5 Biggest Online Music Marketing Mistakes That You Need to Avoid

Photo by Gavin Whitner

You need to promote your music if you want to make a living as an indie artist. It’s that simple.

Luckily, you have the internet at your disposal.

With social media, websites, and email, reaching your fans is easier than ever. But, this doesn’t mean that marketing your music online is easy.

When you first start promoting your music online, you’re likely to make a few mistakes. Don’t let this deter you from continuing to pursue your music career.

Instead, learn from your mistakes. Or, learn from the mistakes of others –

Here are 5 of the biggest online music marketing mistakes that you need to avoid.

#1 – Over-Hyping Yourself on Social Media

You can use social media to promote your own music. But, you don’t want to over-sell your music. Let people listen to your music and make their own decision.

In fact, you need to realize that the majority of your followers are just casual followers. They’ve listened to a couple of your songs and then started following you.

Don’t assume that just because they follow your social media profile that they think your music is the most amazing thing in the world. You can use a little hype, but don’t over-do it.

You’ll also want to avoid over-promoting yourself on social media. This means that you don’t want to bombard your followers with posts promoting your latest music.

The repetition of constant self-promotion will force those casual followers to stop following.

#2 – Not Sharing Music on YouTube

Some indie artists make the mistake of not uploading their music to YouTube. YouTube is actually the 2^nd most visited website after Google.

Uploading to YouTube is a great opportunity to reach a larger audience and attract more attention. The popularity of YouTube is partially due to the rise of browsing on mobile devices. People on the go enjoy watching videos, rather than browse the web.

One of the obstacles that can stop musicians from sharing their music on YouTube is not having any music videos. But, you don’t music videos to upload your music to YouTube.

Instead of creating a music video, you can simply create a video with slides with one of your tracks as the sound for the video. People do this to share recordings that don’t have a corresponding music video. So, start using YouTube as part of your music promotion.

The following video shows you how to put together your own video with music and a slideshow using Movavi Video Editor. You can test out the software for free. After you create your video, you can then upload it to YouTube:

#3 – Not Sticking to a Consistent Schedule

You can’t post twenty times on Facebook in one day and then avoid social media for the next month. If you want to build a following and use digital marketing to grow your fan base, you need to remain consistent.

You should make a commitment to post at least once per day each day of the week. You could take the weekends off, but it’s important to stick the schedule that you set.

Also, don’t use any of the auto-sharing features to automatically post from Twitter to Facebook and vice versa. You should always take the time to personally write every post or tweet that comes from one of your accounts.

#4 – Forgetting to Include the Right Links

Whenever you self-promote on social media, don’t forget to include links. It’s easy to forget this step.

For example, when you tell your followers to check out your latest music, you need to include links to the sites where they can find the music.

If possible, make your music available directly on your website and then link to your own site. This helps build traffic to your site, increasing your local search rankings. If you’ve uploaded music to SoundCloud or Spotify, you can use a plugin or widget to add it to your site.

#5 – Not Having a Website

The 5^th marketing mistake that you want to avoid is not having a website. You need a reliable destination to direct all your internet traffic. Even though Facebook has a billion users and Twitter has millions, they may not be around forever.

A website is your online home with a permanent address. People will always know how to find you. Plus, you can have one unified spot from which all your marketing efforts flow.

You can include links to your social media profiles, press releases, and other online content. And, you can add a form for building your email list.

Basically, you won’t get far without a website. They are cheap and easy to set up – even an elementary school student can build their own website. So, there’s no excuse.

Music marketing doesn’t require a lot of experience. But, it does require consistency.

You need to avoid over-promoting yourself. Remain humble and put yourself out there. Let yourself slowly grow a fan base and a mailing list. And, stick to a consistent schedule.

Along with these mistakes, there’s one more to avoid. When you have an upcoming album or a major event, you should promote it with a press release.

Click here to learn more about our professional press release services and maximize your online marketing potential.

Source: ArtistPR Music Marketing