Producers need to invest in a growth strategy to grow their audience. Coming up with a marketing strategy is necessary for increasing exposure for your beats. Having a great strategy will get your beats and projects in front of thousands and sometimes millions if done correctly. Now, there are plenty of ways to go about marketing your beats, but I am going to go over the easier methods for beginners.
It is important to know that simply posting on social media will NOT be enough to get your music heard. It takes dedication and most importantly, consistency. If you do not have the time for these tasks, you might be better off paying for sponsored ads on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube etc.
Prepare Your Social Media Strategy
What’s success without preparation? Nothing. That’s right, before we start sharing or posting anything we must cover 3 important steps. The 1st is stocking up beats, 2nd is signing up for EVERY social site, 3rd is having a consistency plan. Let’s dive in!
Stack Up Beats
Most of you already have some beats ready to be published or have plenty of unfinished tracks. Most beginner producers post as they make, meaning that they post the beat on social media as soon as they finish. This is the wrong way to do things as it causes lots of pressure on our second point; consistency.
Instead of publishing right away, lets hold off until you have around 15-30 beats. You may include unfinished projects because most social media sites only allow videos up to one minute. 30 beats should last you 2 months if you decide to do 2 beats a week. This is the power of planning. When you stack up your beats like this, you now have 2 months to make more beats or focus on other important factors for your marketing.
If you are having trouble with creating more beats, try reading our creativity tips post! There are many ways you can boost your creativity to make sure you’re never stuck in a writers block!
Sign Up for Social Media Sites
If we’re going to take our marketing seriously, we must sign up to as many social media sites as we can. This will make you look more professional and it will allow you to cover all platforms regardless of traffic. This in turn will build your brand and will make people trust your business more than someone who only has an Instagram profile. I understand that maybe most of your beats sell on Instagram but this is about your online presence as a whole.
For producers, the essential social media sites are Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube & Twitter. Every time you publish a beat, you must upload the same beat to all of your social media on the same day. This sounds like a lot of work, but in reality, there are plenty of tools that help you schedule your posts so you do not have to waste any valuable time. This brings us to our last step before sharing to communities.
Forming a Consistent Publishing Plan
Forming a consistent publishing plan is the most important step in this article. This will build your audience and grow your account organically and effectively. This will also tell fans how dedicated you are to your craft. But most importantly, consistency builds predictability. If you post at random days and times, your fans will always have to catch you at the right time. This is difficult when you are trying to build a fan base. On the contrary, if you post every Tuesday and Friday at 3 pm, then your fans will know when to expect your content.
I recommend posting 2-3 times a week, all at a certain time. To achieve this, I use scheduling tools to schedule and post all of my content without my presence. Facebook and Instagram have their own scheduling tool, Business Suite. YouTube also allows scheduling on its platform, as well as Twitter. SoundCloud allows scheduling but you must have a premium subscription.
Sharing Your Beats
Once your scheduled posts are posting, it is time to share with the masses. Share your posted beats and pick the platform you want to hyper-focus on. Once you picked the platform, use that link to post on as many communities as you can. From Facebook Groups to local directories like craigslist, there are plenty of music communities you can find on the internet. While there are many communities, there is one that sticks out more than the others.
Reddit is one of the most powerful online communities out there. Reddit is a large network that has thousands of communities. Posting your music on there can literally make you viral. Chance The Rapper has been known to be an active Reddit user during the start of his career. Although Reddit is this powerful, you must abide by each community’s rules. This is the part where most people get confused.
Build Reddit Karma
Reddit uses ‘Karma’ as part of their great anti-spam system. Karma is gained when a user upvotes your contribution to whatever community. For example if you post a funny meme in a funny community, people will upvote your post and you will gain karma. One of the fastest way to gain Karma is by asking a question on the ‘Ask Reddit’ community. Another way is to look at the Reddit homepage and browse through the trending communities. Once you find a trending community, go to google and search up a meme that will relate to that community. Post that on there and see your Karma fly!
Join Hip Hop Communities
Now that you have Reddit Karma, you may join lots of communities and post your links on there as long as you follow their rules. Some popular hip hop communities are hiphopheads, rap, hiphop, listentothis, music, makinghiphop, and indiemusicfeedback. It is important to READ the rules of each community before you post because most communities have a specific title format you must follow. For example, listentothis requires the title format to look like this: Artist Name – Song Name [Genre] (Year).
This single strategy alone will promise to deliver plenty of new feedback. Make sure you engage with each community you are a part of. This is how you will b able to avoid any bans. It is worth noting that you simply can not spam your link to multiple communities because Reddit will be able to detect the same link across many different areas. So, you will need to alternate links or post other relevant content that is not yours. Reddit will see you as a contributor and you will now be able to post your music links more often.
Conclusion
Producer marketing has been a subject kept secret until now. Support Hip Hop plans to help artists with creating paths for themselves to gain social media exposure. Learning this basic marketing plan above is applicable to any music profession. Take our producer growth tips and tell us how you find them working! We’d love to hear what you think!
Amazing on what teachings they have to offer, can’t forget to mention the tools of marketing.