#198: Why I Never Release Music Without This Promotion Calendar

Struggling to promote your music on social media without burning out? You’re not alone. In this episode, Marc Matthews introduces his 30-day music release promotion calendar for indie musicians, a practical tool designed to eliminate guesswork, boost engagement, and help you post purposefully.

You’ll learn what a social media content calendar for musicians is, how a content calendar can improve music promotion, and what tools can help musicians plan and schedule social media content. Marc breaks down how to schedule content types (like teasers, throwbacks, or studio clips), choose the right platforms, and, most importantly, track engagement metrics for your music posts.

Marc also shares lessons from my campaigns, how tracking content performance helped his “Half-Life” release outperform “4-Minute Warning” with fewer posts and how to analyse the performance of your music releases online to get better results every time.

This episode answers key questions like how to measure the success of your music marketing campaigns and how to track social media engagement for music releases, all while reducing burnout from social media as a music creator.

Tune in and grab your free download of the calendar. Let’s make your next release smarter, not harder.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

Grab your FREE 30-Day Social Media Calendar

Chapters

• 0:00 What Is a Social Media Content Calendar for Musicians?
• 2:12 Calendar Features and Tools for Tracking Music Promotion Content
• 4:29 How I Track Engagement Metrics for My Music Posts (Case Study)
• 9:04 How to Analyze the Performance of Your Music Releases Online
• 11:36 How to Get Your Free Music Release Promotion Calendar

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:34

Stick around, because I'm giving away the exact 30-day content release calendar scheduler, if you will. That I use for my releases and it's built specifically for producers and artists like you. You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to Inside the Mix. If you are the type of producer or artist that posts on social media just a ticker box, this episode is for you. Stick around, because I'm giving away the exact 30-day content release calendar scheduler, if you will. That I use for my releases and it's built specifically for producers and artists like you. Now, I'm not a social media expert by any stretch, but the reason I built, or rather created, this content release Canada is because I was haphazardly posting and I was posting just because I felt it when it was all last minute and I wasn't really getting anywhere with it. I wasn't getting any engagement and it was just a bit shit, to be honest, and it became more of a pain in the ass. So I thought you know what. There's got to be a better way, and I love tracking things. So I thought I'll create a content calendar and I'll also put a tracking element in there as well, so I can see what's working and what isn't, and then I can take that forward into future releases. The idea was to reduce overwhelm not that I really get overwhelmed just because I'm a pain in the ass and to have everything planned in advance. So I know exactly what I'm going to be doing and I was able to then plan decent content stuff that I think is going to work and is going to land well, rather than just last minute rubbish.

Marc Matthews: 2:24

Before I describe the actual 30-day release plan or scheduler itself, click the link in the episode description and download your copy and remove that guesswork. The first thing you'll need to do when you have access to this content calendar is go to file and then save as google sheets Please do not request permission to access, please and then save as google sheets. Please do not request permission to access. Please. Go to save as google sheets and open it in your google account, and then you can edit it and do what you see fit. So, going from left to right, we've got the day from 1 to 30.

Marc Matthews: 2:54

Then we've got content type teaser clip, studio tour, throwback, post release eve, post release day, post hyperlapse. Some of these need to be done on specific days, others you can move around as you see fit. Platform you've got a dropdown you can select from Instagram, youtube, tiktok, facebook or X. If you hit edit, you can edit it and add or remove them as you see fit. For example, I could remove X because I never use use it, but I'll just close that for the time being and you can add multiple as well. Same with format. So, under format, I've got video picture or carousel, because I use Instagram primarily. Again, you can edit that and then a description of what the content is. So we've got some items such as a 15 second teaser behind the scenes look at your studio setup, a run, a poll, for example.

Marc Matthews: 3:43

Another behind the scenes here. A day in the working, a day in the life, working on this project. Tomorrow is the day for release eve. It's here on the release day hints at an upcoming project, a time lapse or quick progress montage, drop an an FAQ, share a bonus surprise, announce a remix competition, whatever it may be, and you can change these as you see fit. The idea here is we can track what works well and what doesn't, and then we can start using that in future releases. Then you can select created, yes or no from the dropdown and then you can say yes or no is posted. So the idea is that we're batch recording. We can keep track of what's recording, what isn't. So then, moving to the right, this is where we're tracking. So in column H, we've got plays. In column I, we've got likes. J, we've got comments. K, we've got shares and Ls, we've got saves. And the idea here is we are tracking the numbers so we can see what content's working well and what isn't. So we can sack off what isn't working. And we'll have a look at an example that I used, a tracking example for my release. Four-minute warning in a minute, or rather, I'll describe it to you if you're listening to this Now.

Marc Matthews: 4:50

At the moment I haven't developed it for multiple platforms, because if you're using Instagram, youtube and you're posting on both, you're going to have to calculate the views. You're going to have to add them together. So what I do and I recommend doing this is pick the platform that's your primary one and track that, for example. But what I have noticed is certain posts do better on different platforms. For example, the production posts that I put out do better on YouTube Shorts than they do on Instagram. And then pictures do better on Instagram than they do on YouTube YouTube on YouTube, for example, which kind of makes sense. It's not video, is it? I do get some engagement on YouTube with pictures, but not as much as Instagram. We'll have a look at that in a minute so you can see.

Marc Matthews: 5:33

It's all set up to track. It's all customizable as well. You can do what you want with it. This is the first iteration of it. As I develop it, I'll probably add some more graphs and stuff to it so I can start analyzing progress over time and other bits and pieces. So I'll drop another video if I do that, but at the moment, set for 30 days. It doesn't have to be 30 days. You might only want to do 14 or 15, rather, so you can just delete some of these.

