34: Social Media Relevant to Classical Musicians
with Andrew Ousley
So getting into some real nuts and bolts, what are the platforms you think are most relevant for musicians right now?
Well, they're all different. So to break them down, Facebook obviously is the biggest one. It has the largest community overall, globally, 3 billion people or something. It also is one of the most mature platforms. It has...
So it has the lowest growth in general. It's the hardest to gain followers. It has, on the whole, lower engagement than many of the other platforms, just because of how they have tweaked their algorithm. But it has the richest spread of content that you can share in the sense that you can share photos, videos, live streams in a variety of different ways, text, etc. So links to articles and so on.
So it's, it's one that I-- and it has an-- on the whole, and older demographic which for our world, for the world of classical music, is important because our world has an older demo and a lot of the people who make decisions in our world are on Facebook.
And so a lot of artists like, Do I have to be on Facebook? And I say, Yes, you have to be on Facebook and you have to at least understand the bare minimum of what to do there, and particularly how to engage with institutions on Facebook, ‘cause Facebook is where you can get the followers who are at those institutions and the decision makers at those institutions. And then you have a direct line of communication to them for, for the rest of your career. So it's important to be on Facebook,
Kellogg:
Got it.
Ousley:
but to realize that it's not a growth platform. Instagram, much higher engagement on the whole, in aggregate, and much easier to gain fans because people are still coming to Instagram. It's slowing down significantly, it's, it's achieving maturity, but it's still the case. It's a much more visual platform, much more limited in terms of what you can post and how you can post it. And so you have to figure out how to represent yourself visually. So if you're somebody who likes to dive into the scores and that's one of your story points, is that you just pour into different editions of scores and you just have this massive library, you need to take photos of those scores, you need to take photos of yourself holding those scores, etc., and figure out how to represent those things visually.
Do a video of yourself talking through a score, marking it up, or a million other things. But Instagram requires that visual component to be compelling. Then Twitter, terrible, obviously terrible platform.
Kellogg:
We won't talk about that.
Ousley:
We won't talk about that. No. Twitter-- I mean, the problem with Twitter is, if, if you understand Twitter on a visceral level and you if you like to be part of the conversations that happen on Twitter, and then search yourself, and have that sort of witty, like, witty ability to communicate in brief, pithy quotes, Twitter can be extraordinarily valuable, because a lot of conversations happen there, and the more that you're in them, the more visible you are, and the more you are a part of it. You become a part of the fabric of the industry. It's also from a publicity standpoint, that, that sort of gray area: journalists love Twitter. They're all on Twitter and they have big debates on Twitter that if you can join in on, they'll flag your name, they'll, they'll flag your opinion, and they'll be more likely to cover you or to be interested in your music when they hear your name a second time. So Twitter is valuable there. Otherwise for anything else. And if you don't just dig into that world, which most people don't, then do the bare mi-- be on Twitter, but do the bare minimum there, and only announce big things and important, important comments. Obviously, you're highly limited in how much you can post and how you can posted on Twitter.
YouTube, you should have a YouTube account to share any video content that you get, that you own. But unless you are actively creating a dedicated strategy to video content, then you're not going to become a YouTuber. And so it's not-- and you don't need to worry about the number of subscribers and so on. It's really just a repository for your video content.
Kellogg:
Okay.
Ousley:
And then platforms, platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, etc., like very early-stage platforms, try them. If they strike a chord with you and you feel, I get this, I love making this kind of content, go for it. And early adopters often have the biggest followings and can even, can even become a media story. If you are... that, like that violist, that viola mom on TikTok. And so you can often transfer that in traditional publicity hits. That said, don't invest-- if you don't enjoy them, don't invest tons of time in them because they might go away, they might change, but also like they might not get mass adoption. So wait until they reach maturity before you really start to invest a strategy in them.