Social media for musiciansMusic marketing gurus like to repeat the mantra “be everywhere.”

Well, they’re wrong!

Sure — with some aspects of your music career, such as digital music distribution, being “everywhere” makes sense; you sign up with one service (like CD Baby) that gets your music onto all the relevant download and streaming platforms without you having to lift a finger to maintain that retail presence. But with something hands-on like social media, it can be an overwhelming amount of work. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, G+, YouTube, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, and yes, MySpace… sounds exhausting, right?

It’s easy to dive into the deep end of social media; it’s harder to swim back out.

If you’re trying to balance practices, touring, recording, and marketing, don’t get carried away. You’ll drive yourself crazy and do a bad job at social media while you’re at it. Instead, pick one or two of your favorite platforms to focus on. It’s better to use a couple social platforms well than to juggle six poorly. A scattered social presence ends up looking unprofessional to people in the industry and gives your fans the impression that you’re not all that active in your music career.

When your music career has advanced to the place where you really SHOULD “be everywhere” in regards to social media, you’ll also be in a position to enlist some help with your online marketing.

Are you overcommitted when it comes to social media? Do you have an exit strategy? How are you going to regain some social media sanity? Let us know in the comments below.

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