Twitter has proven to be a useful tool for musicians. Learning how to promote your music on Twitter can be a good way to connect with your fans and even acquire more as you launch you campaigns.
Twitter has over 300 million users and there is no reason as to why a couple of them cannot be your fans. Using the proper strategies and tactics will enable you as a musician to gain the most in raising awareness for your music.
The platform has a lot of benefits. It will help you increase your brand recognition as you communicate your personality. You’ll be able to avoid all the noise out there and gain a loyal fanbase.
Twitter is not as big as Facebook but it has the same effect in reaching out to your followers. Your fans will be your biggest support in spreading your music and provide you with the necessary feedback through likes, retweets and comments.
There are a lot of ways do it wrong when setting up your account. Getting things right from the get go will make your account attractive and appealing. This will make it easy for fans to straight away follow you if they like what they see.
You need to set up a Twitter account if you don’t have one already. You can do this by visiting the Twitter website and click the “sign up” button. Twitter has an easy installation setup. They will guide you along every step of the way and it only takes minutes.
Here are 9 easy ways to promote your music on Twitter
1. Make sure you Tweet consistently
Consistency is vital when growing your Twitter account as a musician. Fans want to follow an active account. Active accounts show that you like to keep followers updated on your latest music endeavors.
You might go beast mode on the first month but then get carried away by other projects such recording new music. If you are to busy then you need automation tools to at least manage your activities so that there is a consistence presence.
It all depends on you. If you would like to tweet once a day or even 15 times a day it doesn’t matter. Being consistent will attract followers.
2. Make your Tweets Long Enough
Its good to keep things short especially with Twitter’s character limit. But getting your message understood will be of great benefit even if it’s a little bit longer. Feel free and use all the characters Twitter has given you in order to make your Tweets stand out.
3. Engage with your fans on Twitter
There are plenty of ways to engage with fans. This always results in more retweets, likes and comments. And is the most difficult part of maintaining your presence on social media.
Take time out of your busy schedule to reply and connect with fans. They love it when their favorite musician shows appreciation for their comments. This makes it more encouraging for your fans to continue sharing your tweets and your music.
Whether it’s following back, retweeting back or responding to a question, your chances of increasing your followers will grow tremendously. And make sure your content is worth retweeting.
4. Offer Exclusives and Giveaways to your Twitter Followers
When you have some exciting new announcements, making it first available to your Twitter followers will make them feel special. You can do this by offering exclusive content such as snippets of your upcoming music release or a small clip of your new music video.
You can as well share any achievements or breakthroughs you’ve had in your music career like receiving an award or performing at a special event. Doing this will help your Twitter followers feel special and make them feel important.
This will get your followers to start talking and sharing the exciting news. You can use Periscope and go live with a short version or snippet sample of your new music.
According to Social Media Today, 80% of all internet traffic will be video by 2019. When you promote your music on Twitter having video tends to drive better engagement with live video seeing huge response rates.
Do you have any giveaways? Offering raffles, giveaways, and doing fun contests will make your fans more engaged and will help you while you promote your music on Twitter. Fans tend to respond quite better and are more enthusiastic when there is something in it for them besides the music.
5. Afternoons and Evenings are the best time to Tweet
Are you wondering which times of the day to send out your tweet? According to Buffer, the best times are in the afternoon well after the lunch break. Starting from 2 pm seems good as Twitter traffic starts to increase at a considerable amount.
Maybe folks feel like they’ve got enough work done for the day that they can afford to sneak in 5 minutes on Twitter. So schedule your tweets with those people in mind.
6. Promote Your Twitter Account Offline
When promoting your music online its also wise to remember doing it offline. This means when doing interviews or while performing at live events tell fans to follow you on Twitter. You already have a large group gathered and what better way to boost your following by mentioning your Twitter username.
When it comes to your promotional materials include your @ handle so that people can easily find you on Twitter. You can also reach out to other musicians when going to perform at shows.
Most of them are willing and ready to share their support. Don’t forget to follow them back and mention them in your tweets. This will also boost your efforts considerably. Your fans will become their fans and their fans will become your fans. It’s a win-win situation.
It will help you even become more relevant as an established artist among your peers and create long lasting relationships.
7. Minimize Your Twitter Automation
Twitter can be quite hectic when figuring out all the actions you have to perform in order to keep your account up-to-date. And there are tools to help you with that. I’m not saying don’t use them, but use it in a way that it will feel natural to your fans.
Fans will be keen when you promote your music on Twitter and will be very quick to notice tweets that don’t resonate with your personality. They expect a unique experience that will create a deeper connection with you as a musician and your music.
When promoting your music on Twitter use your automation tools sparingly or when needed. Other than that you can do the posting in real-time to make your tweets more authentic and natural.
8. Choose the Best Days To Tweet
According to Hootsuite, the best times to tweet occur between Mondays and Thursdays, with peak interest being Wednesday. Getting the timing of your tweets right makes sense so that your tweets gets in front of your fans at the right time.
The worst time for posting appears to be the weekends with the lowest amount of engagement, clicks, and retweets.
But it all depends for everyone especially you as a musician. Most of the time you may be awake during the middle of the night recording music or on the weekends you may be doing shows and meeting fans in the evening till morning.
So its best to experiment and find out what brings in the biggest effect in terms of engagement.
9. Don’t be to shy to ask for the retweet (“pls RT”)
A retweet is simply a repost of another Twitter user’s tweet on your own profile to show to your own followers. This will be a common part of your strategy when you promote your music on Twitter.
This is the most simplest way to get engagement on your tweets. Just by asking your fans to retweet your new song, album or music video will be more than enough for them to show you love.
But you have to make sure your content is worth retweeting otherwise your tweet won’t see the light of day.
10. Try not to Over-Tweet
With Twitter there is no limit to the amount of content your can post. You can be posting 2000 tweets in a day. But the likelihood of the tweets not being seeing as spam is minimal.
Fans will ran away from your account if they see you posting overly promotional content or too much of the same boring and bland stuff. Even if you switch things up, posting every 10 minutes for 24 hours everyday is not ideal.
You want to make sense of everything and appear considerate with your tweets. At least once every hour is realistic enough to get your message across. You don’t want your fans to see you as irritable by plaguing their news feed with several tweets.
11. Don’t Spend Too Much Time On Twitter
As a musician when you promote your music on Twitter it should not take up most of your time. You don’t need to spend the whole day behind your computer following and unfollowing 1000 people everyday.
You could create a balance and focus on activities that will bring you worthwhile results. Twitter can be a powerful tool in your promotional efforts, but recording music, booking and performing on music shows should be your main priority.
Conclusion
Even though your Twitter feed should always have up-to-date information, it is very important to lead your followers back to the main objective when you promote your music on Twitter. Send them to your blog or where you sell your music either on BandCamp, Apple Music or Spotify. And if they like it, more followers will come and share your music!
