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If you’re an independent artist, you are likely planning on dropping a single or an EP sometime soon. Heck, that’s part of what keeps the bills paid, fans engaged, and your music career rolling. Practically every music career guru on the internet tells you to start promoting it before it’s actually released, but there’s not much information available for how to do that. You don’t want to share the song, but you know you still need to build anticipation for it and promote it before it’s actually done or ready to be released. You need a strategy to make that happen and we’re here to help you with that.
The beauty of promoting something before it’s actually released is that you get to build up suspense for it among your existing fans while exposing your brand to potential new fans and raise a bit of money in the process. Did anyone say pre-orders? But here’s the rub. What do you say, when there’s nothing tangible to share yet? There is so much to share even before your music single or album is released and in this article, we’ll discuss 10 social media content ideas you can use over and over again to promote your new music release before it’s actually released.
Interviews and Trailers
Movie studios do it all the time. They release interviews with actors about a new movie that is not actually coming out until months from now. They also release a series of trailers and posters in the same manner. Take a page out of their book and create some interviews and trailers of your own. In fact, you don’t need a journalist or blogger to help you get interviews. You can just create them yourself. Come up with your own set of questions, sit down in front of a webcam and answer them. Then when you edit the video, just include the questions as text or title screens and show a cut of you answering the questions. Voila! You now have an interview or an interview series.
The same thing goes with trailers. Combine segments from your “interview”, photos or video clips from you in the studio recording the song, video clips from the video shoot if applicable, and a voice-over explaining what the song is about and you’ve got yourself a trailer! Be sure to include the title of the song, when it’s coming out, and a webpage to find out more at the end.
- Interview snippets
- Song trailers
Sneak Peeks
There are a lot of ways to advertise an upcoming release by sharing small snippets of your work. You can do this by sharing pictures of you and your band recording the song at the studio. You could also share some audio/video clips of you rehearsing a small part of the hook without sharing the actual song. Additionally, you could share some hints or motivational messages related to your release based on the original meaning of the song (more about this below). For example, if your new release is a pop song about taking charge in life and you’ve titled the song Get Ya Life, you could say something to the effect of not waiting for things to happen but making them happen yourself and then say Get Ya Life coming out this Spring along with a link for more information (your pre-order page).
- Photos of you recording the song in the studio
- Audio/video clips of you rehearsing the song (snippets only)
- Motivational messages related to the topic of the song
The Purpose Behind The Song
There’s a lot you can say about why you wrote the song, who inspired it, what you hope the song will do for listeners, and how the experience behind the song has impacted your life. I recommend writing a blog post or two about this aspect of your new release and repurposing quotes from your blog post as social media posts. You can get a lot of content from doing this. Consider adding pictures, or animated images to your posts to get more attention.
- Why I Wrote (insert song name)
- Who Inspired (insert song name)
- An anecdotal story about an experience you had that prompted you to write the song
- What are the impacts of the song when listening to it? Ex. My new Single, (insert title of song) will make you dance! Pre-order now…
Related: 50 Engaging Content Ideas Musicians Can Use on Social Media
Your Promotions Verbiage
In addition to the meaning and purpose of the song, there are a few other things you can share about your upcoming release such as what the song is about and who the song was written for. This is actually a part of what I’m calling your “Promotions Pack.” It’s a series of content that will help you promote the song to anyone. It should include your song intro, the intended audience, your elevator pitch, and more. To learn more about creating a “Promotions Pack” for your song, click here. Ultimately, a lot of your social media content during the pre-release phase will come from this pack.
- What is your upcoming release about?
- Who is it for? Describe the audience, who might like it and why.
- What bands/artists would this song remind you of? Ex. How can I describe (insert song title)? Let me put it this way, if Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra were to write a song together, it would sound something like this.
Snippets from the Artwork
The artwork is a huge part of your song. It visually articulates the meaning behind the song without you having to put it into words. Sharing the artwork for your song ahead of its release helps to remind people that the song is on its way. It also promotes that intrigue factor especially if the artwork is really interesting. Share the artwork for the song on social media as part of your pre-promotions. You can also talk about who created the artwork whether it’s a photo of you captured by a photographer or artwork done by an illustrator. Even if you’re the one who created it, even better. This means you can speak directly on your creative process and why you chose the route you did to create it as well as how you decided on the final result.
- Share the artwork behind the song.
- Talk about the author or photographer
- Talk about the photoshoot (if applicable)
- Share the process of creating the art
- Talk about why you landed on this particular art direction
Get the New Release Promotions Checklist
Here’s everything you need to do to promote your music project. Use it every time you have an upcoming release.
Reviews
As artists, we don’t create art in a vacuum. We share it with others as part of the creation process. This means that you probably already have reviews from other people about your new release. You may not have considered this, but you can totally use these ‘reviews’ to promote your song. If you shared the song with fellow artists, or at an open mic, or in your songwriting group and had people say positive things about the song, use it as material to promote your song. You can also have the song professionally reviewed by tons of music listeners and use their feedback as part of your pre-release promotions efforts. If you’ve managed to get a music review critic to share something positive about your song, even better. Use what people have already said about your song as a promotional tool.
- Share reviews from fellow musicians, family, and friends.
- Share review feedback from a professional survey. (Psst, we’ve got a song review service you can use just for this here.)
- Has your song been covered by a music critic yet? Share what they said.
Lyric Quotes
This is an easy one! Take a small snippet of lines from your song, add them to an interesting backdrop, and post them on social media. Even though your fans may not have heard the song yet, simply seeing the lyrics makes it real for them and it builds up the intrigue. You can use this trick weekly to help with a consistent flow of content.
- Lyric quotes as text on an interesting background.
