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Navigate Social Media as a Musician: Proven Tips, Tricks, and Tools for 2024

If you’re a musician struggling with social media, here is your guide on getting started and perfecting your social media game.

Posted 1 month ago

Written by

Mackenzie Taylor

Posted 1 month ago

Being a professional musician trying to break it is tough. Add in social media and marketing yourself? It seems like an impossibility. With millions of musicians trying to go viral online, how do you make a name for yourself and stand out in the noise? That’s where we come in to help. In this blog, we are going to teach you everything you need to know about social media for musicians.

Here’s everything you need to know about promoting yourself and your new songs, connecting with your fans, going viral on social, and so much more.

Jump to a section ✨

Why does social media matter so much for musicians?
What social media platforms should musicians use to promote their music?
How can musicians build a strong online presence through social media?
Tool to use to help musicians with social media creation
- Flick
- Why use Flick?

Why does social media matter so much for musicians?

It seems nowadays if you want to make it in the music industry, you need to go viral on social media first. While that is a sad thing to say as music should be the main focus, if you want to get noticed at all in the music industry, you need to build up a small following for yourself online and get people interested in your music.

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A post shared by Azure ☽ 🐺 (@azureryder)

Over 3.6 billion people worldwide use social media and by utilizing social media in the right way, you could start building up your fanbase all over the world and do what you really love—play music to adoring fans! And in case you’re a musician wondering why in the world social media even matters for your music, it’s the primary source of music discovery for 63% of listeners.

That’s a lot of people discovering new music online—and hopefully discovering your music online too.

Ready to start getting new listeners? It’s time to start using social media to your advantage. Let’s get started.

What social media platforms should musicians use to promote their music?

Want to connect with your audience on a more one-on-one level? Parasocial relationships are all the rage these days! Kidding—kind of. If you want to boost your streams and get on the road in front of thousands of adoring fans, you’re going to need to use social media to promote yourself. There are tons of social media platforms you can use to promote your music and engage your audience, here are the best ones to use:

TikTok

@noahkahanmusic But it’s the Season Of The Sticks #fyp #MadewithKAContest #jewishedsheeran #originalsong #viral ♬ original sound – Noah Kahan

Every musician knows that if your song goes viral on TikTok, you’ve got it made. Well, for a while at least. TikTok provides a pretty creative space for musicians to share their music in interesting and engaging ways. As a musician, you can create catch music clips people can add to their own videos, create your own challenge with your lyrics, explain the process of writing a song (re: Noah Kahan with Stick Season), have others stitch your song, and so much more. TikTok’s algorithm makes discovery easier for musicians to reach a wider audience with the potential to go viral. The features that TikTok provides make it easier for musicians to respond and connect with their audience in real time and get immediate feedback on if something is working vs. not working for their fans.

YouTube

YouTube still continues to be the ultimate platform for musicians. The platform lets musicians share their music videos, live performances, Shorts, vlogs, and more to entice their audience. And the more you use YouTube and start getting viewers coming in, the more you can monetize your videos and make some cash-cash-money. A lot of musicians use YouTube as the place to direct fans to listen to more of their content (outside of streaming services, that is!). The features YouTube provides make it easy for musicians to connect with their audience and also know exactly what songs and videos work best for their fans.

Instagram

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In this day and age, having an Instagram presence and followers is important to get your foot in the music industry. Being able to utilize all key areas of Instagram will be important to get new followers through your door. Share behind-the-scenes of you in the studio. Show off your everyday life so your fans feel more connected to you. Explain the process of writing a song in a Reel or on your Instagram Story. Instagram is a perfect place for musicians to share all aspects of their lives — something a lot of fans want to see.

SoundCloud

cassö · Prada – Cassö x Raye x D Block Europe

While not typically a social media platform thought of in the traditional sense, SoundCloud is a great place for musicians to upload and share their music, create playlists, and engage with their listeners through comments and likes. SoundCloud is a great place for musicians to discover and connect with other artists as well. One of the best features of SoundCloud is that it is incredibly user-friendly and its focus on audio content makes it the best place for musicians to show off their new music and build a dedicated fan base.

How can musicians build a strong online presence through social media?

