This is one of those extremely exciting moments in life. You’re about to release a part of your legacy that will be out there forever for the world to hear!
You song is scheduled and your release date is coming up! (deep breath!)
That’s great and all, but this is not the time to sit back.
In fact, you’re probably going to work more and harder now than you did when you were recording your song.
So roll those sleeves up!
Here’s what we’re going to cover in this post:
- Pre-release promotions
- Release day
- Post-release promotions
Important Notes:
- This is Part 4 of my ‘Release Your First Single‘ blog post series showing you how to submit and schedule your song to be released, and how you can release it on your own website.
- Some of the links I’m recommending are affiliate links and I do get rewarded if you take action on those.
***If you’re serious about taking your music to the next level so that it can be heard by the masses, or at least by the type of people you want to hear it, check out Savvy Musician Academy
(I’m actually an elite-veteran student and their programs have literally shaped my own music career.)
3 Strategies to Promote Your Song Before It’s Released
This is going to be the most important part of your journey – promoting your song before it’s released.
Remember, just because you have an awesome song coming out doesn’t mean that people are going to go knocking down the doors of iTunes and Spotify to listen to it. They’re not.
You need to build up a buzz and make some noise. You’ve got to let your audience know what’s coming and how this song is going to benefit them.
That last part is actually a crucial part of sales and marketing. It’s not so much about the actual song (or product). You have to lead by sharing how your audience is going to benefit from your music.
Yes, the term ‘sales’ is a turn-off to many, especially us creative musicians!. But this is part of being an independent musician. Besides, it’s not like you’re selling vacuum cleaners that suck; you’re selling your own music!
So I want you to think ‘benefits’ over what your product is.
Here are three simple strategies that you can use, and I’ll go over each in detail:
- Create a blog post on your website
- Create a series of short videos
- Create an IGTV ecosystem
1 – Write a Blog Post for Your Song
This is the first and most simple thing you can do for your pre-release. Write a blog post about the song on your website!
Now, you may be wondering why you need to write a post. You may have even heard that blogging is dead. I assure you that’s alive and well (hence, you’re reading this blog post!).
Here’s are some benefits of blogging as a musician:
- It’s free traffic and way to promote your music
- Blog content on your website is content that you own and control
- Blog content, if written well, will organically pull in traffic over time
I recommend writing a post that’s at least 800 words (go for 1200!). This will give you a better chance at Google picking up your post.
In this post, you can talk about the things like:
- What inspired you to write this song
- Meaning behind the lyrics
- The story that the melodies are telling (this is great for instrumental tracks)
- The process of creating to song
- ”Behind the scenes’ in the studio
You could even talk about the process of creating and recording the song. This is something I do, as many of my fans are guitar players so they’re interested in that sort of thing.
Once the song is actually released, you can go back to that post and add links that go to listen to your song.
TIP: Once the song is created, I typically create a web page for that song that has links going to the popular digital music platforms, and the CD and merch when applicable. So you can link to that page on your blog post once your song is released.
Here are some examples:
– Blog Post for Creating My Album ‘Masterpeace’
– Web Page for the album Masterpeace
2 – Series of Short Videos
Create 5-7 short 15-30 second videos. These videos can be a mixture of parts of your song (not the entire song) and you engaging in your audience. Each post should be clear to what your intent is, and that’s the release date of your song.
Then, do this:
- Post one of these videos each day on Facebook until you’ve posted them all
- After about 10 days, g back and look at the Facebook Analytics to see what your top two posts are
Next, you’re going to boost these posts on Facebook to the two groups of people below:
- Highest Performing Post: Boost to your current Facebook audience and their friends
- Second-Highest Performing Post: Boost this to a new audience of people who like pages from artist or bands similar to your song and in your genre (choose 5-7 bands)
You could do something simple like running these ads for $1 a day for each ad (that would be about $60 a month). This way, you’re letting your current fans know about the release but you’re also continuing to build your audience with the second boosted post.
