Last Thursday I woke up to some bad news. I was sitting having my morning coffee, I opened up my Instagram and got a message from the Meta gods. "Your account has been deactivated" Apparently, they thought I did something that went against community guidelines and if I disagreed with this decision I could appeal. So I appealed. Saturday morning I checked the account again and it was working normally, like nothing had happened. No explanation from Meta about what I may or may not have done wrong. So even though I’m none the wiser I learned a few things and if you rely on Instagram for your business you should probably be doing what I did next.

It doesn't matter what kind of business you run, if you're using social media to promote what you do you could be missing something important. Turning followers into fans. Independent musicians, in particular, are terrible at this. Many focus on the numbers and post endless videos of them performing either live or in a studio. To truly succeed you need to start talking with your followers and not just singing at them. Here I’m going explain why engagement is the key to generating fans and give you three ideas to help you start conversations with your followers.

Throughout the whole of 2024 we're doing something really special. We're donating 2,024 minutes of our time to help the future of the music industry. Why? Well it's because we're frustrated. Frustrated by seeing so many independent and unsigned musicians struggling to get their music heard and ultimately make a living from the music industry. Here's how you can get some of those minutes this year.

I’ve worked in the music industry on and off since I was 16 (which is nearly 40 years). In that time, I’ve seen some massive changes. Formats have come and gone (and come back) even whole genres have been invented. But now I can clearly see we’re heading for a big problem.

Each year we run a competition to give away a music video. The music industry is more competitive than ever with more artists than ever before fighting for space on both streaming and social media platforms. Our winner in 2023 was Eleanor Kane. We were hooked as soon as we heard the song and still find it hard to believe this was her very first release. This is the story of how we made it. Take a look first though.

How to save time when making videos If you make videos to promote your business on social media (and if you don't we really need to talk about that ) then you'll know it can be a little stressful. In order to make a splash on social you need to be posting content consistently and that can mean anything between 2 and 5 times per week. When you consider video is the best way by far to get noticed, that's a lot of videos you've got to make every month. Anywhere up to 20 if you're counting. Not only does that mean coming up with a lot of ideas (more on that here ) it also means making a lot of videos. So how do you do that stress free? Let's find out.

Here's a little problem I see often on social media. A lot of businesses are guilty of doing this. However we work with and follow a lot of independent musicians who seem to do this more than other small business. I'm talking about posting all passive content and no active content.  So right here right now I'm going explain what both of those terms mean and why you might think about adding more active content into your marketing strategy.

There’s no better way to demonstrate how awesome you are than asking one of your happy customers to shout about you. Testimonials and reviews are a really powerful and proven technique for growing your business and there’s no better way to do it than with video. Lets find out why you should be making review videos and how you get started.

When creating a business page on Facebook or a business account on Instagram, what’s the first thing most people do? If your answer is to invite all of your friends and contacts to follow you then ... WOAH!!! STOP RIGHT THERE! While this is really tempting it’s a really bad idea. In fact, you’re actually doing more harm than good and inviting everyone you know could actually lead to some of big problems.