Navigating social media is tricky when you’re an indie artist with a full schedule. Replying to fans, creating new content, interacting with other accounts – it’s a lot. Social media is a great tool for advertising and sharing your art, but maintaining multiple accounts can often feel like a full time job, and coming up with fresh content can feel impossible. We’ve compiled 10 helpful tips to make your life a little easier so you can focus on making music.
1. Plan Ahead
You’ve probably heard this by now, but we’ll say it again: scheduling your social media content is everything. With Intercept Music’s Artist Dashboard, you can both create and schedule posts for all of your social media accounts at once. This way, you can spend 1-3 days a month on content creation and scheduling and have the rest of your time free!
2. Set an Alert
Everyday, set aside 15 minutes to 1 hour (depending on need) for responding to comments and direct messages. This will keep you up to date with your fans and help make the ‘social’ side of social media more manageable.
3. Mix Things Up
Post regularly, but make sure your content is varied. Every post should be visually appealing, interesting, and worth your fans’ time. It’s good to keep a consistent mix of promotional, personal, behind-the-scenes, video, and photo content.
Here’s a list of ideas to inspire you:
- Artist Collab
- Caption Contest
- Excerpt of a Work-In-Progress Song
- Explain The Meaning Behind One of Your Songs
- Live Stream AMA (“ask me anything”)
- Live Stream Night (recording music, AMA, interview someone, artist collab)
- Moment from a Show You Attended
- New Release Teaser
- Personal Life Moments
- Professional or Fan Photos from Your Latest Show
- Reintroduction Post (for new fans)
- Repost of Someone Wearing Your Merch
- What I’m Working On
- You Wearing Your Merch
4. Platform Specific Content
Semi-regular mass posting is fine, but it’s a good idea to make adjustments to content for each platform. For example, a video on Instagram with a TikTok watermark won’t do as well as an Instagram Reel.
5. Meaningful Written Content
Anytime you post a photo or video, the written portion of that post should be just as appealing to fans. It doesn’t have to be long at all, so long as it has purpose and is worth your fans’ time.
6. Interactive Content
Engaging, interactive content is one of the best ways to maintain and grow a following. Polls, giveaways, AMAs, feedback prompts, etc. are great ways to grow a relationship with your fans online. People like to feel included in a community and asking for their opinions helps them feel like a part of your creative process.
7. 1-2 Regular Post Types
It can be helpful for planning and fan engagement to have 1-2 repeating post types each week. This could be a weekly AMA or a “what I’m working on” update. This gives fans something to look forward to and helps structure your social media content. If this type of regular post is interactive that’s even better!
8. Tag Posts
Tagging venues, bands, artists, or brands that appear in your posts is at the minimum a social media courtesy but it can also lead to some amazing collabs or celebrity shout-outs. Next time you attend a show, tag that amazing band you love! If they played at a small-medium size venue, tag them too. If the venue notices your post, you could have the opportunity for an awesome gig!
9. Show Off Your World
People get attached to experience and emotion, we find connection in the humanity of others. Show your fans the world of music and bits of your life outside of what you produce. Post what inspires you and speaks to your creativity. People appreciate that kind of candid vulnerability.
10. Experiment
Play around with photos and videos! Everything is a potential post, so don’t be afraid to document anything and everything. You won’t use all of it – or maybe even most of it – but there will absolutely be some amazing content mixed in. This isn’t to say your entire life should be on social media, but giving yourself lots of options can make planning posts much easier.
Just remember that social media is an art, not a science, and it takes time to learn what works best for you and your followers. We hope these tips will help make social media easier for you and less of a stress on your schedule so you can spend more time doing what you love.