A lot of musicians don’t know what to do when it comes to promoting themselves, let alone music branding strategies. Sometimes, they don’t even want to promote themselves. They believe that promoting yourself is narcissistic and that it has to be phony or inauthentic for it to work. Joining Bree Noble to dispel this misconception is Megan Kuhar, a professor of Music Technology, creative brand and tech coach, audio engineer, videographer, social media manager, percussionist, and entrepreneur. Megan dives deep into music branding strategies, social media content, and all the things you need to be working on in your marketing to help you profit from music.
Today, we’re going to talk to Megan Kuhar about music branding strategies, social media, content and all other stuff about marketing to help you profit from your music.
Megan is a professor of music technology, creative brand and tech coach, audio engineer, videographer, and social media manager. She has been a musician all her life. She went to music school and majored in Arts Management. She could find a nonprofit arts job and it was a blessing in disguise. She ended up going back to school for audio engineering and then went to teaching. She started working with individuals that were musicians or artists that wanted to get more into technology.
That time, she was recording and had her own business on the side and enjoyed it. At first she didn’t realize she was doing marketing. She just wanted to start project all the time. She noticed that every gig she got was by word of mouth. Her business grew through that.
She ended up getting her Masters in Music Technology. That time, she also asked her Communications Department if she could take courses in communication and they agreed. There was a particular professor who was a great influence for her . She learned a lot about marketing because she noticed musicians didn’t really know or didn’t want to market themselves. The misconception is mainly about being narcissistic, phony or inauthentic if you want to promote yourself. She worked on instilling on her students and clients that a person can promote himself or herself and feel good about it. Megan’s life revolves around helping creatives about rethinking, branding, and marketing.
Just like Megan, I wanted to get a master’s degree in Arts Management, didn’t get in and decided to get an MBA. I worked in a nonprofit but it was hard and stressful but I learned a ton.
On Branding
Megan clarifies that branding is not just about design but it’s more about your identity as a brand. You need to be clear and consistent about your branding. Uncover your identity and communicate it clearly. You do not need to be perfect. You just have to be yourself and have personality.
Branding is not mainly about logo but more about what your message is to the people and why you are doing what you are doing. Visual presence is important — using the same colors, etc. but there is much more to it than that. As your taste change, you can also evolve your brand.
Content
It’s hard to be everywhere but you can have a presence in different social media platforms. You can use and reuse your content alternately. You can do lives, engagement and repost stuff. For Instagram, you can do more stories since people engage more with that. Your main focus is to make sure your content has value.
Megan also shares about her product called The Content Alignment Toolkit which helps plan your content a month in advance. If you do not plan your content, you have a tendency to have inferior posts because you are not thinking it through.
You have to know what your message is about. You have to be clear on what you want people to know. You also have to value your audience. If they want to see more about how you write songs, how often you practice, etc., you can give that to them. Having fans moderate stuff and create content would be cool. They can easily create engagement questions for the community since they are curious to know about the same things about an artist.
Need for alignment
Megan reiterates that you can be in alignment with what you share on social media personally. You don’t have to feel like it’s a chore or a job that you have to put on a specific hat to go do it. Everything that we do as far as administration, content creation, or email marketing, all that stuff, allows us to be creatives and share our work with others. You can be all your pieces in one person. You don’t really need to be different persons for marketing or for your private life and stuff.
Megan’s show is Creative Brand Sessions. There is a free download on megan-kuhar.com/roadmap and you can get the free download for brand alignment. It teaches you how to uncover your brand, communicate it through impactful content, and feel good about your business. You can find Megan on Instagram at @megankuhar.
This was originally posted on The Profitable Musician Show.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Creative Brand Sessions podcast
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