How to Promote a Concert on Social Media: A Quick Guide

With modern technology taking over everyday business practices, knowing how to promote a concert has become increasingly sophisticated. Between 85% and 95% of venues actively use social media as part of their marketing strategy. Music industry professionals who master digital marketing can transform their reach, engagement, and ticket sales. 

Unlike traditional marketing methods, social platforms offer unprecedented targeting capabilities, allowing promoters to connect directly with their most passionate fans. Artists and venues can now craft personalized narratives, build anticipation, and create immersive experiences that extend far beyond the physical event.

Technological advancements have simplified how concerts are marketed and managed. Innovative music promoter software has emerged, offering intelligent solutions that streamline complex promotional workflows. These cutting-edge tools leverage artificial intelligence and data analytics to provide unprecedented insights into audience behavior, optimal posting times, and engagement metrics. With social media at the forefront of event promotion, understanding how to effectively leverage these digital platforms becomes invaluable.

Mastering How to Promote a Concert on Social Media

Whether you’re a social media veteran from the MySpace era or a relative newcomer, digital channels offer an unprecedented opportunity to advertise your upcoming events.

Determining how to promote a concert on social media goes hand in hand with your other marketing campaigns. It relies on having a deep understanding of the people who are most likely to buy tickets to a specific event. Different platforms come with different niches and nuances, so you have to have a solid strategy before posting.

Why Do I Need a Plan for Social Media Ad Campaigns?

Without a strategy, you risk falling into the trap of posting without purpose. Every post should be intentional, working toward your primary goal: increasing event attendance.

Creating a strategy for how to market a concert on social media will ensure that you use the right tools to get the kind of exposure you’re looking for. Plus, you’re busy enough as it is–make sure the time you dedicate to social media promotion is used most effectively.

Social Media Ad Campaign Checklist

Now that you understand the importance of social media in event promotion, it’s time to get tactical. Use the following checklist as your roadmap to digital marketing success. Each element is an essential piece of the puzzle that, when assembled correctly, creates a compelling promotional strategy that can transform your event from a local gig to a must-attend experience.

How Will You Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media?

The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to establish a presence on every single social media channel. You can pick a couple that you believe will give you the greatest chance of reaching your target audience.

According to Sprout Social, there are some specific demographics for each social media platform that can help you with this:

• Facebook: 2.91 billion monthly active users, with most users between 25-34 years old
• Instagram: 2 billion monthly active users, with most users between 18-34 years old
• YouTube: over 2 billion monthly active users, with most users between 15-35 years old
• TikTok: 1 billion monthly active users, with most users between 10-19 years old
• Twitter: 211 million daily active users, with most users between 18-29 years old
• LinkedIn: 810 million monthly active users, with most users between 25-34 years old (although LinkedIn is widely recognized as a B2B social networking platform)
• Pinterest: 431 million monthly active users, with most users between 50-64 years old
• Snapchat: 319 million monthly active users, with most users between 15-25 years old 

Related: Live Music Industry Trends: 10 Trends Shaping the Future

So, if you have a headliner who would primarily appeal to Millennials, you’d likely want to concentrate your social media efforts on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. If you were promoting an event to a Gen Z audience, you’d want to focus on TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.

Of course, these aren’t hard and fast rules, but understanding the primary demographics of the users on each channel will help you decide which platforms you want to establish a presence on.

What’s Your Budget?

After selecting platforms, determine your marketing budget for social media campaigns. If you want to promote posts, you’ll have to invest a bit to help your content get discovered by the right people. While organic discovery through curated content and hashtags works, paid promotion helps ensure your concert promotion efforts reach the right audience.

Allocate a portion of your budget to boosting posts, running targeted ads, and testing different formats like stories or video ads. Start with a smaller budget to gauge what works, and be prepared to adjust based on performance metrics like reach, engagement, and ticket sales. Creating a comprehensive concert budget template can help you track and allocate resources effectively.

