Tag Archive - community

Twittering Bands – Good and Bad Practices

April 15, 2009 in Emulate, Featured, Interact with 6 Comments

trying to help bands avoid communication fails...

trying to help bands avoid communication fails...

Back in February I published an article, “Building Fan-Band Relationships In 420 Characters Per Day” that put forward some tips on how bands could take better advantage of the Twitter platform, and utilize it to more effectively communicate with their fans.

Since then, I have seen a large growth in the number of bands who are using Twitter, and have seen many examples of good practices and some examples of not-so-good practices, some of which I’d like to call attention to here.

Some great example posts of good use of twitter by a band:

- “We’re #1 [national] artist for most views on Youtube today!! You guys rock keep checking the [song title] video! -N

This is a great post because it’s informative, yet promotional, but doesn’t sound egotistical, in fact it has a thankful tone, contains a directive inciting fans to perform a desired action, and the post is “signed” by the band member, so a reader knows which band member logged in to Twitter that day.

- playing at 1714 XXXX street in LA at 2pm. directions at http://XXXX.com – only room for 50 people so come get in line asafp!!!

Another great use of twitter, in that it announces a promotional message that your fans would care about, (a secret show), gives specific details, conveys urgency, and excitement.

- @username What exactly is a garbage plate?

This is a great example, because it’s a conversational response to something one of the band’s fans actually said to the band.  Interacting with the fans is crucial, because the Twitter platform is not meant for one-way communication.  It’s meant for conversations.

- http://twitpic.com/XXXX- yes, you can play with the mac, just don’t touch the keys or drool on it.

This one is great because it uses a twitpic, and everyone loves to see pictures posted from their favorite bands.  Especially when the photos and caption provide insight into what you’re doing, showcases your personality, or something that you’re passionate about, and has an interesting caption.  The immediacy of Twitter makes the photos seem even more special because there’s the feeling they are happening right “now.”

- sick with flu, in bed, brain full of emptiness. watching DVD of doctor who and drinking hot toddys. life, love & time are great mysteries.

Another post that shows personality, talks about some non-music related interests, keeps fans updated in a very intimate way, and still manages to contain a profound thought.

- What are some new bands/artists that don’t suck? I need some new music that doesn’t sound like some regurgitated crap I’ve heard before.

Okay, so this one isn’t articulated the best, since its a little negative, but the idea of polling your followers to get them to talk about other bands they listen to is a great idea.  Not only does it engage your audience, get them talking about music, but it actually also gives you useful info about your fanbase that could help you better market your music.

In general, posts that inform, inquire, engage, and interact are the best.  For a really great example of an artist who is being extremely effective on Twitter, check out @amandapalmer.  She’s the lead-singer of the band The Dresden Dolls and also a very talented solo artist.  Whether you like her music or not, you could learn a lot stylistically from her twitter account.  She does twitter-based Q&As with her fans, holds impromptu secret shows announced via twitter, does quick promos like “first five people to @reply me get on the guestlist for the show tonight”, surprise fan meet-ups, polls her audience, talks to them, has conversations with them, posts lots of twitpics, and demonstrates many other lessons in effective online fan-communication via Twitter.

So just before I wrap this up, I think it’s only fair to comment on a few bad practices, however I’m not going to call anyone out or anything like that, but here are a few “please don’ts” to keep in mind…

- please don’t publicly thank people for their support when really what’s happened is that you followed them first, and now they decided to follow you back out of courtesy.  Note, this is especially bad when you do this with famous musicians.  @depechemode is not showing their support of your band, by returning a follow.

- please don’t REPEAT OVERLY PROMOTIONAL TWEETS THAT ARE WRITTEN ALL IN CAPS.  PLEASE DON’T REPEAT OVERLY PROMOTIONAL TWEETS THAT ARE WRITTEN ALL IN CAPS.  PLEASE DON’T REPEAT…see what i mean?