Now that you know which platforms you should be on, it’s time to make those platforms work for you. But, what should you be posting? How can you make people interested or care about you? Let’s dive into it:

Optimize your accounts

First, you need to take a look at your accounts overall and figure out if they are optimized in the best way. What the heck does that mean?

Are all of your profile images and cover images sized correctly for that specific platform? Every platform has a different sizing guide, so be sure they are correct. Click here to learn the social media sizing guidelines.
Make sure your account name is yours or makes sense with who you are. How are people going to find you if your account name doesn’t make sense?
Be sure your profile and bio link back to either your website, tour, a new song, or whatever you want people to view.
Go through your profile and ensure that everything on there is accurate and up-to-date.

Going through your profile to make sure that it is optimized correctly is an important first step when it comes to social media. It will help guarantee your audience is being pointed to the information you want them to see, plus make you look more professional overall.

Share behind-the-scenes content

A big reason why people love following musicians is to feel connected to them and to see their process. Think back to why you follow your favorite musician—is it to see their take on touring? Their process of writing a new song? Sneak peeks into the studio? By showing off these little teaser moments, you get your audience excited about your music even more. This can lead to more ticket sales, sharing your music on social media, pre-saving your album or songs, and so much more.

Share user-generated content

When your fans tag you in videos or photos, share them with your audience! People love to know that their favorite musician saw their Story or liked one of their posts—but their favorite musician sharing that content? That’s even better! Plus, it makes people want to tag you in more for the chance of being seen and shared. This helps you with building a better relationship with your audience, but it can also help new people discover you. When your fans share your music and photos to their own profiles, their friends see it (and hopefully discover you for the first time) which increases your reach online.

@gavinthecloud #musician #musiciansoftiktok #guitar ♬ Julia – Gavin McLeod

Collaborate with other musicians or influencers

We know it’s easier said than done, but find a musician that you love and see if they are open to collaborating with you. Perhaps you can stitch one of their TikTok videos with your own lyrics. Maybe you cover one of their songs online. Reach out to the musician and ask if you can do a video together. By collaborating with other musicians, you both benefit from each other’s separate audiences. Collaborations are a great way for you to reach new audiences but also provide an opportunity for cross-promo and (hopefully!) mutual support.

Interact with your fans

You need to engage and talk to your fans online to really build a sense of community. Yes, it seems like an obvious thing, but interacting with your fans is so important for your social media strategy. By responding to their DMs, heart-ing their comments or messages, or reposting their content, you’re showing them that you see, recognize, and are listening to them. And that definitely leads to a more loyal fanbase.

Be consistent

We shout about consistency a lot over here at Flick but it’s because it’s so important. Regularly posting content and engaging with your audience helps you build a more loyal following and keeps your music at the top of their minds. We recommend creating a content calendar and scheduling all of your posts in advance so you can remain consistent.

Instagram scheduler

Start scheduling with Flick!

Check your analytics

When you go through your analytics, you’ll get a quick overview of what your audience likes and wants from you. Start paying attention to the videos and posts that get a lot of engagement. What are people sharing with their friends more? What are people commenting on more? From there, you can start to build out a social media strategy that is tailored to your exact audience and what they want from you.

Instagram Analytics

Grow your account with best-in-class Instagram Analytics.

Tool to use to help musicians with social media creation

Flick

To help you spend less time on social media and more time on creating music, Flick is the ultimate tool you need. Flick’s AI Social Media Assistant can help you with social media creation from start to finish. Utilize the tool to brainstorm content and caption ideas, generate the best hashtags, repurpose past content, see what posts have done well for you previously, and so much more.

With Flick, you can streamline your social media workflow in seconds. By using our analytics, AI Assistant, and scheduling tools, you’ll remain consistent on social media and get the growth you want (and need!).

Why use Flick?

Analyzes all of your content in seconds and lets you know exactly how you stack up against your competition
Schedule out all of your content in a single click
Create captions inside the Scheduler with the AI Caption Generator tool
Writes in your brand voice based on your Brand Info
Get access to endless post ideas in a single click
Access to a FREE AI caption generator
Repurposes all long-form content into bite-size social media posts
Integrates into Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok
Get auto-generated hashtags based completely on your captions that are best fit for your content
Caption templates that sound more human and completely like a post you’d actually write
Available in multiple languages
AI-generated images and access to our Stock Image Media Library