Social Media Marketing Interviews

My project will use popular social media platforms for content delivery. I have decided that I am going to use Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. I found myself somewhat lost while researching these platforms online. Luckily, I recently attended a lecture in which I was shown an interview Chris Hazell, TV Production Lecturer UOB, conducted with Chloe Rhodes, PR Account Executive Aisle 8.

In this interview, Chloe highlighted the main benefits of social media for marketing – the ability to target specific users by analysing their activity data, and the ability to engage users with interactive features. These make social media a highly responsive and effective medium for marketing.

Chloe offered some advice on how to use social media successfully and how to manipulate it to your advantage. She stressed the importance of needing content to engage users within the first three seconds. The importance of a cohesive aesthetic is also very important, so that users can quickly and easily recognise your content. Following on from that, it is important to have a clear, eye-catching logo that instantly conveys your identity. The format of content must also be considered - for example, you should not publish landscape orientated videos on TikTok, a portrait orientated platform. Finally, Chloe mentioned that it is important to monitor trends as they can be used to gain exposure, and it is very important to make sure that you’re not conflicting with trends.

I found this interview incredibly helpful, so I decided to interview two of my peers that study music marketing. First, I interviewed Adam Ateem, a third year Music Business undergrad at the Leeds Conservatoire. He told me that I should avoid spamming on social media. Releasing too much content at once causes social media algorithms to devalue your posts, and users are more likely to unfollow your social media accounts if they’re being bombarded with your content. The next piece of advice he gave me was to only release high quality content. Musicians specifically need to establish themselves as professional because of the huge numbers of amateur musicians on social media. He advised banking up on high quality photos to release at regular intervals. Finally, he suggested that I should seek out and contact similar local artists in order to build a community.

Second, I interviewed Niamh Christian, a third year Music Marketing, Media and Communications undergrad at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute, and founder of Radd! Events UK. She had a lot of good advice about marketing to the classic rock audience, as she is the currently the manager of an up-and-coming psychedelic rock band. She said photos of music production and ‘behind the scenes’ videos get a lot of interest. She mentioned that the DNB audience seem to prefer interesting visuals rather than content about artistic process. The importance of keeping content homogenous across social media platforms was stated. This is get the most out of your content and not alienate any part of your audience. Niamh also warned that TikTok is very hit-and-miss, so I shouldn’t be too concerned if engagement unstable on there. She advised me to focus on Instagram, as that is the main social media that people use to engage with artists. She also compounded the point that it was important to find and support other upcoming similar artists in my area.

I took my research one step further by contacting Olly Hookings, of Hookings Management, who offers a professional management service to help independent musicians market themselves. I had a 30 minute interview with Olly, in which his industry knowledge proved invaluable. Demystifying TikTok, he revealed that in order to be successful on that platform I should align myself with an existing niche. He suggested that covering popular DNB tracks would be a great way to do this, and the phenomenon of reinterpreting and combining tracks is already a big trend on TikTok. Olly also told me that I should use hashtags that my influencing artists use to increase the chance of my content being viewed by their fans. He also prompted me to consider what time of day I should release content, as different demographics are online at different times. The final peice of advice Olly gave me was to follow the 80:20 rule - focus 80% of your effort on one platform because it's better to gain a lot of popularity on one rather than be a little popular on a spread of platforms. This is because audiences can't interact across platforms. Very kindly, he commented that my music concept was very unique and had a lot of potential. I came away from the interview feeling confident and motivated.