Five Ways Music Brands Can Pregame Their Social Media Before NAMM

Some simple planning lets your music brand do more at NAMM than ever before.

As a music manufacturer, you spend a lot of time and treasure preparing for NAMM. You want to get the most out of your experience in Anaheim by making connections, setting up appointments, forging partnerships and generally learning about changes in the music industry.

Let’s face it. NAMM gets overwhelming with demands on your time. You’re trying to showcase your company’s new products and often trying to generate sales and take orders. It’s a lot to balance in a few short days.

How do you squeeze the most out of your NAMM investment? By getting a little creative through social media. Here are five tips for using social media so you can have a productive NAMM show.

Crowdsource Your Marketing

Find out what hashtags are trending, Tweet at and tag other vendors or featured artists (especially ones your company might already have endorsement deals with), and get the word out about your booth or workshop. Think of this mini-campaign as a warm-up act – people will be more receptive when they have some familiarity with you and your offerings. Then you’re not forced to interact with a cold audience.

Create a Branded Hashtag

Spewing hashtags all over your audience can be at best rude and at most worthless. Try creating a unique hashtag. Work in your company or product name or something key to the event and then tie it to a prize. Every time a NAMM attendee posts a pic of your booth or products on social media using the hashtag, they get one entry.

Get Real

Authenticity is everything with social media. People in the music industry can smell a fake a mile away and nobody wants to do business with a brand they can’t trust. Make sure your posts stay true to who you are. Use Facebook Live, Snapchat, and Instagram (among others) to showcase personal moments such as behind-the-scenes footage, spur-of-the-moment interviews, and candid shots of musical instruments and gear in use.

Build Your NAMM Wishlist

Mine your LinkedIn connections, Gmail address book, mailing list, or old-school Rolodex and make a list of industry influencers you want to connect with while at NAMM. This is your chance to set up lunches or post-show cocktails before everything’s in full swing and people accidentally overschedule themselves.

Pre-Schedule Your Content

When you’re having a great time, it’s easy to forget those mundane everyday tasks like sending out Tweets or posting to your site’s weekly blog. Use a platform like Hootsuite or Coschedule to load up content before you load up your luggage and then you can just post spontaneous updates or show photos for extra color when you have time. Whatever you do, don’t go radio silent because you’re busy – in social media, much like music, relevance is often closely linked to visibility.