Social media is now becoming even harder as a vehicle to get fans if you’re an unknown artist. Why? Because all major platforms have changed their terms of service and made it more difficult to add friends without paying for advertising. And yes, its about money, free platforms like Myspace are a thing of the past and perhaps a wakeup call for new services to be created. But there is still hope here. While you can’t add friends en masse to Twitter with software any more, you can build slow and strong relationships over time that can one day hit the tipping point. The main thing here is to be patient and consistently put in the time.
Below are some key actions you want to take to build your Twitter following:
Pimp Your Profile
In order to create and expose your brand you’ll need to personalize your profile with a bio, main image and background image. Twitter actually gives you three image options, but unless you are a pro graphics designer or hire one, just add your profile image and a background image. Try using black in the image you don’t use, which will help the profile image stand out. For example check http://www.ChadScottMusic.com for reference. Now check your bio under >>settings >> profile… and make sure you are clear about who you are and what you stand for. Check other profiles for reference. Don’t skimp on this one, people will determine wether to follow or not based in large part to your bio.
Set Up an Auto-reply
In order to capture people and draw them to your website you’ll need to set up an auto-reply so when they follow you, they’ll instantly get a message telling them to watch a cool video or grab a free download. You can sign up for a FREE account here at http://www.SocialOomph.com .
What to Tweet
When considering what to Tweet think about what your audience would like to hear. Obviously your music is important here, but its about 10-20 % of what you will be tweeting. The other 80-90% will be cool quotes, videos, other peoples songs, news, and thoughts from your head. When it does come time to tweet about your own music, think about adding links to your blog posts, soundcloud links to your songs, youtube links to your videos and iTunes links to purchase downloads.
When to Tween
You’ll need to tweet anywhere from 2-5 times per day and if you wan’t to hit a bigger audience consider repeating your tweets like Guy Kawasaki every 8-9 hours. Guy has well over a million followers and is not a celebrity. We will study Guy more on him in our official Twitter Course. If you haven’t already, sign up on our email list so you can get access when we release the official Twitter Course For Musicians. This is a lot of tweeting so think about scheduling your tweets in advance using Hootsuite or SocialOOmph.
Who to Follow
You’ll need to start following so people can then follow you back. This will be your main source for getting people to follow you. If people don’t follow you back, you should axe them by unfollowing them unless you really want their info. To unfollow people who don’t follow you, think about getting an automated software that allows you to simply click off all those unfollowing like TweeT Adder Here.
Engage
Once you start Tweeting you’ll need to engage with people who like your tweets and “favorite or share” tweets that you like from your friends. This engagement builds relationships and relationships is what sells your music. Once people trust you then they will become die hard fans (as long as they like your music). Make sure you engage every day.
Track Tweets
When you tweet a link, which should be a majority of the time, you need to use bit.ly or some other link shortening service. Reason being that you can then track who and how often that link gets clicked, otherwise you have no idea what is working and what isn’t.
For a full in depth course on Twitter and learning how to double your followers every week, sign up on the right and we’ll email you when our Twitter video course for musicians comes out in the next few months.
Tweet it up
Chad –CEO Music Launch Pad