How to Promote Yourself and Your Music

Alright, you’ve been doing the hard work of practicing and honing your skills, and you want to share it with your community and the world. What are some basic steps you should take to promote yourself and your performances?

FOUNDATIONAL STEPS: PROMOTING YOURSELF

Online presence is not everything, but it is extremely important. People need to be able to type your name into a search engine (like Google) and easily be able to find out who you are, what you do, and how to contact you. How can this be done?

• Maintain a professional website and domain. It will cost a little bit to maintain monthly, but it is worth it. Squarespace, WIX, Shopify, and Wordpress are great web hosting options – each will walk you through the basic steps to set up your site yourself. With professional template options, Squarespace is probably one of the easiest to use. WIX has the most customizable options in design. Shopify is great if you want to set up a webstore to sell items. 
  
  Pro Tip: Keep track of how much you spend on your website to write it off on taxes as marketing if you file as self-employed.

• Make sure your biography is up to date and that people can easily contact you. Your website should clearly state your background and what you do, in a professional manner. Make sure to set up a Contact page so there are no questions about how to contact you. If you perform regularly, post a calendar on your website and update it often! It’s a great idea to have an option on your website where people can “subscribe” via email for updates on future performances and other news.
  
  
• Make sure you have quality photos of yourself and recordings of your work. Your photos should represent the genre you specialize in and look professional. Use the same photo for your bio and headshots on social media to help with your branding so people can easily recognize that it’s your account.

• Be present on social media (Facebook AND Instagram). If social media isn’t your thing, that is okay! You don’t need to be that person posting what you eat every day or what you’re working on every moment, but it is important for people to be able to easily look up your name and find information about your work. If you don’t have any social media accounts, it makes it harder for people to find you. You’re also missing out on an opportunity for peers to tag your accounts and recommend you—which is the best type of marketing, it’s free and personal!
  
  If you are someone who has used social media for a long time and has collected lots of history, check your public preview to make sure your content is appropriate. Some artists decide to have a private personal account and a more professional “page.” That is a good option to protect your privacy; just know, the algorithms favor personal accounts over business pages.

PROMOTING YOUR PERFORMANCES & MUSIC

• When organizing a concert, know your target audience and spread word on as many platforms as possible! If you’re performing with a well known symphony, then you probably don’t need to promote yourself to generate an audience. But if you’ve organized a concert all by yourself, you better start spreading word! Sometimes venues help, but other times they can’t or won’t do the legwork for you. It’s extremely important to check your contract and make sure to ask what to expect when it comes to promoting and marketing. (This is where having a social media presence comes in extremely handy – it is an important tool and shouldn’t be overlooked.)
  
  
• List your event on your website as soon as possible. Include all the details: What, when, where, who, and cost. If you’ve been collecting emails on your website for performance updates, make sure to share your event in a timely manner so people can plan ahead.

• Create a public Facebook event. Make sure it is public! Why? Your whole city can look up events and see it – they don’t need to be your friend or follower to come across your event. Make sure details about the performance are all there so people know what to expect. Additional things to include beside the “what, when, where, who, and cost”: brief bio of performers, performance length, and parking. Add a professional header photo and a professional event title. Post a few videos in the discussion area as time gets closer to the event to help draw awareness. Make sure to keep an eye out for notifications of people asking questions. Facebook events are the first place many people turn to to look for updates in case of potential postponements due to weather or other circumstances, or for answers to questions they might have forgotten to plan for (Cash only? Where to park?).
  
  
• Make a post on Facebook and “boost” it. Facebook and Instagram operate under the same ownership. If you pay a little to boost your post, not only will it show to more people, you can connect your Instagram so it shows up on that platform as well. 
  
  Pro Tip: Make sure to uncheck the boxes to exclude promotion via private messages and third parties (which shows up outside of social media on websites users are already visiting). Nobody likes getting spammed in their inboxes, nor easily trusts random ads on websites.

• Other ideas, depending on how much you want to promote and what type of event it is: 
  
  
• Make posters and post them in appropriate areas (music shops, community centers, coffee shops, etc.)
• Contact news stations, especially if it’s for a special cause – press is always looking for uplifting news to spread. 
• Personally invite people who you know would love to come – personal invites go a long way. 
• Check to see if there are any online calendars that would list your event. K.C. Strings lists local monthly string concerts on our website and love it when people send in requests! (Send your event to info@kcstrings.com)
  
  
• Anything else? SHARE, SHARE, SHARE! Make sure to share your event details as soon as possible. Don’t forget to share and share some more leading up to the date like the week of, the day before and  the day of! People easily forget and need reminders. Don’t expect people to remember your concert just because you shared it once the month before. Your audience is inundated with information all day long, all around them. Truly, it is easy to forget. You need to keep sharing and share why your performance is worth enjoying!

That covers some of the basics of promoting yourself and your concerts online. However, don’t forget the importance of building your community by meeting with people in person and building your network organically. These are great tools, but the most important thing is audience connection – it’s an element that is incredibly difficult to achieve solely online!