Social Media Best Practices

As part of CMC's continued commitment to professional development within the sector, our promotion and devlopment department has created a helpful guideline for performers, composers and other new music professionals outlining how to utilise social media as a promotional tool for music.

SOCIAL MEDIA BEST PRACTICE: TOP TIPS 

Be mobile aware 

• Remember that images look different on mobile and may need to be resized and that the verbal content of posts should be concise, with shortened links (or ideally links embedded in the accompanying image) to suit mobile users.
• Engage with your audience and know your industry. Look at what similar organisations or individuals who have a strong social media following post and update on their pages, study what kind of content captures their users imagination and interest and use this information to help shape your own unique voice on social media, as well as engaging with users proactively (i.e like, sharing, re-tweeting, commenting and mentioning others).
• Social media is for sharing, so the more you share relevant content by those in your industry or audience, the more likely it is that your updates and posts will be shared in return
• Be consistent: Post regularly, be active in your engagement with users and remember to use a similar tone across different platforms and posts that reflects you and/or your organisation.

Create Engaging Content

• Language – TONE: Always positive and confident tone on social media which reflects the voice of your brand. Please reread posts to make sure they do not come across as negative.
• CALL TO ACTION: What do you want someone to do with this tweet, post, video, link? Share, read, buy tickets? Tell the reader what you want every single time you post. E.g “Here’s a sneak peek at our latest video. Please watch and share with your friends!”
• Format: Use short paragraphs and/or short sentences, social media engagement needs to be direct and concise. Skip unnecessary words and avoid jargon, the passive tense and needless repetition. Put the most important information first.
• Address your users or audience directly, with the correct language, i.e ‘’Please watch and share with your friends!”

Social Media Platforms

• Create a Twitter account for your band/ensemble/festival or event
• Optimise your profile: Good quality images for your cover/profile picture, include link to your website
• Be consistent: try to tweet daily, with up to 5 tweets a day.
• Never tweet without a picture, especially when asking people to pledge. Tweets with pictures are much more likely to get engagement.
• ALWAYS use a hashtag. Optimal 2 hashtags in 1 tweet.
• Don’t be afraid to share the same thing multiple times! Twitter is a constant feed of info so copy and paste tweets that did well.
• DO tweet at night time and early in the morning
• Use Twitter Lists to keep up connections with people who are relevant and relationships you want to encourage on the platform. DO share content from other people in your industry

• DO ask others to share your content in DM or reach out to them in a tweet with content that is relevant to them! “Hey @CMCIreland. Have you seen my upcoming concert featuring music by irish composers?”
• Tag others in your tweets to increase your reach. To save character space, tweet with a picture and tag up to 10 others in the picture.

• Create a Facebook profile for band/ensemble/festival or event
• Optimise your profile: Good quality images for your cover/profile picture, include link to your website. Complete the “Call to action” button on the profile as well as other buttons such as “Buy Tickets Now” or “watch video” etc.
• Post less on Facebook aiming to up to 7 - 10 posts in 1 week. Try to avoid multiple posts in 1 day.
• Use Facebook Events to promote your events and sell tickets. Post often in the event page itself with relevant content.
• Tag others in your posts to increase your reach, especially important for content made by others ie videos and pictures etc. 
• Facebook groups - great way of finding new audiences online. Join Contemporary Music Ireland (admin by Contemporary Music Centre) to share your event/recordings/opportunities with people you know are interested.
• DO use promoted posts on Facebook to target specific audiences with your content.

• Create a YouTube channel
• Optimise your profile: Good quality images for your cover/profile picture, include link to your website.
• Make compelling videos with good quality audio and visual.
• Add a call to action at the end of your videos; “If you liked this video, please subscribe!”
• Include good detailed descriptions both on your profile page but within your video descriptions. This helps people find your videos through Google.
• SHARE your YouTube videos through your other channels (FB/Twitter)
• Build followers by giving incentives to go to your YouTube channel from Facebook/Twitter - for example make a short video saying “I’ve just made an awesome video and put it on YouTube - go to my YouTube channel now to watch it!”
• This gives your audience a reason to leave FB/Twitter and actively visit your YouTube channel and will hopefully lead to them subscribing.
• Other profiles for promoting your music are Soundcloud, Bandcamp, BreakingTunes, Spotify and Apple Music

• Don't expect tons of traffic – and don't expect followers overnight; it takes time.
• Don't share images unless they are in the public domain or licensed accordingly.
• Don't write too much; let the images curate themselves.
• Don't expect your colleagues to take great images with bad-quality mobile phones; make sure they have the appropriate equipment.
• Don't accuse colleagues of taking bad pictures – make sure that everyone involved can experiment without fear of being shut off.
• Do show naturalistic photographs (nothing too formal or stagey).
• Do show spontaneous images in a good mix.
• Do use videos.
• Do show a mix of actual people, activities and objects.
• Do interact with your audience – ask questions.

A visual slideshow version is avilable below, as is and a more detailed text document here.