If you’re reading this blog post then you’re probably somehow tied in with the music industry, brands, bands, labels and what have you. Cool. I get it. It’s weird. For some reason though people are starting to care about your band and you are starting to get a sense of how to move forward in the music industry in a way that is both meaningful and exciting. Of course I’m sure that a lot of you are still asking the question ‘Why does social media even matter? Do I really need to be updating it? It’s true that a lot of bands out there developed their following by grinding it out on the streets, making friends with fans and building up a dedicated following of people who are part of the scene. You might have social media, but how much are you actually using it to your advantage? These are the questions that I think haunt a lot of us trying to get a leg up in this industry and this blog is meant to help.
When it comes down to it, social media can help with every aspect of your band and remove a lot of the hard work that you might have thought you were otherwise obligated to do. Beyond that – there are ways to make social media fun and easy and something that doesn’t feel like a chore, or at least make it a chore that only takes 5-10 minutes every day to handle appropriately. If you’re able to do that then it means that people are going to seriously want to interact with you and start to realize that there are significant steps which you can make in order to grow your brand into something special which will continue to build rather than just becoming another has been band that nobody cares about. From a time investment perspective alone social media is key and is going to dramatically reduce the man hours (And gas) needed for you to access new markets and start to organically build up a demand in places that you have never been. Just look at this chart showing how business owners (And what are bands if not a type of business) felt they benefited from using social media!
One of the keys here is advertising. When it comes down to it the fundamental principle of advertising is that you need to go to where your target demographic is. If you’re targeting regular concert goers under the age of 50 – which – at the end of the day you probably are then they are all going to be on social media. While there are certainly bands that exist outside of the social media advertising world, those are both increasingly few and far between and very rarely trying to market to people under the age of 50. I know that this creates a really creepy dystopian bubble, but again, that’s how things are. I know that this might seem fairly obvious to most of you, but it’s also something which I can’t really understate since it is so vital for bands to have a strong understanding of social media advertising in 2018.
Finally – you need to be active on social media for important people in the industry to take you seriously. This goes across multiple levels. As much as you might not want to admit it to yourself – promoters are not going to care about you if you’re not properly handling social media. I know this sounds shitty and I know that you might think ‘Oh well my friends who are promoters don’t care.’ However, I am personally guaranteeing you right now that promoters on a higher level who are actively working with the sorts of bands you want to be opening for check to see if social media pages are being handled properly. You going out and flyering is great, but this isn’t the 90s. There needs to be tangible evidence of your work online, even if it doesn’t actually make anything happen, it’s a great way to show that you are out there doing great things and creating value for yourself, even when it sucks.
When it comes down to it – social media is important because it shows that you care and people seeing that you care is the best way to make them want to work with you. If people don’t think that you care then they aren’t going to want to work with you and you’re going to routinely find yourself suffering. So go out and make an effort, realize what needs to be done and embrace that future. You and your bandmates need to be interacting on social media on a daily basis because it’s only going to mean growth for you and your band. If you need guidance on how to do this then you’ve come to the right place – let’s get motherfucking started.