This article has been written by Maurice Hissink — Owner/Founder of AniMouseMusic for Sweet Madness.

So you want to start sharing your music online?

Great! If you are an Independent artist, you should!

If you want to start to share your music online, then you have to do a couple of things to make the best possible online music promotion.

There are a couple of things that are easy to do and a couple of things that are difficult.

Don’t worry, we’re going to dive right into it so that you can start as quickly as possible with your online music promotion.

1. Music promotion needs a goal

The very first thing that you should do is to have a decent goal. You want to set up a goal that is reachable, achievable and preferably a goal that follows the S.M.A.R.T rules.

If you have never heard of S.M.A.R.T, which in this example stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Trackable.

This will make sure that your goal is not just a fun thing you thought of in a sunny afternoon.

A great goal has a meaningful end. That end can change of course, but you should at least be working on achieving it in the first place.

This will make it easier to focus on the real reason why you want to promote your music online.

Possible reasons could be to get more gigs, sell more CDs, collab with other bands, get more fans, make more money, or all of the above.

2. Social Pages

Set up some basic but great social pages.

This one is pretty easy, as you can have a simple Facebook page or twitter page in no time.

Start simple, with a decent profile pic, banner, and short but detailed bio. Your new fans should know they have found you, the awesome musician/band.

It is also a good idea to create a fresh profile for your band or music project. If you start with your personal profile, it might seem strange to your current friends if you suddenly start sharing different things then your cat or your breakfast.

Another downside of personal profiles, as opposed to fan pages or a business profile on Twitter or Instagram, is the limitations that they can have. A personal profile can only handle 5000 friends and has a different method of sharing updates.

A business profile will give you all the statistics that you will need. Even if you don’t use them now, they will come in handy later. The more details you can get from your audience/fans, the better.

These will come in handy later when you create new content for your social profiles. You always want to know if you attract the best audience for your music.

3. Every musician needs a website

Whether you have a great Facebook page, or some followers on Soundcloud, Twitter or Youtube, it is still very much needed to have a web page.

It will be the one thing that you will have all the control and power over.

Social media pages are changing all the time, and sometimes not in your benefit. Certain limits get changed, like the total amount of followers. Content or apps gets restricted for different reasons. And, worst case scenario, your account gets banned or muted for various reasons.

With your own website, you control what you put up there and what not.

You can create a great user experience, tailored for your best fans and new visitors.

From a fan perspective, this also makes the first impression better, because they will be presented with your style instantly. No static layout like on other social pages at all.

If you make that impression count, you will gain a new fan with each visit! (Hopefully :-))

Add some great images, a great backstory, snippets of your songs and a sign-up form!

[read more about this subject here]

 

4. Find content to share

You only wanted to share your own music online? Uh, yeah, but what else?

What would the user experience be when you only shared your own songs and album every day. Probably not as good as you want, as much as your fans love your music.

Especially when you are a new musician, you want to attract new fans to your social sites and website.

If you already established your name, but are just starting with online music promotion, you can share stories and information that is connected to your music. Old live show stories, behind the scenes, how you record your album, and an occasional shoutout or collab will help to get your already existing audience interested in your online presence.

To find the best content to share, you can do some research on other similar artists profiles. See what they do and ask yourself if you can mimic it. Don’t just copy content, but try to figure out what they post, how often and how they interact with their fans.

You can also start to share your personal stories. For example, share why you started making music. Or share some lyrics and how they came about.

You can also talk about the gear you use or the live shows you did.

The biggest thing right now is live video, so if you have the possibility to go live on facebook or youtube, this will create the best connection with your fans.

5. An email strategy

Also, the same content can be used in your email sequences. If you create a nice welcome sequence with say, 10 emails that go out when people sign up (one every week, that is more than 2 months of emails right there!) you increase the chance of people interacting with your content. You want to keep your audience engaged as much as possible. That way, they will remember you when you send out an email when your new album comes out.

You can get very creative with email sequences. For example, on top of the 10 email sequences, you can send out a newsletter whenever you have something interesting to share with your fans. For example, when you added a new album on iTunes, or when a live show is coming up.

You can also create a new sequence just for a new album as a lead up to the sale.

Just try out what works best for you (and what your current mail service provider offers as possibilities).

As a bonus tip, I want to mention that your music needs to be easily findable online, in the best quality possible.

Take some time to create great songs. Using the quick demo recorded with your phone might not be the best user experience, especially if it is your only song. You could start with no songs and just built your social presence first. You could start teasing your new album or songs but don’t tease what you don’t have. Create a song/album first, and tease the release date.

Keep creating awesome music and share it with the world!

Maurice Hissink — Owner/Founder of AniMouseMusic.

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For more information about online music promotion, you can follow Maurice on:

Youtube • Twitter • Facebook • AniMouseMusic.com

You can also sign up on his website for a great music promotion newsletter!