Twitter is the perfect platform for artists, content creators and music professionals who are looking to build a network, brand and/or fan base. Twitter allows you to share your story with followers, create conversations and form deep connections.

Twitter is different from other platforms like Facebook because it allows you to grow your reach without having to necessarily pay for advertising. This fact alone makes the social media platform attractive for writers, musicians and traditional media outlets.

Twitter’s design is naturally rooted in creating converstions. With the use of hashtags, search and sharing information through different content formats. Such as articles, video, polls and surveys.

Now lets deep dive into 5 reasons to use Twitter and build a brand.

5 Reasons To Use Twitter

1. Easy to communicate with other people.
2. Direct Messages (DMs) allows for more opportunities and open collaboration.
3. Retweets = Boost in engagement, reach and MORE FOLLOWERS.
4. A straightforward way to interact with fans and followers.
5. A practical advertising platform, equipped with re-targeting.

Tweets consist of photos, GIFs, videos, links and now audio tweets. Although, if you’re just tweeting text, you’re restricted to 280 characters. Twitter use to be only 140 characters, which created a number of difficulties for people trying to prove a point or elaborate on different situations.

Twitter has now added threads that allow people to link tweets together to form a narrative. In the early days of Twitter this was something that people would naturally do by flooding their timeline. With threads, users can click on a tweet to view the thread in its entirety.

Keeping your tweets short and concise present your message as less wordy. Keep in mind, people are reading other tweets so you don’t want to come off as disconnected or incoherent.

Twitter also helps with becoming a better writer, 280 characters may not seem like a lot to work with, but over time it becomes second nature.

Now lets deep dive into 20 facts that make Twitter a go-to social media platform.

Facts About Twitter

1. Twitter has 145 million monetizable daily active users.
2. 30 million (or 20%) of Twitter’s daily users are American.
3. 92% of the U.S. population is familiar with Twitter (even if they don’t use it).
4. 22% of adults in the U.S. use Twitter.
5. 44% of U.S. 18- to 24-year-olds use Twitter.
6. U.S.-based Twitter users are younger, have more education, and more income than the general U.S. population.
7. The most active U.S. Twitter users have 20x as many followers, on average.
8. 12% of Americans get their news from Twitter (71% of Americans on Twitter are using it to read news.).
9. Twitter’s site referral traffic is up 6%, year-over-year (Instagram: 56%, Facebook: 29%, YouTube: 22%).
10. Twitter users are more likely to like brands that are inclusive and transparent.
11. Twitter ad engagement is up 23%.
12. Twitter ads with video are 50% cheaper in cost-per-engagement.
13. Twitter users spend 26% more time with ads than other social media users.
14. Twitter users spend 24% more time with ads posted by ‘creators’.
15. 25% of Twitter’s most prolific users use scheduling software.
16. Tweets with hashtags gets 100% more engagement.
17. People watch 2 billion videos on Twitter per day.
18. Watching video is the #3 reason people use Twitter.
19. Tweets with video get 10x the engagement.
20. 93% of video views on Twitter happen on mobile.

Building Your Twitter Brand

For artists and music professionals your brand is your first encounter with potential fans and followers. Before they make the decision to follow you or engage with your content they will ultimately be judging you based off of your image. This fact alone is why your personal brand should take the lead when developing a social media strategy for your career.

A solid brand is crucial when building your network and creating rapport with other artists, labels and industry regulars. The ultimate goal is to have your brand resonate with your target audience, no matter it be fans, label executives or concert promoters.

If branding yourself online is one of your goals, Twitter is the perfect platform to get started. Although there is a lot of noise when it comes to social media. There is a wealth of creatives, artists and professionals to connect with through the sharing of blog posts, websites, news, videos, photos and podcasts.

The convenience at play is that there are millions of people using Twitter as a marketing platform. So there is plenty of examples to take note of, as well connecting and working with content creators of similar interests.

Twitter’s biggest advantage is that it allows artists and music professionals the opportunity to interact with fans directly.

“I think you lose a lot if you outsource your social communication to third parties. It only takes a few minutes a day. There’s a very big upside for artists that invest their time in getting it right.

One of the main advantages Twitter has for artists is that it’s more open than Facebook or any other social platform. Artists can follow any band they’re into and connect with them easily. This is a big plus.”

– Mike More, CEO & Founder of plagood, a social streaming platform.

Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls has built up some cache on Twitter. The Boston-based musician has created a reputation on Twitter for being one of the most active and engaging musicians on the social media platform.

Palmer dives into everything from chats with fans to seeking input and feedback about creativity like t-shirt designs and songwriting.

This creates the opportunity to connect and work with other artists in your genre. If you can combine the right formula of getting followed, retweeted and becoming relevant; you can build a massive following in the span of a year.

Different artists utilize Twitter in different ways. The overall advantage it continues to create is that artist-to-fan communication is much more accessible than ever before.

It all depends on who you are as a musician. Your brand or content may require you to be ‘strictly-business’ and use to Twitter for announcements such as tour dates and new music. While other content creators are generally more intimate with their fan base.

The value continues to lie with the fans. Everything from free previews to unreleased material, promotions of albums, mixtapes and/or videos. All the way down to the personal thoughts of their favorite artists. Twitter has definitely created a deeper connection among fans and musicians.

Keep in mind, that all of this is happening in real-time. So it provides a sense of spontaneity. This creates an immense amount of value because artists can build their brands and fans can connect with their favorite musicians.

We all know that social media is important to content creators, but does the extra effort actually pay off?

It all depends on the artist and how they approach social media. For anyone starting out you will have to define what your “value” will be for your fan base.

The primary focus of social media marketing is to establish a line of communication with your fan base and build a brand.

You may not see the immediate results in more followers or selling out more shows. The art of developing those key relationships will make it more likely to gain followers and sell out shows.

Mike More says, asking people to make a purchase is probably the least effective approach.

“That doesn’t provide any value for your fans. It’s a demand.”

More recommends creating conversations with your fans, getting their input and doing things like hosting open chats via Twitter.

He advises, when the time comes to make a purchase and invest in your brand. Fans will be more likely to do so if they have a deep connection with your brand.

Going back to Amanda Palmer, she experienced this lesson firsthand. She used her influence on Twitter and the feedback of her fans to create a t-shirt design.

According to Twitter, the proceeds from the t-shirt brought in $11,000 in the first two hours.

Other artists have had similar successes whether it be selling out an upcoming show or getting more people to stream their new music.

Keep in mind, these results will vary depending on how big your following is on Twitter. Over time you can create a legitimate, real-world fan-base. Whether you are independent, local or Worldwide. Twitter is a great place to start.

Tools like Facebook and Twitter are very powerful when combined with real-world connections such as networking with other artists or having your fans join you for a live performance.

No matter what social networking tool you choose to use as an artist or music professional. The Internet will always be complimentary to creating those human connections.

Twitter just happens to be one with extraordinary potential.

“To this day Twitter is still the best communication platform for artists and fans, I love instagram but the comment section is so limited versus here we can talk about anything extensively.”

— Afrojack (@afrojack)