go over how the process works. The goal is to build an email list. Wait… What…? I thought you said we will be advertising on other networks? Okay you got me. So, let me break it down for you. What you will be building is what is known as a sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel?

Simply put… a sales funnel is the system by which you put prospects in the top of your funnel. Then, they move through a sales process. Finally, you have customers come out of the bottom… Yes, paying customers. Here, I will show you a “paid sales funnel” and then provide you with different places you can pay for these campaigns.

How does this work?

Well, first off the quickest way to get traffic is “Pay-Per-Click” advertising. Pay-Per-Click is just what it sounds like. It is where you pay when somebody clicks on your advertisement. The advertisement should be a promoted post in whatever platform you are using (check below for platforms). Create some content that is either music they can listen to, a post that is relative to your target audience, or a video interview of another band.
Once they are on your website you can focus on relationship. The best method is to get someone to subscribe to your email list. This is covered extensively in the next chapter to stay tuned. Giving someone content that is relative to them will help you to build a relationship.
How do we know if the relationship is going well? It is called trust. This is when a person has moved through the first two stages and are opening your emails and commenting on your music. It is where they like what you do and believe in your cause.
Finally after someone trusts you it’s time to make an offer they cannot refuse. What this does is make a raving fan out of that person. They trust you so much and like your special discount on your brand new album that they have no problem giving you money.

Different Places You Can Get Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Facebook – This is the largest social network out there and can be very successful. Most people throw money away and have no idea how to spend on this platform. The key is to start small. Then review your results tweak your messaging then see the results. It can take a while but all good things do. Here is a great post on how to start on Facebook.

http://okdork.com/2014/03/04/how-to-start-advertising-on-facebook/

Twitter – Twitter ads are taking off right now and it’s good to get on the gravy train before everyone figures this out. Twitter has a variety of options for advertising. The best one for your music marketing efforts is using their Promoted Tweets.

Sign up for an account. If you already have twitter, then you are good to go.
Once signed up, go to the twitter search section. Look for other bands in your genre. Follow these bands.
Then go over to digg.com and look at what is popular and the most re-tweeted stories.
Now you know what your audience will like.
Create a similar tweet and link it to your similar article.
Now in twitter, choose your target audience or interests in timeline.
Target your tweet. Using Keywords In Timeline Setting.
Look for .50 to .75 cent cost per click (cost per engagement is what Twitter calls it).

There are services out there that will help with this such as:

http://justretweet.com/

http://tweetpeddler.com/

http://retweets.pro/buy-twitter-tweets

http://retweet.it/

Stumble Upon – A great site that you can use for free, but here is how to use the paid traffic.

Create a blog post. Here’s a few tips of the type of post below.

Make a highly visual blog post with lots of eye catching photo’s.
Make a list style post that has songs of musicians that you like along with one of your songs.
You could also promote. Ten “must see” concerts by local bands or five musicians you didn’t know played live music in your area.

Using paid discovery on stumble upon.
1. Sign up for a stumble upon account.
2. Select the URL of the article that you want to promote.
3. Once you are in stumbleupon ads, you will have some criteria that you will need to fill out.
4. Select your target market. You already did this in the first chapter.
5. There are two options; .10+ per click and .12+ per click.
6. With the more expensive of the two, you will be able to be more specific with your criteria, interests, age, and location.
7. Using “interests” helps and location will work wonders.

Get visitors.
1. Once you have the account set up, you will want to run the ad.
2. Make sure you start slow and small until you get the hang of it.
3. This is a great form of promoting concerts that are coming up. Make sure you use an eye catching picture at the top of the post. Create an awesome header that makes you want to read the article.
4. Make sure your page loads fast, fast, fast.

Take a look at http://searchengineland.com/5-seo-tips-boost-page-speed-187931

These are my favorites for getting paid traffic. The trouble is that you can easily spend a lot of money and not have it work. Trust me, 98% of marketers spend money that doesn’t make sense for their business and then say how horrible the service is. The thing is companies want people to spend money so they make it really easy to. So don’t think it will work amazingly the first time. Instead, spend small until you get the hang of it. If something seems to work then spend a little more to make sure. Once you figure out what is working for you spend more until you reach your goals. Right now you have mastered getting people in the top of your sales funnel. You now have traffic! Follow along in the next section to really see how to get bags of cash out of your sales funnel.