Almost every figure in the entertainment and talent industry could benefit from social media management. Once your posts are targeted directly at the right audience, all it takes is one share for your content to reach new fans, giving independent creators a new freedom that levels out the playing field. Building your online presence is essential for your brand, and we can help.
Here are our top five tips to smash social media in 2022.
1.) Pick Your Platforms
Since most creators would rather spend time making content versus monitoring every social media platform out there, it’s important to choose quality over quantity. Opposed to a mediocre presence on everything, it’s better to hone in on three social networks at most. And if you choose to have that many, make sure there’s a reason each platform is added to your rotation. Will it offer unique content that the other two won’t? Will it bring something new to the table?
Along with that, think about which of the big websites suit your business. Although your followers will be on multiple sites, with each site comes a different demographic. Are you an entrepreneur turned spokesperson? Consider adding LinkedIn to your rotation. Are you a model or photographer? Instagram is a very visual platform. Singer-songwriter? YouTube is a must. Comedian? Twitter is easy to send out funny one-liners. Chef turned blogger? Pinterest can tease viewers with delicious photos that link to the recipes on your site. Poet? Tumblr is where the writers like to hang out. Are you trying to reach a younger audience? Snapchat. Are you trying to reach an older audience? Facebook. You get the idea. If you’re still not sure where you might fit, see where your idols are. If they have similar fanbases and are experiencing successful engagement, maybe follow their lead.
2.) Find Your Brand
After picking your platforms out, it’s important to figure out what your brand is. When your business is more focused, it makes it easier for your audience to agree with your message. This doesn’t mean posting the same thing every day or straying from your identity to fit in a box. It means when approaching social media management, it’s not just about posting: it’s about understanding who you are as an entertainer, and understanding who your audience is.
Let’s say you’re a pop artist. If your songs convey certain messages, your fans are going to identify with those messages. So if you represent body positivity and empowerment in your songs, you could post content about this. Or if you always feature a flower in your cover art, this is part of your aesthetic and “brand,” as well.
Another huge thing about brand is understanding how to please your audience. You wouldn’t want to say anything that would make them feel isolated. For example, if you run analytics on your fans and determine that many of them are also fans of Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish, it’s not a good idea to post anything negative about Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish fans.
3.) Videos, Videos, Videos!
There’s a lot of great content out there, so your videos need to meet professional standards. If you performed the best comedy set of your life but the video you posted was on a shaky phone in the audience with laughs drowning out your joke, that’s not the video you want to post (and if you have something like this on your profile, delete it now). Your fans are much more likely to watch something that matches the standards of other YouTubers and pros who know their way around a camera.
And the fact of the matter is, videos get you more traffic. Consider these statistics from sproutsocial: in a three year period, views on videos have increased by 99% on YouTube and 258% on Facebook. As for Twitter, if your tweet has a video in it, it is six times more likely to get a retweet. Six times. Some social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook even have algorithms that favor videos because they get more traction for the platform, so it’s bound to get more traction for your profile.
4.) Share Content from Behind the Scenes
Behind the scenes pictures and videos are so easy to post because you don’t need to make new content for it. Followers love to see how their favorite art comes together. Examples would be little video clips from photo-shoots, pictures of photographers behind their camera, stripped back vocals of a single, etc. These are all cool snippets of your life as an entertainer that take little effort to post or plan.
This type of post can also work as promotional work for your upcoming project. Teasing little bits of it coming to life will make it all the more exciting for your fans to put the pieces together later on. It’s a win-win, because it’s something that as an entertainer you would’ve done anyway, but you can incorporate this marketing tactic in your social media management.
5.) Partner with Influencers
When there’s so much content saturation, it’s hard for viewers to sort through all the noise and find the entertainers that actually resonate with them. So, making a connection with a trusted influencer who partners with good products only could give you all the more credibility. Fifty percent of buyers reach out to influencers to review their new product because influencers seem like a more organic approach to marketing.
But, make sure to do your research. If you’re a personal trainer vlogger, reach out to Instagram influencers who focus on fitness, nutrition, and self-love to validate your talent, not someone who’s not in your niche. And make sure their following is big enough that it could impact your business.
Also, make sure you have an incentive planned for the influencer. Give them a reason to join forces with you like free tickets to your performances, reposting their content on your feed, etc. It’s these extra steps that give them all the more reason to help you out.
Check out our roster of social media influencers.
This is the time to shine online. Especially now that the world is practicing social distancing, almost all social interaction will take place on a screen. Social media management is your top marketing technique in the digital age with the potential for major outreach, so treat it as such. Strategise, optimise your feeds, and the results will come.