One issue is that most music organizations are not open about industry best practices for music video promotion. A lot of musicians often are tasked with the promotion of their new music videos and become puzzled with the way to go according to industry standards. Well, in some short tips we’ll explain how you can promote your music video.

1. Use Social Media to Build Up Excitement before a Release

The following tip also takes some preparation. When you know a new music video is on the way, start building anticipation with your audience ahead of time. You can announce the music video and its release date directly or adopt a more silent approach and tease an unclear launch without a precise date. In any case, your fans will be invested in the new music video long before it is released. Most artists frequently make use of Instagram and Twitter for their music promotions on social media and you could also pick this technique up to promote your music video

Post teasers and behind-the-scenes videos to guarantee your followers are following, and offer incentives like giveaways to the first few people who engage with the video when it’s released to promote your music video, and you’ll be sure to acquire first-time engagers to increase your video’s YouTube score.

2. Ensure your Music Video Promotions Starts Earlier than the Release date

Along with using the best SEO practices to rank higher, have your PR team start promoting your videos through channels specifically for music, such as private forums, groups, and your mailing list, so that people there can be among the first to see them and provide feedback. This information will better position you to run your campaign. “Unlisted Video Push” is a trade secret that applies to this.

You must have a Google AdWords account to set up your video as a sponsored Ad on YouTube. You may then quickly target your video to reach specific audiences similar to your fandom. Paid YouTube Ads are one of the finest ways to immediately start racking up those YouTube views and ensure that your music video is being seen by the proper demographics, by doing this you’re strategically on your way to promote your music video.

3. Utilize Influencer Marketing for your Music Video

You can also ask influencers to share the new music video and express their support if you want to take things beyond your network of other musicians. The reach of this strategy can be as broad or narrow as you wish; you can invest a lot of money in huge celebrities who can expose your content to millions of followers, or you can specialize to go for a particular target promote to promote your music video. You’ll merely need to strike a balance between the cost of exposure you’re ready to spend and the demographics of the audience you want to attract.

If done correctly, sliding into influencers’ DMs can occasionally have a significant impact. Take a chance and get in touch if you see an influencer supporting music in your genre(eg  Afrobeats, Hip Hop, RnB) and you believe they would appreciate your video enough to share it. Due to its straightforward accessibility and capacity for material to become viral faster than most other social networking platforms, Twitter is frequently the best place to promote your music video or song link.

4. Ensure you’re Promoting via ADs on YouTube

When you upload your music video to YouTube, you should next improve the SEO that supports it. It’s a given that every musician’s music video must be accessible on YouTube for die-hard music lovers, therefore you shouldn’t neglect this stage (or this distribution channel). After all, 93% of the most popular YouTube videos are music videos, according to Brandwatch.

When you share your video, be sure to include the song’s name and your name as the artist in the title. Next, include additional keyword phrases in the description and tags. If you’re unsure of what to add, look at other music videos in your genre’s titles and descriptions to get a sense of what is considered standard in the business.

Making ensuring your music video is adequately optimized is essential to position it for optimal discoverability if it is being uploaded on a YouTube channel. This entails ensuring that your video’s Title and Description match, properly classifying and categorizing your video, and using an attractive yet truthful image. By doing this you promote your music video.

5. Collaborate with other Artists

Asking or encouraging other musicians to share your new music video is the next stage in promoting it. This strategy will be more effective if you already have a network of musician friends and are willing to help them out again when they have a launch.

For this marketing strategy, you have two primary possibilities. The first is to simply share the launch with your network of artists to let them know about the new music video and hope that some of them would share it out of support or because they enjoy the work, an indirect method to promote your music video. The second is to inform your artist network of the launch and formally request their assistance in promoting the new product.

Both choices are acceptable, although as you could expect, you’ll probably gain more momentum if you specifically request promotional support. You can even combine the two strategies, asking your closest musical buddies for shares while also distributing the release to the general public. whichever suits you the most as long as it’s a surefire way to promote your music video!

6. Get in DMs

Lastly, to promote your music video, this one is arguably the most difficult for most individuals, but it’s also the most advantageous. You must enter those direct messages! Once your video has been published, emailing it to your fans directly is one of the finest ways to draw in new viewers and ensure that they see it. The DMs step in at this point.

You want to do this properly now. We don’t want you to copy and paste a message saying “please watch my video” and spam it to 1,000 people or just send someone your post without context. That will never work, and the time you waste trying to make it work could be better spent doing something else (that doesn’t irritate people) that is why you need to find a more soothing way to promote your music video.