3 – IGTV Ecosystem
There’s a really cool IGTV strategy you can use to really boost engagement. Best of all, it doesn’t cost you anything, and you don’t need 10k followers to do it.
Here are the steps:
- Create an IGTV video (a little over one minute long) with some short clips of your song and you talking about what the song is about
- In the description of your IGTV video, post the link of the blog post you created on your website
- Now, post Instagram stories each day (or several times a day) with a ‘swipe-up’ that takes them to your IGTV video you created
This is a little Instagram hack, so to speak, that I learned when I started promoting my last album.
Advanced Methods to Promote Your Music: If you want to take it to the next level with things like using Facebook Business Manager to run ‘real ads’ and email marketing (which is still the most effective way to promote), check out Savvy Musician Academy
Release Day Strategy
This is a day that you need to plan ahead. You do not want to just post links to your new song on social media the day it’s released.
You can do that, but be aware that the social platforms will more than likely bury your posts.
Why?
Because social media is not going to promote something that takes people off of their platform.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Seriously, plan ahead for this!
- Have a video ready that you’ve already created that’s longer (3+ minutes) than the short videos you were posting and boosting, and post that the day your song is released.
- Go live! Go live that day, and go live several times a day!
Also, make sure you’re responding to every post and answering questions, especially on that day.
How to Promote After Your Song Release
Your song was released yesterday and it’s time to celebrate! However the work isn’t done yet.
In fact, the work is never done!
Okay, so yes, you can definitely celebrate at this point. You do need to reward yourself for all of the hard work you’ve put into this.
But you also need to keep pushing your new song. If you don’t, there’s a good chance that you’ll see those stats go down on the digital music platforms over time.
Here’s the good news…
You don’t have to be an adamant as you were before your song was released. But you do want to post with intent.
I’d say 80% of the time, you want a CTA (call to action) in your posts. You need to tell them to do something, and how that ‘something’ is going to benefir them.
Here are some examples of things you can say or write in your posts:
- ‘if you need an awesome song to get you through your stressful day, click the link in the description and let me know what you think!’
- ‘it’s Friday, and I have something to help you celebrate – just check out the link in the description!
- ‘I know, Mondays suck, but I have something to help yours not suck as bad…check out the song in the description.’
- ‘I’ve got some metal to give you a boost and start your day with…check out the link in the description and let me know your favorite part.’
Do you see how I worded these? I didn’t say things like ‘Hey, go listen to my new song!’ or ‘My new single is out!’
Remember to add value to your audience – what’s in it for them. Not just ‘here’s the link to my new song.’
Always Continue Posting, Engaging, and Building Your Audience
These tips are in addition to your normal posting of content on social media. And the reason I’m harping on social media is because that’s where the majority of people ‘live’ and that’s where you’re going to reach people.
And just because I didn’t mention other platforms in this post, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t post on them. Again, these strategies are in additional to the things you normally do.
Also, YouTube is an extremely relevant platform to promote your music. In fact, most of the digital music distribution services we talked about in Part 3 also place your music on YouTube, so that’s another stream of revenue for you.
The great thing about YouTube is unlike the other social media platforms, YouTube is a search engine. So if you’re posting videos that people are searching for, you can gain momentum.
And that’s another source of free traffic because you can post links to your album and website in the description of your videos.
*YouTube is actually one of my primary sources of organic traffic.
Questions?
I know all of this stuff can seem a little overwhelming. So if you run into any issues or have questions, the best way to get those answered is below:
- Copy the link to this blog post
- Go to my Facebook Page and create a new post
- Paste the link with your question, and then click ‘post’
Like that cheesy Bon Jovi song, I’ll be there for you!
That wraps it up for this 4-part blog series on ‘Release Your First Single.’ I hope this helped you and really hope that it motivates you to get your music out there!
Remember, this is your legacy!
Keep it Metal,
Jason
P.S. If you’d like to jump ahead, I encourage you to check out Savvy Musician Academy.
I’m a veteran elite member of this awesome academy and it’s responsible for putting my music on the course it’s meant to be on! Learn more here.
