You may compose the greatest music of all time, but it doesn’t matter if no one is there to witness it.
So many creative, forward-thinking innovators are developing products and services on a daily basis throughout the world and its many industries, and there are millions of people who fall at the very first hurdle. This is usually down to the fact that they just don’t know how to sell themselves effectively.
In this blog post we share with you a handful of useful tips to help sell yourself as a composer.
1. Write, write, write
Writing and sharing your opinions openly is one of the most effective methods to get your name out there and establish reputation. Create a blog section for your website and post regularly on there, submit an article to a website or newspaper. Make yourself searchable by putting yourself out there.
An impressive back catalogue of written content can be excellent in backing up your work that you have achieved as a composer, the more varying types of content to back up your existing content is always a good thing. This is especially true for when you are starting out on your journey as a composer, usually you won’t have the big projects you have worked on that can speak for itself. If you are versatile, it will help you get your name in more search engines. For example, if you choose to write a little bit about educational content then you would come up in more searches about that particular topic and not just when someone types in “composer.”
Once someone has read that piece of educational content, they may be curious about who the author is, which could lead them to checking out the rest of your website, which could also link to your social medias. You see how this is all starting to come together? A little bit of extra work here and there can go a long way in regards to you achieving your long-term goals.
The written word is a fantastic medium for sharing your thoughts and ideas with an audience.
2. Grow your social media following
Social media is extremely difficult to learn in terms of understanding algorithms and what works and what doesn’t, but you should create accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to just name a few. One thing to remember is to know your audience, if the majority of your clients are on Facebook, spend more time there; if they are on Twitter or Instagram, then spend more of your time there.
It truly is fantastic to sell yourself online, it will make you look more marketable and credible. Another good plus point to this would be that you don’t have to actively put all of your effort into growing your following, but this is only true if you want to grow your following slowly. If you want to see relatively rapid growth, then it is important to study social media and its trends, to the best of your abilities. If you do this then you will grow at a much accelerated pace.
Overall, we can’t underestimate how important it is to emphasise just putting some of your time into growing your social media channels. When it comes to doing business with people and making your name more credible, social media is imperative to success, the more effort you put into social media, the less work you will have to do when it comes to selling yourself and less convincing you will have to do if you have a large following. Just think about it, more people would want to work with you because they also want to be seen collaborating with a composer, who has a larger following than them.
Social media is an amazing tool for selling yourself when used correctly.
3. Collaborations
What goes hand-in-hand with social media? Collaborations! Especially with other people in the industry. Whether that be with other composers, or with various orchestras to work on music together. It is always good to work with other people, you can promote each other’s work and in most cases learn more from the experience.
Having various collaborations in your portfolio is always a good thing when it comes to selling yourself as a composer, this is because it makes you look like you are keen and eager to work with a variety of different people. But it also shows that you are versatile and are easy to work with. We keep on going back to credibility in this blog, but it applies to most things in life too. It is a know fact that if you haven’t got much credibility then you are going to have to have to work significantly harder in terms of selling yourself to potential clients. The more evidence you have that corroborates your credibility, the less you will have to work in selling yourself. This is why collaborations are a perfect example of this, it’s not just your work showing how good you are but also your peers in your field.
The more collaborations the better, in our opinion.
Engage in collaborative projects wherever possible and you will reap the rewards.
4. Education
Education is vitally important in all walks of life, and the same applies to our situation right now. As a composer, you are very well educated in terms of composing. But how educated are you in terms of the internet, trends, website creation, understanding algorithms, digital marketing and SEO? To just name a few. If you are unsure about any of those topics then educate yourself on them, study them just as hard as you did to become a composer.
Luckily, we already have a blog up on our website “Digital Marketing – 5 tips for composers to stand out and succeed” that will help you understand some of the basics of digital marketing. But keep an eye out on our blog as we continue to post helpful and educational content, similarly to what you are seeing here!
If you can add all these strings to your metaphorical bow, then that would help you exponentially when it comes to selling yourself. You will see an uptick in traffic on your website and an increase in sales too, just for added good measure.
Understanding the current landscape is key to selling yourself in 2021 and beyond. Educate yourself!
5. Expert knowledge
When it comes to selling yourself, trust is crucial, and people trust experts. Obviously, you are an expert when it comes to being a composer. But don’t be afraid to flaunt that, show people that you are an expert and show the fact that you know what you are talking about.
There are certainly some ways you can find ways to educate yourself even more though, my idea for this would be to set aside an hour each day to read industry-related publications or market research. A greater knowledge here could help you devise different marketing strategies or help you hit your target audience in a more efficient manner. Furthermore, having a number of conversations with clients in your field each week to get their opinions on how you can improve can help a lot, especially if you are missing the mark slightly, this can help correct this.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of this section, it is good to flaunt your skills and knowledge, so why not create a YouTube channel where you may share your knowledge to the world. The bigger the presence you have online, the more credible you look and the more often you will appear in peoples search engine results. And the more you end up in search engine results, the easier it will become to sell yourself.
Knowledge is the path to success.
Conclusion
It can be hard selling yourself, if not one of the hardest things to achieve online or even in day-to-day life. You may be doing everything right, except one small detail. But hopefully this blog post has helped you identify a few things which could possibly help you sell yourself just a little bit better.
We hope you have enjoyed this blog post!
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