You probably already update your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram daily. You might even maintain regularly updated Spotify playlists or a Snapchat profile.
But direct messages are the most effective medium to communicate with fans: they have near-guaranteed visibility and high engagement rates.
And that’s why we’ve built POP.
So, you got set up, you direct your fans to Messenger, you’ve sent your first POP… Now how do you give messaging a place in your social strategy?
Messaging is a great channel for exclusives
When you’re setting your fans up on Messenger, you’re basically asking them:
“Will you let me send you a notification whenever I have something really exciting to share with you?”
This relationship is about convenience as much as it is about trust. You can’t predict whether all the content you offer to fans will be relevant to everyone. Targeting helps, but still requires a judgement call.
So make it worth their while.
Think of things that are easy to offer, exclusively through this channel. Exclusives like:
- Discount codes
- Phone backgrounds or other virtual goods
- Invitations to exclusive live streams or real world events
A fan on Messenger is a highly engaged fan, so they’re considerably more valuable than your average Facebook fan. Invest in this relationship.
Your message at the right time
Friday is an important day for new music releases, so you need to stand out in the noise and drive fans to your new music.
Create a Spotify playlist for this purpose. Update it weekly.
If you don’t have new music, then switch it up a bit and feature music from friendly artists, labels, or new tracks you’d play in a DJ set.
On Fridays you can message fans as soon as you’ve updated your playlist:
“It’s Friday! And here are my favourite tunes for this week. Have a great weekend!”
It’s as simple as sending a tweet — except Messenger is best with a lower frequency than the average Twitter account (5 tweets a day is the standard).
So, put yourself in the position of your fans — think what they might be doing, and deliver timely messages.
Amplifying other channels
The previous section already gives an example of how you can integrate Messenger with existing activities in your social strategy.
Instant messages hold a lot of power to amplify activity in other places. Experienced social strategists are well aware of how punishing algorithms can be on Facebook, Instagram or Spotify, but also how rewarding they can be if you manage to get the right amount of buzz at the right time.
You can use Messenger to drive people to a new release on Spotify, an announcement on Facebook, or an important image on Instagram. Getting a lot of post interaction in the first minutes or hour after you publish something, usually means your post will attain higher overall visibility.
What other strategies are you employing?
Leave a response. We love hearing about how you use POP.
