Online music promotion has never been more comfortable but having such a vast network of possibilities it can be overwhelming. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are the go-to networks, but what other options are there and how do we utilise them to full potential?

Keep reading to find out how to promote your music online efficiently.

The no. 1 secret: create a website

One day you may wake up to find Facebook has gone bankrupt overnight and you no longer have an artist page with 500,000 followers. The chances of this happening are slim but are you prepared if Zuckerberg can no longer pay his bills?

Creating a website should be the first thing you should build. It’s your central hub. All traffic should point at your domain. Every post on social media should link back to your website. If you started doing this, you would put your self in a very safe position. Here’s why.

You own your website. You don’t own social media.

The problem with social media is that you don’t own or control the traffic. Facebook, Twitter & Instagram can change the algorithm without warning, and suddenly all your posts no longer get views. You lose your traffic. You lose sales. You suddenly don’t have an audience.

Instead of posting directly onto social media I recommend you start writing posts on your website blog. Why?

For starters, Google will find your posts and start ranking them on the search engine. This means people browsing Google will stumble upon your blog, and your website will have traffic. Secondly, your site will grow and if you continue with this approach your traffic in a year will be sky high! Also, that traffic is YOURS! Not Facebooks. Not Twitters. Yours.

Once your blog posts are written its time to start posting snippets of them across social media. Every post you write must link back to your original blog post. See where I’m going with this?

“But writing blog posts and sharing will take me ages!”

Guess what, it probably will if you continue the way you’ve always known. Think about this though. How many times have you Googled ‘how to promote music online’ and ended up just writing a short, aimless post on social media. Then you did another on Twitter. Then again on Instagram. Add that time up. Did all of that procrastinating, Google searching and social media writing pay off? I doubt it.

You’re probably thinking, “I came here to learn how to promote music online efficiently, and all you’ve told me about is building a website. “

Here are some tips to help speed up the process

Find something to write about. Do you have a new release that’s coming out on Beatport or Digital Tunes? Write about it. Write your own press release and post it on your blog. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, but get it published. Promo.ly uses WordPress, it’s very convenient and posting only takes a few minutes. Create your post, use a proofreading tool, like Grammarly to ensure your grammar is correct. You don’t need the grammar police on your back.

Creating artwork

Creating artwork can be long-winded. But you don’t have to pay a graphic designer or be a pro at Photoshop. There are tools like Canva and Stencil that can help you along the way. Canva comes with pre-set templates for social media, blogs and everything in between. All you need to do is edit the information and change some colours. This page banner on the top of the page was created in Canva. It’s a stock, royalty free image that took no more than 60 seconds to create and publish. It’s nothing fancy, but it fulfilled its purpose.

Distributing your posts on social media

Stop spending your entire day on social media posting stuff. Scheduling posts are straightforward and should take no more than ten minutes.

When distributing music online, you need a secret weapon.

Buffer is a social media management platform. Their free account is excellent and at the time of writing allows three social media accounts and ten scheduled posts. Create yourself an account and set up Facebook, Twitter and Instagram inside Buffer. Get your blog post URL and create a social media post in Buffer. Buffer can take your post and post to all three social media networks at different times. Think about how much time you can save if you scheduled a week’s worth of posts. Buffer even shows you the best performing posts. Unless you need to engage with comments, there isn’t a need to keep checking social media.

Traffic building

If you use this process, you will gain traffic over time. It may take some tweaking, adjusting and editing but you will get there. Remember to install Google Analytics code on your site. This will help you keep track of the pages that are performing well.

Use this traffic to your advantage. Start collecting email addresses and send a monthly newsletter. Ask people to share your content and offer them something in return. See this articles for more details about email list building.

The outcome

You have just created yourself a streamlined process for promoting your music online efficiently. As I mentioned earlier, your website is your central hub. Your social media is the distribution channels. Stop pouring away hard earned traffic and start bringing this traffic to your site.

If you take these tips on board, you will have a solid structure within a few months. Starting is the problematic part. You’ll need a domain name, website and hosting. Then you’ll need website content, images topics to write about. But once this is in place, it will be like a well-oiled machine, and you’ll suddenly have an efficient way of promoting music online.

Need more help with marketing your music? Check our blog to increase your knowledge.