So, what you should do is have a little chit-chat first for a bit, if you don’t mind. Ask about them in these messages. Make a brief mention of them in your comment by referencing anything you noticed on their Instagram. When they inquire about you, that is the perfect opportunity to mention your most recent video and encourage them to take action. Instead of just saying, “I’d love it if you watched it,” try saying, “I’d be honored if you liked it, if you shared it with a friend,” or go one step further by saying, “I’m holding a contest.”

Conclusion

Like anything else, the more time and thought you put into creating a marketing strategy for your music video, the more exposure and success you are setting it up for. Every approach will be different, but by combining the above-mentioned promotional strategies into your subsequent plan for the release of a music video, you are certain to experience success. You can relax knowing that you’ve taken all steps necessary to promote your music video properly.

Since the launch of the first social networking site- SixDegrees in 1997, there has been an emergence of loads of social media platforms that musicians have taken advantage of to promote themselves as artists.

YouTube is one of the most populated social networking sites with about 30million active users and 5billion videos watched per day, which is the reason why using YouTube for your music promotion is something you should definitely add to your music marketing strategy.

A lot of music artists are still in the dark about all they can do with YouTube and don’t use it to promote their music in the same way they would use Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Youtube has made it very easy for musicians to spread awareness about their music, but with the high amount of videos being posted on the platform every day (5billion videos per day according to the 2019 statistics) pulling people’s attention in different directions and the competition from similar artists also pulling attention to them, the quality of your content is becoming more important than the number of followers you have and this is the same for all the social media platforms.

For effective YouTube music promotion, having a professionally structured youtube channel is necessary hence, the requirement to grow your YouTube channel.

How To Grow Your YouTube channel for your music.

I’m going to be giving some tips on promoting your music on YouTube, showing both organic and paid things to do. I’m also going to be listing some mistakes artists make on Youtube. Growing your youtube channel is a step to promoting your music on social media and creating buzz for your music on youtube becomes easy. The following are the steps to grow your music channel to promote your music on YouTube.

Have a professional-looking YouTube channel;

You should have a professional-looking YouTube channel. This makes you look more official, authentic, and real and helps you gain more subscribers.

Your YouTube channel should have the following;

• A name that corresponds to your stage name. Do not add “Official” or pseudo-“VEVEO”.
• Your professional-looking profile photo/avatar
• Your channel’s banner is related to your brand.
• A playlist to organize your content
• Links to your social media profiles and your website
• A short bio or description that summarizes what visitors can expect to see on your channel
• Eye-catching customized thumbnails for each of your videos
• A customized URL for your music project example; youtube.com/user/newsong

Post valuable content on a regular basis;

Posting valuable content on your channel helps to grow your YouTube channel and aids your music promotion on YouTube.

You should write songs and post contents that evoke emotional responses from the people that listen to them and watch them.

Songs that have a good beat or tend to get stuck in people’s heads are usually shared the most, meaning they could go viral.

With the numerous amounts of daily posts, keeping attention on you is difficult. There is always going to be a new video that takes the attention away from you.

That is why posting consistently is necessary. Don’t leave your channel stagnant. Continually post content to keep your subscribers engaged. Posting content does not mean expensive videos that are directed by… produced by… or filmed by… and you don’t have to write new songs weekly.

Think of other smaller creative projects that you could make and share with your subscribers.

I’ve made a list of a few video content ideas;

a. Behind The Scene Footage;

Like sound check short clip for a big show, behind the scene footage from filming your next video, a short clip of you in the studio recording.

b.  Chats In The Car;

You could record short talks or interviews with a buddy while running errands, talk about upcoming shows, other things in your life.

c.  Share Music Tips And Experiences;

A great way to earn the following of other musicians is to share tips on what you’ve learned in the long run of your career. Share your mistakes, failures, and how you overcame them.

d.  Meaning Behind Your Songs, What Inspired You;

Tell them the stories and meanings behind each song, what inspired you in writing them. Then pair the clips of you performing the song and you’ll have a really compelling video.

e.  Videos Of Your Band Practice

f.  Interviews with other musicians

g.  Share What You Are Doing;

You could be writing a new song, cooking, working out, doing a fitting, whatever it is you choose to show them. Your fans would definitely enjoy knowing what you are doing.

h.  Frequently asked questions;

A lot of fans will enjoy asking you questions if given the chance to. Give them a platform to submit their questions about you, your career, your music, or your personal life, allow them to get to know you. Answer these questions in videos and post them on your channel.