- Share a video of you reciting the lyrics or singing it acapella
- Put the lyrics on a t-shirt and introduce it as a new merch item. Alternatively, you could put it on a mug, a decorative poster, or a face mask. Use Printful to create and offer your merchandise on your website without having to buy any inventory or deal with fulfillment and shipping. Learn more here.
Related: 10 Ways to Promote your New Release on Social Media
Behind the Scenes
There’s plenty of material you can use as social media content taken from behind the scenes related to your upcoming release. Things like studio sessions, screenshots or conversations from your production team such as your mastering or mixing engineers. You can share where you are in the production timeline. You can even talk about struggles or snags you’ve hit along the way and how you overcame them. Or maybe you have yet to overcome them and need help or ideas from your fans? This is an excellent way to engage with your fans about the release, by the way.
- Photo/video highlights from studio sessions
- Tour of the studio
- Screenshots of your DAW workstation
- Conversation snippets from your production team
- Any snags or struggles throughout the production process
- Where you are in the production timeline or what’s coming next
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Song Production
In addition to behind the scenes outtakes, you could also share a little about the actual production of your song and who participated in creating the final version. This gives your fans another peek into your song without you having to release it in its entirety. Talk about what instruments you used and who you worked with to create the different sounds they’ll hear in the song. Talk about the studio where you’re recording the song. If you had anyone work on the song remotely, talk about them, how you connected with them and where they’re from. If you have a band, highlight each band member’s role in the making and/or writing of the song.
- Instruments you used to record the song.
- Introduce the different people who worked on the song and their roles
- Talk about the recording studio, it’s location, it’s accolades, etc
Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the best ways to get attention for any project. Video has become a wild competition among lots of social media platforms. They’re all trying to be an authority in top views and hits on their platform. Therefore, if you incorporate video into your social media content strategy, your posts will most likely be promoted even more over your text/image-based posts. Use this to your advantage! Post videos of you talking about the song, singing snippets from the song, interviewing other people who had a hand in writing or recording the song, and sharing chords found in the song, or why you love the song. You can practically repurpose any content from the ideas above into a video and double your content volume.
Related: How to Get Media Attention for your Music in 3 Easy Steps
Contests
Contests can play a huge role in gaining exposure for your upcoming release in addition to engaging existing fans. There are lots of contests you can do as you gear your fanbase up for a new release. For example, you could do an artwork contest. Have your fans compete by creating the artwork for your new release. This will give them an investment into your project and help keep up the suspense and anticipation. You could also have them guess the title of the song by sharing the hook if you haven’t already released the title of the song. Another contest idea is to have them submit photos of themselves doing something related to the topic of the song or submit their story related to the topic of the song. For example, if your song is about love and relationships, have your fans submit their love story for a chance to win something special. For more contest ideas, check out 10 Easy Contest Ideas for Musicians to Engage Fans on Social Media.
With every post you create, make sure you are teasing the song by including the name of the song, when it will be out, and how people can learn more about it. I strongly recommend creating a pre-order page on your website that shares all the information a fan would want to know about the song including title, when it’s coming out, any pre-release content available, any merchandise you may have created connected to your upcoming release, blog posts about the release, along with a way to pre-order the song before it’s released. This is your one chance to build up momentum before the song is released and you should milk it for everything that it’s worth.
This is an excellent time to capture the attention of new fans and prospects too. If you notice, when celebrities appear on talk shows, they typically are promoting something that is about to be released – a movie, a fragrance, a book, a TV show, etc. That’s because audiences enjoy hearing about what’s new and hot. They tend to get more exposure by pre-promoting their projects and they get to engage with people who may not have known about them in the process. It works the same way on the independent music scene too. As an independent artist, promoting your new release before it’s actually released generates these same benefits.
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Posting on social media is only one facet of what you should be doing to promote a Single in the pre-release phase. There is so much more you can do like engaging your existing audience via other channels, text marketing, video marketing, beefing up your website, working with the media, and so much more. In order to make the most out of this special time, it’s imperative to create a marketing plan just for promoting your new release that will help you tie all of this together and make sense out of it. It can be a lot to handle, but having a marketing plan and a content strategy in place will make things super easy for you. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered here at The Crafty Musician! Take a look at our New Release Marketing Plan and Content Bundle for promoting an upcoming Single or EP. It has everything you need to promote a new music release successfully. It includes a 30 Day Plug-and-Play Marketing Plan along with a bundle of pre-written content pieces so you can customize and share with your fans, with the media, for pitching your music to bloggers, and for getting the word out. Grab it here and worry less.
Get the New Release Promotions Checklist
Here’s everything you need to do to promote your music project. Use it every time you have an upcoming release.
As we’ve proven in this article, there are many things you can post about even before your song is released. These ideas are a great place to start, but I’m sure you could come up with even more. In fact if you do, share it with us in the comments section down below. Our motto around here is, “We are better together” because we each have experiences and can bring something of value to share and teach. We don’t have to go at this alone. Good luck on your release!
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Thanks for the tips! I’m wondering if you only have time to work on some of these ideas which ones would you recommend? Additionally, have you noticed an increase in likes/follows/attention by releasing promotional content in any particular order?
If you have to prioritize these content ideas, I’d say go for the points that interest you the most. My reasoning is if you’re most excited about something, you’re more likely to do it and put the most effort into it. As far as order goes, I haven’t seen a significant difference there. Hope that helps and thanks for stopping by.
Wow, this is a great article, thank you for sharing this very importance topic about music promotion. I hope many aspiring musicians can get a chance to read this. I also recommend trying out a music management tool to help you promote your brand, grow your audience and give your music the attention it deserves.