Twitter lets musicians do three
things they can’t do on other social
platforms.
First, if you hate Twitter, fine; don’t be on it.
Same goes for ANY social platform. Concentrate your efforts.
The new rules of social media say you SHOULDN’T be everywhere.
But if you ARE on Twitter, if you like using Twitter, if you’ve seen
results on Twitter, don’t lose hope just because media reports have
shown it on a downtrend over the past few years.

Most Twitter users don’t know your music.
Introduce yourself.

It’s worth remembering, Twitter still has hundreds of millions of active
monthly users — and most of them have never heard your music. That’s
a big untapped market right there.

Next, Twitter lets you do a few things that you can’t do on other
platforms.

1. Post links without hurting your reach.
Facebook downgrades your posts if they contain URLs, especially off-
platform links.

Instagram doesn’t even let you put linkable URLs in your captions; you
just get the one link in your profile bio.
Twitter lets you tweet all day long with links to Spotify, Soundcloud,
YouTube, websites, whatever. And those tweets don’t get ground to
nothing just because they lead users to content that isn’t native to
Twitter.
Even better, lots of those external links (like YouTube videos and
certain music links) will open right up within Twitter so you get
immediate interaction.

2. Post as frequently as you want without hurting your reach.

Instagram lets you post pics to your heart’s content. But sometimes you
want to SAY something.
Facebook might be amenable to a few updates per day, but the more
posts you write, the less likely your followers are to see them.
When you want to say something with words, when you want to say a lot
of things with words, there’s Twitter!
A string of tweets can show you building a larger story over a short
time. A tweet every 15 minutes can reveal the random misadventures of
your life. The one-off tweet can share a revelation.
Whether you want to let your fans in on your stream-of-conscious mind
or you prefer to schedule 50 tweets ahead of time in HootSuite, Twitter
doesn’t hold you back.

3. Support others without hurting your reach.

Being a member of a larger music community is important, but when you
want to share info about a friend’s new music, or thank a blogger who
covered your latest release (on the same day your video goes live on
YouTube), or just ask your fans what they thought of that cool article
about your favorite artist,… you might be reluctant to do so on Facebook
if it hurts the reach of other important posts you need to make that day.
Who comes to the rescue? Yep, once again, Twitter.
Twitter has zero barriers to being a good community member. You can
tweet, retweet, reply, and like things whenever you want. When there’s
no cost to being a supporter of others’ work, generosity follows. Sure,
Twitter is the digital home to plenty of trolls, but it can be a really
supportive place as well.
What else can musicians gain from Twitter?
Those are just three of the things you can still do on Twitter that you
can’t do elsewhere on social platforms. I’m sure there are other unique
opportunities there too.