by Kahliah A. Laney

June 29, 2011

The Future of Music: Dos and Don’ts of Promoting Your Music on Social Media

---

DON’T
Air Dirty Laundry
Sutton cautions against Tweet beefs and blog battles ‘a la Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa or Khia on Nicki Minaj‘s latest album. He says the same applies to the press.

“I wouldn’t attack the media or blogs because you’re gonna need them at some point, even though they may come at you wrong,” he cautions

Staying positive gives artists the upper-hand.

“If you use your social media channels correctly then you could often say, ‘No, that was incorrect, this is the truth, here’s my statement,’ and move on.”

Inundate Fans
Moss stresses the importance of deciding what you want to send, like performance dates or snippets of a new song and how often you want to send it.

“The more frequent it is, the less likely people are to pay attention. I think that’s just one of those things where you just have to see how much people are responding to gauge how often you send things out,”  he argues.

He advises starting weekly and gradually increasing based on fan response

“The great thing about social media tools is that you can monitor the engagement,” he says.

Mix Work and Play
Moss says sending personal messages, not consistent with the brand, is a sure way to lose fans and followers. Sutton seconds that and also warns against publishing inappropriate photos on official sites and commenting on businesses or other performers that could be potential partners someday. Always keep the bigger picture–and goals–in mind.

Stop at Setting Up Accounts
Moss, who was at one time an aspiring rapper, says not to expect the Web to do the work for you.

“The same hustle that people have on the streets pushing their mixed tapes and their CDs at different events, the people that are successful online have that same hustle,” he says. “Just because you have social media doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically blow up, I think you still have to get your hustle on and you gotta study it a little bit see what works for other people and then follow those best practices.”