7 Ways your Twitter header can help market your music

Twitter may only allow you 280 characters, but the header image can be used for a host of music marketing initiatives. These twitter marketing tips can help build your artist brand and market your music and videos.

Twitter offers you 280 characters per tweet. Only 280 characters to tell your fans what you are up to, about your new music, music videos, and when you will be playing your next show. That is not a lot of space to say what you need.

Luckily, there is some extra real estate on your Twitter profile that often goes unused: your header photo. Your header photo is often the first thing that Twitter users see when they visit your profile, so it is important to use this tool to its best advantage. Here are seven ways to use your Twitter header photo to market your music:

1. Introduce yourself

This concept is pretty simple and is great if you are just starting in your efforts to build up a fanbase – or if you are just new to Twitter. Use a cool photo of you or your band and create an image with your logo, your website, and URLs to any other social media you want your fans to check out. This is a great way to introduce new fans to your band, your brand (with your logo), and where they can find out more about you.

If you don’t know where to get started with building your header photo, or you are uneasy about dimension sizes and layouts, check out Canva. Canva is a free, user-friendly website that allows you to create header photos with the specific dimensions needed for your various social media networks. It helps take the guesswork out of designing, with creative layouts, fonts, and backgrounds.

2. Promote your tour schedule

If you are going on tour, you can use your header photo to tell your Twitter followers about it. You can create a compelling header photo using the tour flyer or just a simple solid color background with your logo, and then list other artists that are on the tour package. Space permitting, you could even include the tour routing to show fans when you’ll be in their city and what venue you’ll be playing. If your tour or event is based around a release or a special promotion of any kind, you can tailor your header photo to convey that message to your followers.

For example, London-based singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas used her header photo to promote her upcoming tour.

3. Showcase your new music

Whether you are promoting the release of a single, EP, or full length album, your Twitter header photo is a great place to show it off. Use the album art as your base image, then tell your fans where they can buy it and where they can stream it.

Fall Out Boy got creative and promoted its album American Beauty/American Psycho, promoting its availability on iTunes and Spotify, while also showcasing the band’s tour in promotion of the album.

4. Countdown to the drop date

Speaking of releasing music, using your Twitter header photo to countdown the release day of your new single, EP, or album is a dynamic way to keep your Twitter profile interesting and get your followers excited about your release.

For example, during the weeks leading up to your release, create a base image using your album art alongside of the upcoming release date or the number of days until the release. The text layer will be transparent and show through to your album art. Therefore, for each day leading up to the release your Twitter profile will have a different header photo. If you like this idea, it does take some basic Photoshop skills.

5. Tease your album artwork

Another dynamic way to change your Twitter profile is to use your header photo to slowly reveal your album art to your followers. One way of accomplishing that would be to block out your album art. You could then set up a campaign where you can reveal a new piece of the “puzzle” to your album art daily or weekly, and upload the image as your header photo, with details of the album release.

6. Sneak peek into your video

If you or your band has a very active YouTube channel, your Twitter header photo is a great way to keep your followers updated whenever you have a new video. Whether it’s a music video, tour blog, or studio update, you can use a still shot from the video and create a header photo that tells your followers to head to your channel, check out the video, and share it.

This method is practical if you are promoting a new video but don’t want to overwhelm your followers with constant tweets about it, as it allows for some passive promotion of the video at the top of your profile.

7. Get trending!

On social media, especially Twitter, hashtags are the way to get users talking about you. Virtually all trends on social media have a hashtag associated with them. If you or your band are trying to raise awareness about your music, video, tour, or anything else related to your band through a hashtag, be sure to include that hashtag in your header photo as a reminder to your followers to use it as a way to tag you on Twitter.

Maroon 5 did a fantastic job using methods 6 and 7 to promote its new music video for “Sugar,” as well as its new album and tour, by including #MaroonVTour in the header photo.

These are just a few ways to use your Twitter header photo as a means of promoting your music and brand. Get creative and get your music heard by using Twitter in some unconventional and fun ways.

Jack McCarthy is a featured writer for the Dotted Music Marketing Agency, a full-service digital marketing agency for the music industry. Dotted Music provides industry advice and supervision for music brands of all sizes, with services that include branding, graphic design, inbound marketing, social media integration, website development, copywriting, targeted PR, and online management.

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