Hi, I'm Nick and I'm going to be showing you how record labels should be using social media in 2023, and what you should be avoiding to save yourself time and effort, but still get maximum exposure for your music.
Hi, my name is Nick Sadler from the Label Machine. And today I want to talk about how record labels should be using social media in the next 12 months.
First of all, I'm going to talk about what you should be avoiding, so you don't get overwhelmed or burnt out from using your social media.
And then I'm going to go over practical steps that are going to save you time and effort while still exposing your music to the maximum amount of people.
And at the end, I'm going to share a bonus which is the top three platforms you must be on, as well as a handy little way of creating a piece of content that can be shared across all of them easily.
Four Things to Avoid
Distractions
Okay, so let's get started with the first thing to avoid, distractions. So you want to avoid distractions when working on social media, which sounds ironic, because often social media is the one thing that does tend to distract you when you are trying to get on with some focused work.
But what I mean by that is when you are doing your say content creation for your social media, avoid getting dragged down watching cat videos, dog videos, or in my case, watching short stand up comedian clips.
So stay focused at the task at and sit one time a week for say two to three hours to create your content. And then put 30 minutes aside to go on social media and do your networking, focusing on pushing out your music.
Be consistent, and be disciplined, and stay regular.
Jumping on Bandwagons
The second thing you want to avoid is jumping on bandwagons, you don't want to just jump on the next trend because it seems like what everybody else is doing. Or getting shiny object syndrome, which is where you're chasing an app that's promising thousands of plays of new music, or hundreds of thousands of new fans.
Stick to the platform you know and you understand and where your audience is. Now, if a platform does come along, and it does start proving to be very popular, and a lot of people are using it, that's the time to move over and start cross pollinating your content to that platform.
So an example of this in the last couple of years is TikTok, there's no denying TikTok is a great platform. And it's an awesome audience discovery platform. So now you will probably want to set up a TikTok account if you don't already have one.
Don’t Copy Well-established Labels and / or Major Artists
The third thing you want to avoid on social media is don't copy major labels and major artists content.
They have huge budgets and huge teams working on the content, and may look like they're posting it all themselves and being or very organic.
But the reality is they'll have large teams and large budgets working on these things.
If you do start comparing yourself to these artists and these labels, you're just going to get down, and you're going to get negative thoughts. And ultimately, you're not going to be very productive.
What you do want to do is look out for other labels that are of similar size to you that have got similar artists or similar artists at the same level, and look at what they're doing for inspiration, and use that as a jump off point for your content.
Don’t Rely Just on Social Media for All Your Communications
The fourth thing you want to avoid is don't just use social media for all your communications.
Platforms change, it's very easy for someone just to click like on a post, it doesn't mean they're going to stream or buy your music.
Use social media for top of funnel activities. So new fans can discover more about you, and for your existing fans to keep on track of what you've been up to.
Always be thinking about how you can move someone from social media to your website so you can capture the email address and become social media platform independent.
Practical Actions
Now we know what to look out for. What are some practical things to do with your social media in the coming months.
Use a Scheduling Tool
The first thing to do is use a scheduling tool. This is going to keep distractions to a minimum, it's going to allow you to be really organized with scheduling your posts.
I've used a bunch of different ones over the years. And there are four that I always return to. I'm going to share with you what those four are now.
- First one is SocialPilot. It's got lots of great features for an excellent price. And it's the one that I always keep returning to when I've got a new project or company in which I'm lead on and I need to arrange a social media schedule.
- The second one I can recommend is Hootsuite. This was one of the first social media scheduling programs around. And if you use a third party company or you hire somebody to run your social media, it's most likely they will know how to use this. So it's quite handy as an industry standard.
- The third one I'd recommend is Meet Edgar. And this is great for creating evergreen content, you upload the platform with content will also help you find content as well. You set your schedule, and then at those scheduled dates, it'll pull the content automatically and post it on your platforms, keeping your accounts active, and relevant.
- Final one, I'd recommend as Buffer, which is probably second only to SocialPilot. And what I would recommend, it's got a Chrome plugin and a mobile application as well, which is really handy for if you find something on the move that you want to share, you can quickly add that into your content schedule.
Schedule Content Creation
The second thing you want to do is schedule in your content creation, I would recommend twice a week for two hours to do this.
Also, you want to use this time to look at what you've got coming up in your release schedule and start planning out what content is going to need to be created in the coming weeks.
Now as a record label, you're in a great position for content because you have a range of artists to post about and share content with.
If you're a self-releasing artist on your own label, you'll have to dig a little deeper to think about your unique story that you want to share.
You then want to see about 20 to 30 minutes every day to go online and network on social media. Reply to comments from people during that day and the day before, liking other artists and labels posts as well.
I recommend doing this after lunch every day as you should be eating lunch every day. And it will often act as a good reminder. Stay disciplined and stay consistent.
Make Sure You Use Social Media for Top of Funnel
The third thing you want to do is make sure you use social media for top of funnel activities. And by this I mean allowing new fans to discover and find out about you, and to share with your existing fans what you're already doing.
Always be thinking ‘how can I move a fan down the funnel to becoming a super fan?’. Your funnel also acts as a filter to find these super fans so make sure you've got one set up your true fans want to become super fans, you just have to give them a path to follow.
Okay, there are three main parts to a funnel plus another little one at the end at the top of the funnel. This is where you're going to be creating content on your various platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. And secondly top of funnel is also where you'll run Facebook and Instagram ads or if you're also doing them, Twitter and TikTok ads.
You then want to move fans from the top of funnel to the middle of funnel by using things like download and social media gates on applications like Hypeddit. So some activities for middle of funnel is adding people to your email list and getting Spotify followers and saves.
You then want to move your fans from the middle to the bottom of the funnel. To do that you build up a relationship with them using email campaigns and drip campaigns where you can offer them early access to merch or special edition merch and VIP ticket sales to events.
And then you've got the flow out of the funnel, which you want to go back into the top, and you use that with referrals. So that's offering your super fans access to special merchandise or early access to music, sharing your music with their friends.
Utilise Your Content on the Most Active Platforms.
The fourth thing you want to do is to make sure your content is on the most active platforms. Now 80% of people are going to be browsing social media on their mobile devices, which means they're going to be viewing things in the vertical format or going horizontal to watch something on YouTube. So my recommendations on the platforms that you must be on are Instagram and Instagram Reels, YouTube and YouTube shorts, and TikTok.
Now because reels and YouTube shorts and TikTok use this vertical format, you're going to be able to use a piece of content and cross collateralize that on the different platforms which leads me to my bonus tip: To save time and if you want to create one piece of vertical content, and then upload that to the other platforms.
My recommendation is that you use TikTok because it's got awesome editing tools in there and great filters. Now once you've downloaded it from TikTok, another tip is to use an application called Snaptik and that's to remove the TikTok logo because it is uploaded in its native format to Instagram reels, Instagram does have algorithms that is going to detect this and it's going to penalize you for that.
So you can use an application like Snaptik to remove that, or you can create it just on your native phones, editing software, and then upload that to the different platforms.
Alright, if you are using Facebook, don't bin it yet. It's still great, but I'm just saying make sure you're having content used on those other three platforms as well.
I hope you enjoyed this post and got some value out of it.