In this how-to article we explore a unique approach to one of the hardest and most stressful components of promoting yourself in the music industry, pulling in views on your music video, something even professional PR companies often struggle to do successfully.
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Guest post by Alexander Mckendrick of Burstimo
When it comes to your music promotion, this is one of the most stressful aspects of releasing your music. Getting more Youtube views on your music videos is an incredibly difficult thing to do and even some Music PR companies struggle to drive views to videos.
Have you read articles like this before, maybe with similar titles, but it’s got you nowhere?
Everything you will read in this article is completely unique, giving you tips which we are using right now to drive views to music videos.
There are other articles about this topic and it always seems to be the same advice, mailing lists, Facebook groups, asking friends and family to share the video, sharing it on your socials etc, but we all know this doesn’t work, and will probably account for 500-1000 of your views.
To really drive views to your video you need to be using tips which are relevant to 2018, in as little as a few years promotion techniques have changed dramatically. Not only do you want views, but you want views from the right people, those will become fans and share your video to an even wider audience, so here is our best tips for getting more video views which you can get started on today.
01. Reddit
Reddit is a fantastic resource, if you aren’t familiar with Reddit here is our brief description:
Reddit is a completely open platform which allows people to submit links from all over the internet, people then vote up or down on whether they like the content or think it is relevant. Reddit is divided in to ‘subreddits’ which categorises the content, so you may have an Indie Rock subreddit, a soccer subreddit or even a carpentry subreddit.
Reddit is where most of the virals and stories you see on social media originate from, so this is the best platform to give your music the best chance of going viral.
Here are our suggested subreddits:
Each subreddit will have their own rules on posting, so be sure to follow them. Modesty also goes down well on Reddit, anything that says along the lines of “Best music video this year” will be downvoted in to oblivion.
If you post your music and it doesn’t get any upvotes, try deleting the post and posting it again with a tweaked title 24 hours later, maybe you’ll catch people in a better mood.
02. Find people who have shared similar music videos
This one is crucial for us, as they say word-of-mouth is the strongest form of advertising, so you are most likely to get a lot of clicks to your music video if someone were to share it on their socials.
If you are an indie rock band and are looking to get more views on your music video, you can use lots of different search functions on social media to see people who have shared artists similar to you.
For example, you could search Twitter for “Foster the People” or take their latest single and search the url directly in to Twitter. Create a shortlist of all of the people who have shared that track, them DM them all saying something like…
“Hey, I noticed you shared the new Foster the People track, I absolutely LOVE that one.
Check out this track too, I hope you like it, and if you really love it feel free to share it! :)”
If you can get 10 people with 1000 followers each to share your track, that’s a 10,000 person reach which has cost you absolutely nothing.
03. Get your track added to another Youtube channel
I don’t think artists are utilising this one enough. Sometimes artists can be too precious about getting the views to their own Youtube channel, but our objective here is to get your music promoted to as many people as possible, if your music is good enough, they will find you and listen to your other songs.
Almost every Youtube channel has a contact email address which allows you to submit your music, simply go to the channel and then the about section, and click “view email address”
04. Social Media
We know you’ve already done this, it’s the first thing most artists do when they release a new music video and want to promote it to the world, your own following is where it starts.
But have you nurtured your followers enough for them to even see your posts?
As Facebook have changed their algorithm, you need to have a strategy already in place which is going to let Facebook know you have the potential to have high engaging content so it pushes your music video to a higher percentage of people who have liked your page. This is the same for all social media platforms.
You need to create a social media strategy which allows you to create posts which receive constant engagement, whether you are creating polls, challenges, blog posts or funny videos, it needs to be something which people can relate to and share.
We understand that as musicians this isn’t what you’d like to be doing, and may not come naturally to you, but unfortunately the social media algorithms have forced us to go down this route in order to reach a larger audience.
05. Facebook ads
Following on from Social Media, I wanted to include this tip because Facebook advertising can work incredibly well, but we see so many artists making mistakes with Facebook ads for their music video that they may not realise their money is being burnt in to thin air.
You need to think about your audience’s current frame of mind, and attention you give to sponsored posts when you scroll through your Facebook feed, how often do you stop and watch a sponsored video?
Because that is exactly how others are going to react to your music video. So, although Facebook can give you data which looks like incredibly high numbers, getting 100,000 views for as little as $300, what these views actually represent may be soul crushing to you.
Facebook considers a view to be someone who watched the first 3 seconds of your video. That’s enough for people to simply scroll past and not even listen to a single note of your track.
If you are going to upload your music video directly to Facebook, you need to give people a reason to stop scrolling, turn their volume up and listen. You could do this by putting reviews on the video which validates why the video is worth watching, or you could put up a title such as “For fans of: Catfish and the Bottlemen” then promote only to Catfish and the Bottlemen fans.
If you really wanted to be clever, you could run Facebook ads for 3 different videos, with different bands mentioned. For example:
Video ad 1
“For fans of The Hunna as the title promoted to The Hunna fans
Video ad 2
“For fans of Blossoms” as the title and promote to Blossoms fans
Video ad 3
“For fans of The 1975” as the title and promote to The 1975 fans and so on…
You could direct each ad to your Youtube video (this is a lot more expensive than a direct upload to Facebook), and you can be absolutely sure each view will be a potential fan of your music
06. Youtube ads
Youtube ads are an under-priced resource in marketing right now, not just for the music industry. What is fantastic about Youtube ads is how well you can target your audience, you can run your ad before other music videos or any other channels which may relate to your genre of music.
Why we love them so much is that you don’t have to pay unless someone either clicks through to your music video or they watch the full 30 seconds of your ad, so you really only have to pay if you get results.
You can set up your Youtube ad campaign by setting up a Google adwords account and choosing a video campaign.
07. Collaborations
Our final tip is to collaborate with others. If you are struggling to get views on your videos, you can plan ahead and offer to collaborate on a track with an artist or band who may have a bigger fan base than you right now, this will help raise awareness for your band and you can attract new fans from each other and have a 2+2=5 situation.
Remember if you are getting 10,000 views on your videos, don’t reach out to someone who is getting 1m views, look for an artist at the same level as you or slightly bigger, but you have to be able to offer them something, whether it is access to your fan base too, or perhaps money, but they won’t do it as a favour.