Making Social Media Work for Your Music Business

Keeping your music business fresh and profitable means adapting to the most up to date marketing methods for your audience and targeted clients, no matter what segment of the music industry you represent. You can run a piano tuning service or be a music teacher or run a studio. Or you could run a full line music store and still house a service business and studio within as we do at Piano Trends Music and Band.

It has been a long time since newspaper advertising has had much effect on the growth of a business. Word of mouth is still King. If satisfied customers speak on your behalf it goes a long way. The way to build your reputation today though is through social media outlets. Any place where your customers go, you need to be there. Show yourself in pictures so clients get to know you across social media. Whether that is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or others. It only takes a few minutes and sometimes seconds of your time to post something of interest. After all if you are in the music business. There are always interesting things going on that both you and your customers share. You should never attempt to hard sell but just enjoy the interaction with your customers. Over time this builds both credibility and trust. Guess where this customer that has been following you will go to first when little Johnny or Suzie decides to play trumpet or flute in school band? Our goal is to help little Johnny or Suzie succeed in learning to play a musical instrument, not to just make a sale. We care and social media allows us the opportunity like never before to make that known. It takes effort but it costs you none to little money out of pocket to be engaged with your customers. Before this transformation of contact you could only keep in touch with use of flyers, phone calls and direct advertising. Now you can create a friend that loves to purchase from you. It also means that you know your customer better and will be better able to service that customer on a level they deserve. That is a bigger responsibility on you. If you have now earned this trust you have to back it up or all your work will be for naught. Treat your customers as friends they have become. they know more about you and you know more about them. This is the best medium to keep customers as repeat customers through staying in touch on a daily basis. Take a look at pictures in this blog. We used them as posts on all of our social media outlets. Speak to your audience, touch their hearts and interests. It also is a good way to brand yourself. We are known for our Blue Grand Pianos and their travels about town. Show examples like we show elsewhere in this blog. Not to sell anything directly but they helped people remember us and they created a stir and buzz about our company.

As an example, recently I heard from one of our Facebook followers that we know posted comments and "likes" on our page periodically. He began asking questions about pianos through Facebook messenger. in the beginning just general inquiries. Through this we found out that he was a keyboardist for an old famous rock group that still played at small venues from time to time. We enjoyed the conversations and it turned out one of our grand pianos ended up in the home of this piano player we only knew through Facebook. He was thrilled with the value and it was like dealing with someone we had known for a long time. Now we service the piano for him on a regular basis providing the level of customer service that he saw us provide through posts and stories he read on our social media. This is what I meant by backing up the earned trust.

Don't underestimate the value of social media to small businesses especially in the music field. Be prepared to adapt to new technology and changes along the way. Doing it the old fashioned way just won't keep you in business for long. At least not profitably. Next time we will discuss what videos and what type of videos can do to educate and provide entertainment value to your followers. There is a difference between Youtube and Facebook posted videos. That will be part of the topic for discussion in the near future.

I will be glad to discuss in detail and even help develop a plan to promote yourself and your music business, whether you are a musician, retailer, teacher or in another aspect of the music business. The same principals all apply and once you get started and comfortable you can take it to the next level on your own. Over 40 years in the music business have taught me to adapt along the way and discover what works. If you keep your customers in mind and put yourself in their shoes you are on the right track You can email me at tim@pianotrends.com anytime. Also visit our music consulting site at OldDogsConsulting.com