Social media is one of the most important marketing and networking tools for independent music professionals today. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy to master as it looks. This article will discuss a few of the most common mistakes people can make when managing their own social media pages. You will need to avoid making these errors if you want to build a name for yourself and be taken seriously.

It’s nothing personal

Social media is a platform that music professionals use to share one’s life with their audience. You will gain new followers when people feel like they can relate to you and are authentically sharing life experiences with you through your pages. That means your content needs to be personal—they have to show you in a real, raw, and candid setting. Posting professional headshots and graphics will give you a legit look, but it’s not very personal and may even feel like an advertisement to some people, so you shouldn’t post things of this sort all the time. Take occasion to throw in a few selfies that you took on the fly with your cell phone. Regularly update your followers with what you are up to and what’s on your mind—engage with them as if they are your friends. Show yourself in your element writing, producing, singing, or whatever else it is that you do. Leave your audience with the impression that you are a down to earth person living an exciting life that they don’t want to miss out on knowing about.  The more intimate you can get, the more likely you are to get people to want to follow what you’re doing.

Copy and paste content

It’s important for you to engage with others by posting, sharing and commenting on their posts. The more that you engage with people, the more likely they are to engage back. A huge mistake a lot of social media users make is that they post unoriginal pre-written messages with calls to action like “Cool post. Check out my page” that are copy-and-pasted on anything with a comment section. People will catch on to this tactic quickly, an is sure to make people think either you are desperate for attention or just a bot. Both of these will leave people not taking you seriously. Even if it seems like it’s working and you get a few hundred likes and follows this way, you will find that this doesn’t translate to any real business and isn’t helping your career along in the real world.

Follow to unfollow

You can get a pretty decent following by following a bunch of people to get them to follow you back and then unfollow them later on. But these tactics will only get you so far and earn you so much respect. Most people will start to see you as someone who isn’t authentic in their interactions and that you are only trying to get followers. The people who actually end up following you are probably those who use the exact same tactics to get followers and aren’t genuinely into your stuff anyway. Playing the follow to unfollow game will likely do more harm than good in the long run.

Too many ads

Social media is a great tool to share new products, services and promotional offers to potential clients. But be careful with how often you are posting ads. At the end of the day, social media is a place for people to socialize and be entertained. People do not want to feel bombarded by advertisements and promotions every minute while they are trying to have a bit of fun on their downtime. If you post too many ads on your pages people will associate you with spam and assume that all you are after is their money. This can be detrimental to your online image. As a general rule, it’s best to post a maximum of one advertisement a day, and also to post stuff that isn’t an ad in between. Your primary aim should be to share entertaining and inspiring content that your fans can connect with on a personal level. Therefore, you must be clever about how often you advertise.