Creating a Content Calendar for Indie Artists

We had the chance to have Ray Roa, Music Editor for Creative Loafing, be a part of Music Industry Sessions’s panel “Branding & Marketing for Independents”. He talked about tips for increasing organic reach, how to submit songs to music blogs, and more.

Here are his tips on creating a content calendar for indie artists.

I’m a visual person when it comes to these kinds of things and since I have so many different things happening, I need multiple calendars and lists to show me my content options and timing.

A band trying to reach fans on the Internet, via social and web posts, it would be important to have a map that tell you when you’re posting, what kind of content you’re posting, and where you’re posting it.

Planning also helps you revisit past campaigns and posts to see what kind of stuff works best.

Data is your friend.

Having that stuff will take a little of the stress of managing it off your mind since you can reference it whenever you want.

There are plenty of free and paid tools that can help artists in being more productive when managing social media accounts, promotion, and content creation.

I go back and forth between Hootsuite and Tweetdeck for Twitter. The Hootsuite Google Chrome plugin has really helped me share/schedule my content on the spot for Twitter.

I find Facebook’s scheduled posts timeline pretty straightforward for those 
purposes. Websites like Digiday, Sprout Social, Nieman Lab, and Poynter all have awesome tips for creating a content calendar, managing social media, and more.