How to Use LinkedIn to Market Your Music

This post originally appeared on Music Entrepreneur HQ.

Look, I know what you're thinking.

“You can’t use LinkedIn to market your music."

I beg to differ, and in this blog post I intend to show you why.

A Brief Introduction to LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform where you can connect with people you know, share your real-world job experience and seek out new opportunities.

As such, excessive self-promotion would be seen as distasteful. All interactions on LinkedIn should be done tactfully and professionally. But that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage the platform to get yourself out there.

Post Updates

Much like any other social platform, you can share updates with your connections on LinkedIn. From what I’ve seen, it’s fairly common practice to share articles and blog posts.

Well that makes things easy, doesn’t it? You’re in the music industry, so you can share your music related content on LinkedIn. You can post your own blog posts or share other things you find interesting. You can develop a rapport with your connections and demonstrate expertise and an understanding of your field.

Use a Sharebar

As I already pointed out, it’s possible to share updates on LinkedIn much the same way you would on Facebook or Google+. As such, it may be prudent to allow your users to share the content on your website using a sharebar or LinkedIn icon.

I’m not going to suggest that this strategy will work for everyone. If your blog posts don’t contain relevant information, there may be no point in having your visitors share your posts on LinkedIn.
If, on the other hand, your content is rich, detailed, entertaining, engaging, informative or practical, this method could work quite well for you.

Cross-Post Email Campaigns

I don’t know about other email marketing platforms, but if you’re using iContact like I am, it is possible to share your newsletters with your LinkedIn connections.

This is awesome because you might be able to reach people who aren’t already subscribed to your newsletter (they might even take interest in it too).

Join or Start a Group

I haven’t invested too heavily into groups, but from what I understand, it is possible to post updates to groups as well. So basically, if you’re already sharing content with your connections, you can take the same things (including email newsletters) and share them with a group as well.

The best approach, at least based on what I’ve heard, is to pose questions. When you’re posting updates to groups, ask for feedback, opinions and varying viewpoints.

There are already many music groups on LinkedIn, not to mention other groups built around things that you’re probably interested in. You can also start your own group if you feel the need.

Of course, you’ll want to observe any conduct guidelines groups provide you with. Spamming is inappropriate on any social platform, but particularly so on a professional networking tool like LinkedIn. Bear that in mind and you should do just fine.

Conclusion

One of the realities of LinkedIn is that it does not have the same user base as Facebook. It is considerably smaller. You may find that only a third or so of your Facebook friends are on LinkedIn.
This is a good reminder, because, we could all benefit from meeting more people and networking on a consistent basis. If you want to increase your connections, be intentional about meeting more people and building friendships.

After all, it’s not about what you know, it’s about whom you know. And who you know may be able to connect you to the people or the opportunities you’ve been seeking out.

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