How to know when you’re spamming on social media

With social media now playing an active role in the careers of producers, it is often a great point of focus for artists looking to improve their visibility on a global scale. While many aim to grow their numbers and achieve as much exposure as possible, they use tactics specifically devised for promoting sales. This could include anything from sharing links to content to posting teaser clips. In this article we’re going to look at the flipside, and analyse the difference between promotion and spamming, and how to tell when you’re taking your promotion too far.

Many producers fixate on driving streams, it’s natural to crave those high numbers and do whatever it takes to drive more clicks. This can lead artists to desperate measures, as they try anything to get as many streams as possible in order to generate revenue and build a fanbase. This can result in artists not realising when they’re spamming and continuously repeat themselves without intention. Repetitive promotion is incredibly boring for your audience, and can cause them to ignore, mute or even worse, unfollow you on social media. This is an incredibly common trap that many artists fall into when aiming to promote a specific piece of content, and it’s something which can be avoided.

The key to keeping your audience entertained is making sure that you are constantly giving something back. Don’t think about how you can get more likes on a picture, think about how you can reward your audience for following you and buying into your brand. Whether you choose to run a giveaway, host a Q&A, respond more to your fans or offer expertise to budding producers, you will be moving in the right direction simply by offering something to your audience. If you start to cater your content towards giving your audience something in return, you’ll soon see your engagement rate growing.

Many will simply not realise that they aren’t offering anything interesting to their audience. If it’s your music you’re advertising, it appears interesting to you. But to a stranger on the Internet, the first post is worth a look, but the repetitive ones that follow are not. It is important to remember that nobody else finds your music as interesting as exciting as you do, so simply posting “listen to my brand new track” alongside a streaming link is not going to cut it.

When you aren’t doing enough to garner the interest of your following there are a few signs to look out for. This could be a decline in engagement, a loss of followers, a lack of comments. If your level of engagement declines in any way, it’s a clear sign that you need to change your approach. This doesn’t simply mean you’ve had one bad post and you’ve not achieved the results you were hoping for, this is for artists who continually aren’t achieving the results they’d like to. It is important to note whether your decline is recent or long-term, the latter marks a much more urgent need to re-strategize.

To stop spamming and redefine your approach it is important to take a step back. Set aside some time to analyse your competitors on social media and take note of their posts that have performed particularly well. Try to understand exactly why these posts in particular have achieved such great results, and aim to apply your newfound knowledge to your own strategy. Regardless of your budget, you can adapt any strategy to your own branding and use it to your advantage.

The most important thing to remember is that you can’t generate more interest in a piece of content by repeatedly posting the same link when you aren’t getting the results you’d hoped for. For example, you have uploaded a video to your YouTube channel and you’re looking to gain as many views as possible. You’ve posted about it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but are still failing to hit the 100 views mark. You wonder why people aren’t clicking through so you adapt the text and post again, achieving the same minimal clicks. This is the worst method you can use to try and generate clicks, as it puts more and more distance between you and your audience as you struggle to achieve relevance and they become increasingly disinterested. Instead, accept that this particular campaign hasn’t gone as planned and go back to the drawing board.

If you are experiencing bad results from a campaign, don’t let it lower your confidence or mood. Failure is necessary in order to learn, and nobody gains a million followers overnight. Everyone who has succeeded as an artist in the industry has faced multiple failures. The best way to move on and stop spamming is to analyse why people weren’t interested in your content. The alternative is that maybe your posts simply aren’t generating the visibility they need, which is when you need to look into your advertising options.

Making sure not to spam is a great way to remain connected with your audience and ensure that they don’t lose interest in your brand. Always be careful to avoid becoming monotonous, this could lose you valuable followers and supporters who may be essential to your growth as an artist. Even if your engagement spirals downward, there is always an opportunity to rebuild and generate more engagement in the future. Learn from your mistakes on social media and use them to generate better results next time around.