I pretty much live and breathe music. Pop. R&B. Rap. Country. Psychedelic Thrash Metal Rock. You name it! But perhaps the most intriguing thing I find is how artists market their music, and how companies are helping. It’s 2020 people; digital music and social media are insanely powerful. I recently audited Spotify, you know, one of the biggest digital music streaming services. Specifically, here are three things that Spotify is doing right with their social media:

1. Timeliness on Twitter

In HubSpot’s article, The Ultimate Guide to Using Twitter for Business in 2020, one of the points it makes is to consider how often you should tweet, given that 92% of companies tweet more than once a day. Spotify tweeted an average of five times a day. The article also mentions how a lot of businesses tweet in the morning, at lunch breaks and early evenings, but Spotify’s posts actually performed the best in the late evening. This has to do with the fact that Spotify considers the time/place of releases, and countries that it will mostly impact. For example, BTS (one of the most successful groups in K-Pop) released a new single on January 17th. Spotify posted the release at 4 AM ETS, which was 6 PM at the time in Korea. Articles and research studies will give recommendations on when to post, but like the Meltwater article, How Often Should You Post on Social says, “there’s not a magic formula to social media success.” However, Spotify wins by doing their homework.

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2. #Hashtags #Hashtags #Hashtags

Social Insider’s article, 12 Steps To Boost Instagram Engagement in 2020, mentions the use of hashtag marketing as a key tactic for engagement. Hashtags should be used on an ongoing basis, and Spotify uses hashtags in every post for the artist’s name. When Eminem’s album was released, they used #Eminem and also tagged him. While this may seem like an obvious thing to do, you’d be surprised how many companies forget to do it. Not to mention, big artists’ names are being searched thousands of times on a daily basis. It goes a long way for an artist when users are brought to Spotify’s platform, making that #money on streams. Spotify does this for every artist consistently.

3. To Engage or Not to Engage?

According to the Ultimate Social Media Best Practices 2019 article, questions perform well on Facebook prompting discussion. One of Spotify’s most engaging posts on Facebook had a question in it, and this is kinda a big deal given that their Facebook doesn’t tend to get many likes/comments (that’s for another day). In another article from Hootsuite, Facebook Marketing in 2020: How to Use Facebook for Business, it suggests that linked content posts get more engagement than status posts. By adding the question to the post, it all the more gives readers a reason why they should click through.

There you have it, music lovers. Some timeliness, hashtags and engagement. Of course, there are a whole lot of other things that could work. What do you think? Are there other things that Spotify can be doing better on their socials to get releases out there? Let’s chat. Comment below and be sure to come back soon for next week’s post!