What Additional Demographics Comprise Your Target Audience?

The more you understand your target audience, the more specific you’ll be able to get with your social media strategy. When it comes to figuring out how to promote a concert on social media, create a few customer personas for each event or artist. Your customer personas should include details such as their:

• Job title
• Age
• Gender
• Salary/income
• Location
• Interests and hobbies
• Favorite social media platforms

These details can help you decide on what kind of content to post and spend on, as well as what kind of information or angle to focus on.

How Often Will You Post?

Quality beats quantity. Post incredible content periodically rather than mediocre content daily. The amazing content will keep your followers engaged; the mediocre content will get you unfollowed. Consider creating a social media calendar to maintain consistency and track your concert promotion strategy.

A powerful calendar tool takes the chaos out of social media scheduling, giving promoters a clear, streamlined view of their marketing game plan. From mapping out posts to aligning with key concert dates, it keeps every piece of content on point and on time. It’s a professional strategy that maximizes audience engagement.

What Will You Post?

Whatever you post should be engaging and valuable to your audience’s lives so that they stop scrolling and engage with your content. For upcoming concerts, consider:

• Artist performance video snippets
• Interview clips
• Event detail graphics
• Fan reaction shots
• Merchandise highlights

Related: Easing Promoter’s Workloads with Event Promotion Tools

Utilize all platform features and every posting method available to you. For example, on Instagram, you can post to your feed, post to your story, and create reels. If you’re on that social channel, you should be crafting content for all three.

How to Increase Visibility

Now that you’ve put your strategy together, it’s time to do everything you can to get your posts discovered by your target audience. Part of determining how to promote a concert on social media is ensuring that people learn about your event while scrolling.

Get Creative With Your Posts

You can do so much with your posts, no matter which platform you’re using to get your message out. Your efforts should attract the right attention as long as you’re creating engaging content and you aren’t over-posting. Some tricks you can try include:

• Using the “countdown sticker” on Instagram Stories to remind people when tickets go on sale or generate a buzz about the concert
• Posting teaser trailers for the event
• Giving a sneak peek of behind-the-scenes action with the artist
• Designing a custom augmented reality (AR) filter on Instagram or Snapchat
• Hosting “Live” events where fans can ask the artist questions
• Reposting content shared by your followers
• Saving event highlights to your Instagram Story highlights
• Teaming up with influencers or other popular artists
• Creating a unique event hashtag for fans to use when they post about the event

Speaking of hashtags, do some research to determine which hashtags you should add to your posts to make them more discoverable to your target audience.

Make an Event Page

If you’re establishing your presence on Facebook, create an event page for your concert. Facebook events are an incredible tool and make it ridiculously easy to share concert details with others.

Setting up a Facebook event page enables users to:

• Discover your event when looking through Facebook’s catalog to find something to do
• Find important information about the event (date, time, location, etc.)
• Respond to posts and interact with content
• Directly message you with any questions they have
• Share it with their friends with the click of a button

Host a Contest

Everyone loves free stuff, and an easy way to create hype for your event is to host a contest on one of your social media platforms. You can decide how people enter the contest and what prizes to give away, but it’s best for the entries to generate engagement.

For example, many contests on Instagram ask users to follow the account and tag a friend in the comments. By having them tag their friends, more people will see your content and (hopefully) follow you and tag some of their friends in return.

All you have to do is choose a winner at random and deliver the prize, whether it’s artist merchandise or free tickets to the event.

Organize Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Staying on top of your social media posts can be tricky, even if you know exactly how to promote a concert on social media. Concert promotions require strategic planning and robust tools. While navigating the nuances of modern marketing can be challenging, innovative venue management software can streamline your process.

Prism offers an elite solution for music event management. Our interactive calendar and comprehensive features make planning social media campaigns seamless. We empower music professionals to stay ahead by providing tools to schedule, track, and optimize social media promotion, ensuring every post hits the right audience at the right time. Schedule a demo today and transform your event promotion strategy.