Many bands struggle with running their social media especially when it comes to creating content to post. It’s not surprising considering most smaller independent bands are running the business side themselves while also song writing, recording and touring. Keeping social media up to date is incredibly important as it operates as your virtual ‘shop window’. This where fans and industry professionals will look to find out more about you. It is well known at this point that social media algorithms push those accounts who post more frequently to further audiences. In order to help overcome the issue of creating content to help increase posting frequency, effectively repurposing and reusing content can be beneficial.
Now, this doesn’t mean continually repeating the exact same image or video content for every post across your social media platforms. But rather it’s about re-sharing previous content when relevant or slightly tweaking existing content to suit a new purpose for a new post. The following are a number of suggestions of how and when to reuse your existing materials.
Milestone Events:
Release anniversaries are a fantastic and important time to reshare your album/EP/ single artwork and/or music video clips. Reminding fans and introducing new followers to your existing releases can assist in increasing your streaming and view figures. You don’t need to stick strictly to anniversaries with this either. Reminders a week, a month or 6 months after a release work well for resharing these types of posts especially in the immediate aftermath of the event.
Tip – don’t forget events like members’ birthdays for which you can reshare your existing band promo pictures. Fans often like to see more personal content like this, if you are comfortable sharing it.
Marketing Merch:
Most people need to see something several times before they will actually go and buy/ stream it. Therefore, it’s a good idea to reshare your new merch item or music release as part of your marketing strategy. Resharing photos of these items in between non-marketing-focused posts will help your sales without feeling too pushy. The key here is to ensure these marketing posts are interspersed with alternative content e.g., behind the scenes photos in the studio or live footage, or even the odd meme or two.
Tip – ask fans to share photos of themselves with your merch if they feel comfortable, and with their permission, share on your own profiles.
Press Quotes:
Sharing press quotes for your latest release alongside the accompanying artwork or your current band press photo is a means to showcase the response to your music and market it further. Editing the quotes onto the image is most effective as it makes for visual impact when users are scrolling through their feeds as it doesn’t rely on the viewer needing to stop and read the accompanying text description in order to see it. Use free photo editing apps to add text to your images quickly and efficiently.
Tip – always credit the media site and the specific journalist if their name is publicly known.