If you want to promote your music online, it's important to have a good-looking, useful website.
You can think of a website as a digital storefront for all things related to your music. It can serve as the hub by which fans (both current and prospective) can find out more about your music.
A good website will allow you to easily distribute links to your music, videos, merch, and anything else associated with your brand.
But you don't need an overly fancy website to make a difference.
Tools like Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, and other website creation services make it super easy for you to create attractive websites without the need for coding or web development skills.
Honestly, this tip should probably be the first one you act on.
No matter how good your music is, if you can't create a concrete, memorable brand that you package your music in, no one will remember you as an artist.
Your first priority when promoting your music online should be to create a simple branding kit.
Why? By making your branding memorable and consistent, you make it that much easier to promote your music and brand online.
These days, people are inundated with music, videos, and other short-form content.
Do yourself a favor and make sure you have these simple branding assets ready to go – trust me, they'll make everything from making social media pages to creating a website that much easier.
If you want to start building your brand as a musician, it's VERY important that you start getting written up in music blogs.
Getting written up in music blogs will help signal to potential fans that you're doing big things in the industry.
This may sound obvious, but remember that, sometimes, people will judge your music based on what others have already said about it.
So if you're making music that you believe in, or that you believe others will like, you'll want people to see that.
If others begin seeing you in music blogs all over the web, they may take on the narrative they read about and spread that message on their own.
Make it simple for them to spread that message by getting coverage in music blogs.
At Promo Panda, we've helped thousands of artists get interviewed and written up by music blogs all over the web.
A music blog can be a great place to start communicating with the world about your music. After all, if people see that writers are taking the time to cover your music and career, odds are that they'll see your brand as a legit entity.
Plus, it's one thing to promote yourself. If there are independent writers singing your praises, people will undoubtedly be impressed.
If you'd rather spend time making music and interacting with fans (as you should be!), let us handle the blog outreach.
It’s no secret that social media is a powerful marketing tool.
The key to capturing the attention of your target audience is to create content that is both shareable and authentic.
Your posts should be both authentic and shareable because if your social media audience sees you as a "phony" or "fake" who is too interested in the purely marketing aspects of social media, they will lose respect for you as an artist and will move on to the next artist who may not even be as talented as you are.
Promoting your music online begins with using social media in a way that’s consistent with your brand as an artist.
The better you get at using social media, the more fans you’ll make with your social media accounts.
Post frequently, but don't feel like you have to overdo it. Sometimes, posting less often than other artists means that, once you finally do post, your fans will be that much keener on checking out your content.
Our last tip isn't so much something you do, but a way you can think.
As you promote our music online, you're bound to come across mean-spirited people who send hateful words your way.
Sometimes this hate will be levied in the form of so-called "criticism," but the reality is that most of these "critiques" aren't constructive in the slightest.
Much of the hate you'll receive online isn't really helpful, and in these instances, it's better to just ignore criticism outright than worry about exactly how you might incorporate the feedback.
While some people are out to get you, others actually have the best of intentions.
When someone shares a compliment with you, it's common courtesy to reciprocate by sending a positive or inspiring comment of your own.
But if you have a disagreement with someone, or are confronted by hateful words, or if you're just plain unhappy with someone's words, I highly suggest keeping your distance.
We've all experienced the wrath of internet haters at some point, so let's just consider this general advice a compromise between keeping it real and maintaining a friendly disposition
If you're ever feeling too drained to fight the trolls, the solution is simple – don't fight, just ignore!
While it's obvious that you have the power to control how you're perceived online, don't be discouraged if it takes upwards of a year or two for you to start seeing tangible results.
An important thing to remember is to know where to spend your time.
Don't hesitate to use services like Fiverr or Upwork to help speed up your brand identity creation.
Here at Promo Panda, you can build a robust music blog media portfolio with just a few clicks. This can save you a HUGE amount of time (which, as the adage goes, is the equivalent of saving money in the long term).
Instead of running around and trying to do every aspect involved with promoting your music online, learn to only spend your time on the things that absolutely requires you to be involved.
Your time as an artist is immensely valuable. Always keep your eye on the prize, and good things will happen.
Remember to always keep pushing and trying your best. Eventually, the world will begin to not only notice your music but your general artistry as well.