Post Regularly;

Consistently upload videos, this sets a schedule for you and helps you gain subscribers and fans. They will know you post one or two videos weekly or every two weeks and the specific day you post them. With this, they can easily see that your account is active.

More so, it keeps your subscribers entertained, interested, and excited for more.

Youtube favors content creators who post on a regular basis. If you add new content frequently, your videos may get listed in the ”suggested” section, this greatly increases the traffic to your channel.

Build Relationships And Work With YouTube Influencers And Other Artists;

Working with influencers who have lots of subscribers on Youtube and a big following on other social media platforms is a great way to create awareness about your music.

They are called influencers because they have gained a lot of influence in their niche.

When you work with influencers, the influencers help to promote your music and indirectly promote your channel. this helps to grow your YouTube channel and increase your number of subscribers.

You can reach out to them by sending them a direct message on Youtube or through other social media platforms.

You can also reach out and team up with other artists in your genre & style and share fans.

Start locally with people you actually know then branch out as you grow. Reach out to people who might want to collaborate with you and artists who might want to co-write a song and perform it with you.

Your Videos Should Be Attention-Grabbing;

Internet users have very low patients, they decide within the very first few seconds if they want to continue watching a video or move on to something else.

The first few seconds of your videos should be captivating and attention-grabbing. A great way to draw people in is by putting the major hook or the most exciting part of the video at the very start so it captivates people’s minds.

Attention-grabbing videos lead to converting new viewers to your fans hence helping to grow your YouTube channel.

Your Videos Should Be Search Engine Optimized;

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is simply using phrases and words that people search for on search engines like Google so when they search, your videos can show on search results.

An optimized video can lead people to your youtube channel thereby helping to grow your YouTube channel.

This greatly drives a lot of traffic to your channel and increases awareness. But it isn’t as easy as it sounds because there is a lot of competition out there. Here are a few tips;

a.  Using keywords;

Remember that SEO for everyone isn’t the same as SEO for you as musicians. For starters, your stage name or your brand name is your major keyword.

Your keyword should be in your title and description as it’ll help rank your videos when users search for videos, thereby increasing your streams, subscribers and helping to grow your YouTube channel.

b.  Your titles and descriptions;

Make sure that the title of each video is short, 60-65 characters max is a good target range. YouTube cuts of the title at 100 characters.

Besides, it is likely that 80% of your viewers will be watching your videos from a mobile device, so you’d want to make your channel mobile-friendly.

Avoid click-baiting – using deceitful title and thumbnail that doesn’t relate in any way to the contents of the video just in a bid to entice people to watch your videos.

Create a description that correctly says what a video is about and use tags to further help the description.

A concise and detailed title and description could convert new viewers to fans and help you grow your YouTube channel.

YouTube Premiere

YouTube premiere is a nice way to get the audience glued to your channel and promote your music. This feature is just like a movie premiere.

With YouTube premiere, you can promote your music and grow your tube channel simultaneously.

YouTube premiere lets you schedule a video for upload and create buzz around that video during the wait time with a shareable watch page.

Just scheduling a video won’t alert your fans that a new video is dropping soon. With premiere, your subscribers get a notification of the video drop date and time making them more likely to tune in.

Remember to always share information about your premiere across all your social media platforms, encourage them to share to their friends and followers as well.

Create a buzz and make sure the content of the video is worth the buzz.

Add Cards And End Screens To Your Top Videos

Cards are a great way to grow your youtube channel and encourage fans to watch other videos of yours.

YouTube cards are the interactive cards you see in YouTube videos, usually at the end, that let creators share clickable links to relevant content.

Cards can be seen on both mobile and desktop screens.

They allow you to include a custom image, titles, and call-to-action texts. Add cards to your top 10 videos or top 2 if you are just starting out on YouTube.

You can display any of the following in your cards;

1. Video
2. Playlist
3. Link to your website
4. Merchandise for sell
5. Fundraising
6. Fan funding

They can be used for pre-recorded and live-streamed videos.

How to add cards to your videos;

• Sign in to your YouTube video manager
• Click “edit” on the video you want to add a card to
• Click the “cards” button in the top navigation bar
• Click on “add cards” twice to open the creation window for the card type you want to add. Enter a valid URL applicable to that card type.
• Upload an image, enter a title and description text
• Click “create a card” and push the cards to the time you want them to appear while the main video is being watched.
• Use SEO to help your fans find different ways to spend money on you.

A video can have up to 5 cards and the cards can be edited and deleted anytime.