As a musician, you always need fresh new content to promote your next release, upcoming show or purely just to engage your audience.
Here are 4 pieces of content you should start collecting to create a content bank.
1. Professional Live Shots
Having professional live images makes your content stand out amongst the crowd, and it showcases what you do best, performing! An I-Phone photo of your last show isn't showing your audience your show in all of the beautiful stage lighting glory. Investing in a photographer who specialises in live music/events for some of your shows this year can really level up your content bank and make your promotional material look more professional.
you can use your live shots for:
Instagram Carousel posts as highlights of an entire show
Promoting upcoming shows as single-feed posts
Your Website
EPK (Electronic Press Kit)
Festival applications
These types of images will stop followers in their tracks, and show them what they are missing out.
giving them an incentive to buy tickets to your next show!
2. Vertical Live Videos
We are living in a vertical world with Instagram Reels and TikTok taking over on social media.
Having a bunch of vertical clips of sound checks, rehearsals, venues, recording etc can be saved and repurposed multiple ways when you need to create content.
Additionally, Having a full live show that you can slice up and create multiple pieces of content is super valuable and a great way to batch create! You could also use an app such as 1SE (1 Second Everyday) that allows you to collate a second a day to create a recap at the end of a week, month or year.
3. BTS Shots
(bonus points if these are professional quality!)
No, we don't mean the K - pop group!
having candid, behind-the-scenes shots of you on the road, recording, hanging out at shows etc makes your content feel more authentic and candid, it can also build brand awareness and trust with your audience.
It may seem boring to you, but to your audience who likely aren't in the music industry, it's a glimpse behind the curtain of what your life looks like.
These types of images can also break up your live content on social media feeds
4. Press Shots
Press shots are essential to promote your music, they help your audience put a face to the name and for visual people, it helps to paint a picture of the music you make.
It is helpful to do these types of shoots regularly to ensure you are staying "on brand", this can be when you are releasing a new single, EP or Album, going on Tour or have changed your appearance drastically.
Typically one image is used across all social media platforms as a profile picture for consistency, so you want it to be a quality and recognisable image as some social media platforms only display it quite small.
Additional images are then used for social media posts, Spotify and Facebook banners, website backgrounds and galleries and promotional material such as tour posters.
Its helpful if you are DIY-ing these to ensure you take note of what you might need to use these images for and frame your shot accordingly.
For example:
Social media profile images are typically round, ensure your 'main' or hero shot works in a square format with a little bit of negative space.
Spotify banners will have text on the bottom left, so make sure your image is landscape orientation with negative space and either right justified or if it is left justified no important information is in the bottom left.
Facebook banners have the profile image overlayed in the bottom left, this likely won't affect your banner image however ensure you use a landscape image that has some negative space to allow for cropping.
Posters are typically vertical with text elements, shoot these in vertical orientation and allow negative space where you might want to add details about your show to make it easy to read.
Venues, festivals and publications also often request these for their own promotional material so having them handy will make you look really professional storing these images on Dropbox or Google Drive will ensure you can send these in a timely fashion from anywhere.
Above: Promotional Material for Bella Deer, used on Website, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, and Tour Posters.
Investing in professional content a few times a year can set you up with a ton of great content for your promotional material and make you look super professional.
Consider hiring a professional photographer that specialises in Concerts and Band promos. If you are based in Melbourne send us an email, we are happy to help you create amazing content of your next show!