Marc Matthews: 5:58

So let's dive into an example and this is my release for four minute warning and in here I can see that I have not created content for everything that I've planned for the most part leading up to it, I I did quite well, three I didn't, but then afterwards I dropped off a bit. I won't lie, I had to drop off a bit and it's mainly video, with some pictures and one carousel, and it's all Instagram and YouTube shorts. But I can see from my tracking, for example, that my collaborator post with Tyler Lyle from the Midnight so this is podcast related was the most viewed at 8,400. And I had 73 likes and four comments. Nine saves five shares. So that says to me that collaborator posts. I'm going to continue using those in future.

Marc Matthews: 6:47

Videos. Content calendars I'm not going to have. I don't know who I'm going to collaborate with, but you can see here that collaborator posts do work well. I say that. But then I got another one here. That's only 315. So I guess it depends on what the content is in terms of what lands.

Marc Matthews: 7:03

But then looking at some more here production, quick tip 401 views, not huge numbers, 10 likes. What have we got here? So I've got 29 likes for one here and that is a picture and that's an ounce of countdown to a major release or event. So 29 likes for that one there and a picture again. Share an old photo or video 22 likes for that one. So what I've realized looking at the numbers here is that, in terms of actual likes and comments, I get more from pictures than I do from videos, which might suggest that my videos are either not that engaging or not of the best quality. Maybe I need to up my game in videos, but the actual pictures seem to be doing quite well Behind the scenes.

Marc Matthews: 7:48

Look at your studio. Artwork is the best performing video, aside from the collaborator one. So that's just a look around my studio in terms of what artwork I have. 20 saves, 9 comments, not 20 saves. 20 likes, 9 comments, 15 second teaser, 25 likes. Only 205 plays. These numbers are quite low, but there's one here in particular. Now I totally sack this off.

Marc Matthews: 8:15

I'm not doing this again. Real-time q a. So going live on instagram. I've got 83 views on that. So that's one thing I'm not going to take forward. Another one I'm not going to take forward I've got a four minute warning. I used a snippet from the movie resident evil to promote four-Minute Warning, 152 plays. Probably not going to do that going forward again. In fact, we'll have a look at my release calendar for Half-Life and see what I did take forward it's probably going to be pictures collaborators.

Marc Matthews: 8:45

And did I do a carousel? The carousel did okay, oh, no, I didn't. I didn't track the carousel. Oh, I didn't track the carousel. Oh, I didn't add the numbers in for that one. I need to do that, but from my memory it did quite well. So let's have a look at my next content calendar, which is for Half-Life. With Half-Life I actually started using TikTok again and I'm unsure whether I'm going to continue using it we'll see, we'll see but I started using it again and at the moment I haven't really seen any benefit.

Marc Matthews: 9:13

But I can see here, looking at my canada, that I'm posting less, and the reason I'm posting less is this goes way back to the beginning of this episode, when I said I was haphazardly posting and posting just because and I felt that's what I was doing with four minute warning and separation separation, I didn't even have a plan, but four minute warning, I was just haphazardly. There was a plan, right, but I felt like I was just doing it because I felt I had to. So this time I was like you know what, I'm going to post less, but I'm going to try and make it better. So I can see here I've got more pictures, this one, so I've learned from previous and I'm posting more pictures, and this is in flux, so I haven't tracked everything yet because I I give them a few days to bed in to see how they do, uh, but what we got here a collab post did quite well. Again, another collab post did quite well. So, reasonably, these are numbers for me.

Marc Matthews: 10:00

I'm not a social media expert by any stretch and in terms of engagement for the content I create, these numbers are quite good. Others will look at this and be like, but for me it's pretty good. And, to be fair, if you put 532 people in the room, there's quite a lot of people, and same with 688. Um, the. What else have we got here? Some videos. Videos did quite well.

Marc Matthews: 10:21

Um, I've got another picture here that did really well 41 likes, two comments, though. 41 likes, but two comments. Another picture, another teaser 22. I definitely get more likes for pictures than I do for videos, which again, probably says I need to up my video game. But again, I can see here I'm posting less, more pictures, more carousels, and it seems to be working well. What I have noticed is if I look at the metrics on Instagram, for example, I'm seeing I'm getting more followers Again, not huge numbers, but certainly more new followers compared to what I was before running this particular schedule.

Marc Matthews: 11:00

So in my head I'm thinking okay, well, if I keep doing this and iterating, using this content calendar every release, I'm going to get that bit better and hopefully, with the compound effect, I'll start to approach a sweet spot where it really starts working well.

Marc Matthews: 11:13

So there we go, folks.

Marc Matthews: 11:14

That is my 30-day social media content release schedule, calendar plan, whatever you want to call it.

Marc Matthews: 11:21

So if, like me, you like to track things and track progress over time, you also want to negate overwhelm from social media, you want to stop haphazardly posting and you want to batch, record and plan your releases prior to them being released and also post-release as well, then click the link in the episode description and grab your free copy of my 30-day content release plan calendar schedule I haven't quite settled on the name for it yet and start tracking your content, see what works well, take that forward into your next release and refine over time and, like I said just now, hopefully you'll gradually reach that sweet spot. And let me know, folks, what went well and also how could it be improved. What did you change? Would you recommend I change in further iterations of this release calendar? I'd love to know. So shoot me a message on Instagram, at Inside the Mix Podcast, or leave a comment on YouTube. Until next time, stay inspired, keep being creative and don't be afraid to experiment inside the mix.