With real-time audience insights and endless ways to steer the conversation, social media is a must for today's concert promoters. Using the right channels can improve engagement and amplify other marketing efforts—all without blowing the budget.
And once you pick up a little momentum in the right digital spaces, raising awareness of the next big show becomes much less challenging. When it's going well, promoters can turn enthusiasm for a show into organic, fan-led marketing campaigns that can lead directly to improved ticket and merchandise sales.
The best social media plans in live music are also as much art as science. Incorporating audience data is essential, but the best concert promotion campaigns rely on creativity to shake up the formula and ensure a digital space doesn't grow stale. By finding fun and exciting ways to connect fans to the musicians they love, a concert promoter can maximize their social media impact in the critical stretch before a concert.
Why you need to embrace social media for concert promotion
When promoters need to get the word out about a concert, social media is the quickest way to find fans and pass along key information. But many promoters only use social media for the basics, which leads to missed opportunities. Beyond spreading essential information, there are many other reasons why promoters should prioritize outreach on social platforms, such as:
- Creating a sense of community for new fans
- Teasing supplemental events (e.g., giveaways and live streams)
- Building a catalog of fan videos and photos
- Showcasing behind-the-scenes footage
- Detecting audience patterns that can inform marketing efforts
While a flourishing social campaign will present the right image, a paltry effort can also have the opposite effect. Fan enthusiasm can fizzle when event pages appear bland or minimal, undercutting a promoter's goals to use social media as a springboard to sales.
Using superior data to improve your social media strategy
The end result of all the fan engagement is a goldmine of valuable data. Promoters can ascertain who is on a social media channel, what types of posts they engage with, and when they are the most active. This lets concert and venue promoters evaluate their posts and make any necessary adjustments. If fans aren't responding and there is minimal sharing, you might need to improve headlines or provide more digestible posts.
Related: Building New Revenue Streams for Your Live Music Venue
Data also helps you decide when to post content. In most situations, posting early in the morning (on a weekday) is the easiest way to improve visibility, but that's not a guarantee. Every band has a unique collection of fans that comes with unique social media habits. Promoters who adjust the timing of their posts to fit their specific crowd will have an edge in driving engagement. Automated posting also makes it very easy to post exactly when you want without having to be available at that time.
Understanding a fluid audience
Promoters also have to understand that audience members have a wandering eye on social media. The typical person uses seven social media platforms every month, which shows that users are constantly moving to where the action is. Staying on top of these shifts gets much easier if you are able to evaluate user data and adjust as you develop marketing strategies.
While Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, TikTok, and X are often seen as the main social media drivers for live music, concert promoters should keep an eye on others as well. YouTube, Amplify, Bandcamp, Discord, and more all have robust collections of music fans ready to engage with the right content.
Maintaining audience engagement with consistency and creativity
Posting at regular intervals certainly can help, but the sharpest promoters avoid a stale social media page by finding new avenues to spark engagement. Some ways to buoy social media efforts include:
- Adding quizzes and polls—People typically love polls and quizzes, especially when they are about their favorite band or live music in general. They're also easily shared, which organically bolsters engagement efforts.
- Giveaways and contests—Handing out a pair of great seats or some cool merchandise is usually well worth the cost. Contests and games are also fun ways to improve engagement and spread awareness about your upcoming show.
- Streaming pre-concert events—There are plenty of ways to reach fans through a live stream before the show. Promoters can stream contests, conversations with superfans, or anything else that might pique the target audience's interest. Many musicians also enjoy doing Q&A sessions with fans a few days ahead of the concert.
The best promoters balance consistency with new elements that keep social media campaigns fresh and interesting. Fans love to engage with other fans, particularly when they can win gear or showcase their music knowledge. Social media is a great tool for creating a fun and engaged community that can rally around a love of the band in the lead-up to the concert.
Working with micro-influencers
Influencers are now important elements of social media marketing, but finding the right scale is critical for concert promotion. Most promoters don't have a celebrity influencer in their contact network, or even a macro-influencer (roughly 100K followers or more). About 90% of influencers are micro-influencers who bring anywhere from 10K to 100K followers.
Micro-influencers are especially well suited to promoting concerts and live events because they usually have a strong regional presence. Instead of trying to connect with nationally known influencers, locally based micro-influencers can provide a significant boost of enthusiasm for a show or pre-concert event. They are also ideal champions of ticket/merch giveaways. Cultivating a network of reliable micro-influencers is an excellent way to improve social media reach and engagement for any type of concert.
Staying ahead of the curve in concert promotion
Creating a consistent social media presence can seem like a daunting task for any concert promoter. With so many other aspects of the business to handle, promoters can struggle to maintain digital spaces that are most adept at encouraging fan enthusiasm. But today's technology also provides ways to be much more efficient in your approach. Real-time analytics can help you hone your efforts while automation ensures you deliver the posts at the exact right time—even if you're busy handling the rest of the business.
The efficient touch of automation is also a major driving force for today's best music management platforms, which can be an invaluable resource for any promoter. The right software provides a boost of organization and bookkeeping, freeing you up to maximize your social media efforts. To learn how Prism's dynamic management platform can help, contact our team to get started.
