Image via flickr.com; used under Creative Commons
As a musician, the last thing you want to do is spend hours and hours every single week dealing with your social media. After all, you probably started in music to be creative, not to sit behind a computer dealing with marketing.
While it’s awesome that you can be in direct contact with your fans in today’s modern music industry, it definitely puts a lot of strain on your time. You need to post quality content on a regular basis, and on top of that, you need to post unique content to your different channels to keep your fans interested across the board. I mean, why should someone follow you on Facebook and Twitter if you push out exactly the same messages on both platforms? That all adds up to a lot of content and a lot of time.
But there’s a solution to simplify your approach, maximize your impact, and speed up the process – and it starts with just one piece of content.
"Circular viralocity" is a phrase coined by marketer and career coach Brendon Burchard. In short, it’s a very simple formula that will help you turn one piece of content, like a cover video, music video, or new song, into multiple pieces of unique content that you can easily share across social media. It’s also a way to circulate your fans to all your online channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud, your blog, and your email list.
In the end, not only will your social media promotion be more effective, it will also be easier and less time-consuming to manage. So let’s break down the steps.
1. Multiply your content
The first step is to derive multiple pieces of content from whatever you’re sharing, and it’s actually a lot simpler than you might think. As an example, let’s say you’re uploading a cover video or even an original song video to YouTube:
- YouTube: First, you’ll post the music video or cover video to YouTube.
- Facebook: Create a shorter edit of the video and upload directly to Facebook to take advantage of its sleek video player.
- Twitter: Grab your favorite lyric line from the song and create a quick quote graphic in Canva to post to Twitter (check out these Canva Twitter post templates for inspiration)
- Instagram: It’s pretty easy to just snap a photo while you’re filming the music video or cover video, but if you forget, you can always just grab a screenshot from the video for Instagram.
- SoundCloud: Pull the audio from your video and post it to SoundCloud.
- Blog: Your blog gives you the chance to go a little deeper with your fans, so use this opportunity to let them into your world a little. One option is to simply post the video and write up your thoughts on the song, what it means to you, the story behind your lyrics, or what the writing and recording process was like. If you have more time, you could film a separate video where you actually explain and talk about some of these things on camera and post that instead.
- Email: You can definitely just email out a link to your blog post, but if you want to take it a step further, you could send your email subscribers a free download of the MP3 audio from the video.
Of course, there are a ton of other options. You can post short videos to Twitter, different lyric quotes or images to Facebook, or free downloads on SoundCloud. Get creative with it!
2. Link it together
Okay, so now you have a lot of really great content. This is where a lot of people stop, but we’re going to take it a few steps further to really power-drive your social reach by linking everything together.
What do I mean by that? Basically, you want everything you post to be linking somewhere else.
- Your shorter Facebook video can link to the full YouTube video.
- Your Twitter can link to the YouTube video, your SoundCloud, or your blog post.
- You can add links to your social channels, your blog post, and a place they can buy/download the MP3 for the song in the description of your YouTube video.
- Your blog post can include a link to sign up to your email list.
See what we’re doing here? We’re getting your fans to check out all the awesome content you just created to drive up the exposure and engagement on all your online channels. It’s a big content circle!
3. Drive traffic
If you really want to maximize this strategy, you want to be actively encouraging your fans to follow through the content circle. In other words, let them know that you’ve got a lot of different and cool content for them on your other channels.
When you’re working with YouTube, most people don’t take the time to look in the description box, especially if they’re viewing on mobile. So the best way to get your fans to check out your links is to actually ask them. Do a quick voiceover at the end of your video encouraging your fans to open the description box and click through your links, or even better, get on video yourself.
On Facebook and Twitter, ask your fans to click through the links you share, and tell them why they should. What will they get by clicking through that they can’t get here?
If you follow this circular viralocity strategy, your social media should be much less time-consuming and much more effective. If you'd like to learn more strategies to simplify your career and unlock more opportunities, I'd like to give you the opportunity to download my most popular ebook, Hack the Music Business, for free. It’ll take you through some of the best strategies for indie musicians to help you grow your fanbase and your career.
Get more social media tips:
- Ask a Publicist: 5 Social Media Dos and Don'ts for Bands
- 5 Key Elements of a Comprehensive Social Media Strategy
- Personal vs. Professional: How to Balance Your Band's Social Media Posts
- How to Make Your Old Social Media Content New Again
Dave Kusek is the founder of the New Artist Model, an online music business school for independent musicians, performers, recording artists, producers, managers, and songwriters. He is also the founder of Berklee Online, co-author of The Future of Music, and a member of the team who brought midi to the market.
