Although using various forms of social media to promote new music or an upcoming tour is par for the course by this point, many artists may be neglecting to consider the power of Pinterest, which can be a great resource for inexpensively building your audience and driving web traffic.
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Guest post by Jessica Hackett of Soundfly‘s Flypaper
Marketing your new album or promoting upcoming gigs? Use Pinterest to inexpensively and effectively grow your audience, drive web traffic, and sell your music!
Pinterest is basically a social media scrapbook where users save and share images and links. It has long been considered a powerful tool for driving web traffic, second only to Facebook. Music marketers have been recommending bands invest time into Pinterest advertising for years, but the platform’s reputation for wedding planning and mason jar recipes has kept many musicians from taking it seriously and pursuing its potential.
Here’s the thing, though: Pinterest users are active and have money to spend. Believe it or not, 93% report using their accounts to plan purchases. They’re highly interested in music and spend more money than users of any other social media site.
So how can musicians boost their merchandise sales one pin at a time? It’s surprisingly easy to use content you probably already have to drive sales. With a little planningand a lot of pinning, you’ll see results you can effectively take to the bank.
+ Read more on Flypaper: “It’s About the Relationship: How I Got to 1.5 Million YouTube Followers”
Optimize Your Pins for Purchases
Pinterest is great for driving traffic, but you’ll need a place to direct your new fans. For best results, combine one active account, one well-organized website, and one well-stocked Shopify store.
Most pins include a link to an external website, and you’ll want every original pin that you upload to include one. Choose where you drive web traffic based on what’s relevant to the post to capture people’s related interests.
If you’re completely new to Pinterest, start by looking at what others are doing. Many users link their pins to blog posts, Shopify or Etsy stores, websites, and other social media pages.
If your goal is to use Pinterest to sell albums or merchandise, create and upload pins with that intention in mind. Create many different pins that link to the same product, pin them across boards, and fill out the description for each pin completely so that it’s easy for others to find.
Pinterest is now rolling out a buyable-pins feature, which allows people to find and buy products directly through their accounts. This new feature is currently only available to select businesses but will make advertising and selling products on Pinterest even easier in the near future.
+ Learn more on Soundfly: Get better results from your home-recorded tracks. Take our new, free course, Demo Recording 101, for some of the best tricks for setting up your home studio!
Grow Your Pinterest Following
As with any social media platform, the secret to growing an engaged following is consistent, quality content. Musicians have a great advantage with access to a wealth of pin-worthy material. Song lyrics, sheet music, YouTube videos, educational tutorials, playlists, and album artwork all make great pins.
Create a variety of boards that relate to your brand and influences. You’ll want to include your content along with a wide mix from other sources that your fans will love.
If you’re active on other social media platforms, be sure to share what you’re posting on Pinterest with your followers. You can also try creating collaborative boards or running contests. By pinning frequently and sharing quality content that you’ve found and created, you’ll see your followers grow and expand the depth of your brand.
+ Read more on Flypaper: “How to Use Twitter Lists to Supercharge Your Music Networking”
Don’t Just Focus on Selling
Pinterest users aren’t always looking to shop. They’re creative and crafty, and they’re looking to learn new skills and get inspired by new visual ideas. Brands that merely aim to sell products and don’t otherwise participate in the community won’t go very far, and neither will your band. Bring the artwork and visual identity of your music making to the forefront to catch new listeners’ attention.
Your followers want to learn more about you, and Pinterst is just another medium to tell your story. Here are some quick ideas:
- Share your influences and favorite artists, as well as your songs that were inspired by them.
- Disclose your dream apartment style, and slip in a link to buy your album artwork prints. Include pitches for your albums and merchandise where they make the most sense.
- Create a behind-the-scenes photo album of your latest tour, and include links for new fans to listen and purchase.
Let’s take a page out of the Pinterest playbook from Lady Antebellum. They focus on insider-only access to the band with personalized boards for each member. They are engaged with their followers (check out the board dedicated to re-pinning their fan’s “Pinspiration”). While their brand identity is evident in every post, only a small percent are actually product-oriented.
Lady Antebellum effectively creates a space for interaction between band and audience, showing their heightened respect for fans who share things with them, as opposed to focusing solely on the opposite. Mutual respect and admiration builds trust and support.
Marketing through Pinterest does take time and patience, but this social media platform is a great tool to drive web traffic, sell products, and increase awareness of your music.