Engage your followers and radio stations on socials
I’ve got a hot tip for you – engaging with your audience is an important thing to do, not just generally but in the context of radio too! Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Self, what’s so hot about this tip?” Well, hang on, I am going to tell you. There’s a way you can engage with your followers and utilize radio promotion. Hot tip: expand your fanbase on socials and promote your music with radio!
Almost every station has a presence on social media – all you need to do is look on the internet for top college stations. Suggesting… that any artist on the rise search for college stations to follow on socials where possible. Not all college stations will play your type of music, so you don’t have to follow every station. However, some station sites either have digital streaming and/or will show the latest playlists. So, if you see they are playing other artists in your style, well they could potentially play your music too right?! And, if so, their socials are definitely worth a follow! So get going!
If you want to get your music considered for airplay on College stations, you can sign up for Caster and promote your release directly to radio programmers, music directors, DJs/Hosts and more with Play MPE’s College lists. And while you’re at it NPR and Community stations are also inclined to play upcoming artists, so those are worth a shot too! And yes Play MPE has promotion packages for those lists as well!
And, bonus hot tip – if you want to see who is charting at College you can subscribe to the North American College & Community Radio Chart.
Entice fans on socials to help you get radio airplay
- DO a social media post, and if you’re feeling particularly creative, you should make a video, which you can put on all your social channels. Do not make it too long or people won’t watch. Be creative – and make sure the song you want them to request is part of the sound bed of the video!
- COME up with a hashtag that’s easy for you to find if you do a search on the platform – but not so easy that a bunch of other posters have used it too. If your band is called The Wipes, you could do #requestthewipesatradio.
- ASK your fans to contact the local radio stations in their area via social media or DM you for the information (engagement!).
- TELL them that when they request the song via social media, to please use whatever hashtag you’ve chosen. Re-gram, repost, reshare all requests your followers make. Power in numbers will help to get your song on the radio. Ask parents/grandparents/friends/neighbors/dog walker – everyone you know!
- CHOOSE how long the campaign should be and ramp it up each week – make a different video each Monday and shout out fans who have been requesting the song and encourage them to keep at it.
- WHEN you begin to wrap up the campaign, you can choose a winner – a fan (or fans) who have seriously gone all out on your behalf. You could do a thank you phone call, a facetime video (which you can then share online with their permission), write a short song with their name in it….you get the idea. You want people to keep coming back to see what you’re going to do next!
- AND….. when you do get radio spins – make sure to share your wins with your followers and thank & tag the radio stations that played you! With that said…
Tracking your radio spins
I’d be a remiss Hot Tipper if I didn’t also mention you can keep track of all of the new radio spins you’re going to get with Play MPE’s radio tracking tool MTR. MTR tracks airplay, providing real time reporting from over 5,000 stations across North America. Joining is free, and you only have to pay when you’ve uploaded a song for fingerprinting and select a plan. Once MTR detects airplay, it shows up in the dashboard. You can see spins by station name, city and day parts, which is invaluable info AND a way to not only forecast radio royalties but also know who to thank for the spins! And you can share your wins on socials per item #7!!
One more hot tip… if you sign up for Caster first a MTR account is automatically created for you. Play MPE is seriously making it so easy for indies to DIY promoting and tracking music.
Now take all these hot tips and hustle friends!