Tips for content production for musicians

Creating content can be a tedious part of growing your music career, so here some tips and tricks on how to make the process stress-free!

A guest post by Sara-Lena of Blackbirdpunk

Content production is at the heart of any social media campaign. What is more, even if you simply wish for more visibility in the online world, you won’t make it without any content.

However, producing great content can become a chore really fast. Here’s the thing: there are already so many things on your calendar and to-do list. Surely, you don’t want to have another point to look after.

One of the complaints I hear most often in my consulting is the stress that content productions can induce. This is crazy: content production doesn’t need to be another pain point for you.

Here are some strategies to help you achieve the goal of stress-free content production for musicians!

Content Productions Doesn’t Need To Be Stressful

#1 Identify Why You Need To Produce Content

Identifying the exact reason why you need to produce content can be a great start. Why?

Firstly, it sets a more professional tone. Do you need to produce content for your social media channels as a musician? Are you running a Patreon channel and need content in order to make your supporters happy?

Secondly, it also tells you the order of priority. Classifying all social media channels that really need work on can give a great deal of perspective and focus.

And thirdly, knowing your why overall as well as in the case of social media content production can help you overcome hurdles like imposter syndrome or procastination. Having a reason for doing things can often help to make the first step.

If you know that you need to do social media in order to promote your music then this can help to set free energy and determination.

#2 Make Content Production As Fool-Proof As Possible

Here’s the thing: posting pictures on Instagram or writing a short behind-the-scenes blog post for Patreon might not sound like a lot of work. Only when you need to do it becomes this big mountain of uncomfortable work that you just cannot do right now.

That is why you need to make content production as fool-proof as possible. Write yourself a list of all social media channels. Very handy for this job is Excel. You can make on row with all the social media channels that need filling in. Then you can make another row with how often you are aiming at posting.

If you are good at time-management, then you can structure the posting schedule according to free time-brakets.

If not you can set yourself reminders in your mobile phone calender and block time as if you would have a meeting. Be smart and hit the button for recurring meeting and the calender will fill in all other weeks for you.

#3 Write Yourself A Protocol

In line with the advise of making your content production fool-proof, write yourself a protocol.

That means, outlining in detail every step it takes you to finish content production. Be as precise as possible. Also, write the protocol so that you can follow it each time without even thinking about doing the job. This works best for content production that will always repeat itself. Let’s say you have a YouTube channel. Then creating video content is a must in order to have the channel running. Writing a video content production protocol could help to become more efficient and disciplined with your work.

For example, your protocol could look something like this:

1. Come up with video idea for example an As Me Anyting session
2. Write down all questions that you want to answer
3. Put up your video equipment like your camera
4. Put up your lighting
5. Install your microphone
6. Put on a nice outfit
7. Apply some makeup or do your hair
8. Put your mobile phone on flight mode
9. Start filming your video
10. Take short break
11. Send your video to your video editor
12. Revise the video
13. If you are happy, schedule the video for upload
14. Fill out all the text in YouTube
15. Do some video SEO
16. Publish the video
17. Share the video over all social media channels
18. Answer all comments on the YouTube video
19. …..

You see, the protocol could be rather long. But better this way then having to remember all the steps in your head. The more you can write down the more brainspace you have for your creativity!

There are many ways of professionalising your content production

There are many ways on how you can professionalize your content production. Here were some tips on how you can firstly identify why you need to produce content. Also, how you could trick yourself by making the process fool-proof. Lastly you learned how you could automate yourself for doing content production. Find the tricks that work for you and content production will never be daunting again!