How To Use Twitter, AirBnB, And Instagram’s Marketing Techniques To Promote Your Music

TThree of the most startling successful startups around today are Twitter, AirBnB, and Instagram. Each of these companies started without massive marketing budgets but managed to get unprecedented numbers of users through smart marketing. What’s their secret? More importantly – how can you use it to market your music?

In the following 3 case studies, I’ll show you how to replicate the techniques that Twitter, AirBnB and Instagram used to get your music heard.

NYC

AirBnB and Instagram’s Crossposting Strategy

AirBnB (note from Editor, Andrew Apanov: being a huge fan of AirBnb myself I added an affiliate link, it will bring you $25 on your first stay if you haven’t signed up yet) giving both is a service that helps people rent out their homes, apartments, and living spaces as an alternative to hotels. You make cash renting out your space, and people can stay avoid the hassle and pricing of hotels. When AirBnB started, they had to struggle against an incredible competitor – Craigslist. But they came across an amazing technique for turning a competitor into an ally.

AirBnB found a way to help their users cross-post their listings on Craigslist. The Craigslist ad linked back to the AirBnB site, resulting in a massive swell in links and bookings and ultimately launching them to the front of the market where they have remained to this day. They leveraged a platform with millions of users to drive interest back to themselves.

Instagram did the same thing by integrating with Facebook. The photo-sharing app was very fortunately featured by Apple right from day one. The real driver of growth, however, was Facebook. Every photo could be instantly shared to the user’s Facebook page, and every time it was shared, there was a little link: “Created with Instagram.” Instagram ended up with millions of links on Facebook pushing users to download the app.

The lesson? If you don’t have a large audience, rely on people who do have an audience to get your music heard.

As a musician, you’re competing against not only other music makers, but also against most types of content being distributed across the Internet. Putting your music online isn’t enough to compete for attention until you have a large audience already. If you don’t have an audience – go to where your audience is and approach them there.

This isn’t as simple as it seems. The obvious routes here are Soundcloud, YouTube, and Facebook. Bare minimum, you have to have your music up on these sites. You should take it a step further. Your end goal is to have as many links back to your music as possible across sites which have the audience you want.

This is why we created profiles and sharing for music on FindMySong – when musicians are looking for collaborators on a new project, we make it easy to crosspost onto Facebook and Twitter as well.

The absolutely most effective way to use this strategy, however, is by leveraging the huge audiences of relevant music blogs.

Blogs are the most important place for your music

Most musicians know that blogs are important, but it’s easy to forget how important they truly are. Music blogs are the single-most concentrated location for your music to be heard. Millions of people every day go to these sites for the express purpose of listening to music. Getting listed on a blog can be make or break for a new song.

AirBnB’s strategy was effective because they ended up with so many listings on Craigslist. Keep this in mind when approaching blogs. One or two submissions are unlikely to be effective. One hundred submissions, on the other hand, will be very likely to get results.

Every time you post a new song you are proud of, you should be submitting it to every relevant blog you can find, right away. The faster you reach out, the more likely you are to be featured. Blogs want fresh content – give it to them!

My favorite way to find blogs to post on is using HypeMachine. Find some artists you sound similar to on the site. Look at what blogs have posted their music. List them all out on a spreadsheet with the editor’s name and contact information. When you post a new song, reach out to every single blog within the hour about getting a feature. You’ll get results.

Twitter found out what made their users stick around

After Twitter already had a few hundred thousand users, they ran into a big problem. Most of their users had “zombie” accounts – meaning, they signed up but never did anything on the site or came back again. This is a big issue, because Twitter had two ways to get more users: pay for them through advertisements, or get them for free through referrals. How could they get more active users, and less one-timers?

Twitter got focused and learned what really made their users tick. Why did people like their service? What made them come back? They found out that people stuck around if they followed people who were interesting. So, Twitter made a change to the way their signup process worked. When a new user signed up, they were forced to follow 5-10 people on Twitter. The result was a massive increase in engagement, which in turn helped them move into millions of signups.

A “zombie account” is very much like when someone listens to one song of yours, and then never engages with you again. How do you get these potential fans to stick around?

Get to know what makes your fans tick

To begin, look at your current audience. Get to know them. Figure out what they’re about, what they are interested in, why they like you. Even if your audience is just a few people right now, it’s important to know what it is about you that they love. Why do they listen to your music? It’s not very difficult to find out – you can query your Facebook and Twitter followings or talk with your fans about what they enjoyed after a show.

This will give you an important insight into what it is about your brand that your fans really love. You can now pull a Twitter and emphasize that insight as much as possible.

Do your fans love your sense of humor? Start creating funny YouTube videos that feature your music and link to your Soundcloud profile. Are your lyrics particularly amazing? Start posting them as poetry or write about how you come up with them on sites like Medium.com.


Now that you know how AirBnB, Twitter, and Instagram triggered their explosive growth, I hope you’re able to take these strategies and apply them to your music. Here’s a good way to think about what these three companies did:

  • AirBnB & Instagram – the distribution; how to get your content found.
  • Twitter – the content; what to create, in addition to your music, that will be appealing to your fans

Guest Post from: Thomas Honeyman. I’m a songwriter and producer from Los Angeles, California, where I co-founded a free online music collaboration platform called FindMySong. Want to chat? Find me on Twitter or on FindMySong.

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