- if someone follows you, don’t automatically assume they’re now your fan.  Don’t auto-DM them thanking them for their interest in your music, or make any other assumptions like that.  Consider that the online equivalent of someone saying “hi, what do you do?” and you’re response being “Oh my god, it’s so great you talked to me, because now we’re best friends, and we’re gonna hang out every day and you’re mom’s gonna bake me cookies.”  It’s a little weird.

- please don’t ignore questions or comments from your followers.  Even if it’s only 140-characters worth of attention they gave you, that’s still effort they didn’t have to bother making, so if they’ve gone out of their way to do it, you had better pay them the respect of replying.

I’m sure there are more of both good practices and bad practices… but I’ll tell you what… I’ll stop here, but I invite everyone to continue this post through the comments section.  What are some more good and bad practices that you’ve seen?

Artistshouse Music

April 8, 2009 in Use with 0 Comments

picture_1Here is a great website community that endeavours to “help musicians and music entrepreneurs create sustainable careers.”  They’re building a vast wealth of resources that include video clips, articles, blogs, text transcriptions and full-length video pieces that cover a huge range of topics like musician strategy, marketing, production, legal, education and careers in music.  These topics then get broken down into more specific sections like tools/gear, careers, genre, networking, songwriting, publicity, promotion, advertising, retail/distribution, merchandise, touring, fan base, internet, arranging, home recording, pro tools, manufacturing, mixing and mastering, pro recording, msuic videos, entrpreneurship, ethics, publishing, services, touring, music as business, copyright, performing, learning, teaching, and believe it or not that’s not a complete list of the topics on which this site has resources for a musician to dig into.

This site is also an aggregator of video interviews and footage from a large number of musicians and music industry professionals… the list is way too massive to include here but I can link to it here.

Furthermore, Artistshouse is very active on Twitter, and they are always sending out links to articles from all over the web that will be of interest to independent musicians and people in the music industry, and I definitely recommend following them.

They also host a live weekly video-stream/online chat program that takes place every Wednesday (or almost every Wednesday anyway) that extends their community into the live arena, and allows you to see the folks at the centre of the site.  The folks seem really nice, they’ve certainly been kind enough to me by linking several of my blog posts out to their community of musicians, and I appreciate them for it.

The people behind this site are backed by the Herb Alpert Foundation, who had the idea to create an online non-profit resource for musicians to get information, support, professional guidance and expert resources to help them navigate the challenges of the music industry.  To read more about the folks who are at the centre of the artistshouse community, check out their about page.

It seems like Artistshouse is organized by people who are trying to help musicians for all the right reasons…which is a great thing, but as with all communities, they are only as good as what their members make of it, so I suggest if you’re interested in checking it out, then try it out with fervor.  If you’re going to sign up, then interact, watch, learn, listen, talk, comment, suggest and be active regularly… get involved and make the most of the platform being provided.

Ping.fm – Update All Your Social Networks At Once

March 7, 2009 in Use with 0 Comments

Use Ping.fm to send your message across all your networks at once.

Use Ping.fm to send your message across all your networks at once.

Ping.fm calls itself “a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.”  It’s currently in beta mode, which means it ‘s free to sign up, and try it out.

Post a message to the Ping.fm service, and Ping then takes that message and distributes it out to all your social networking sites for you… so you only have to send it once.

You tell Ping.fm which social-networks you belong to (they support probably every one you already use), add them all  to your list within Ping, and then when you use Ping.fm to send a message, you just let Ping take care of the rest.  Type it once, and Ping can get sent out as your latest Twitter post, Facebook Status, Facebook Note, Facebook Photo upload, Linkedin Status, Myspace Status, Myspace Bulletin, etc.  Check out their mainpage for all the networks they support… a list of over thirty different ones.  It’s got built in support for URL-shortening too, and tells you how many characters your message will be, so it can stay Twitter-friendly.

You can send your messages to Ping.fm from many ways too… via SMS, instant messages, email, 3rd party apps, and more.  They make this very easy for you.

Signing up for a ping.fm account is about as basic as it can get… email address, user name, password, you’re done.  Then, when you’ve logged in, you can start adding all your networks, which does require you logging in to your various profile pages through their site (and presumably giving them your passwords… tin-foil hat-wearers need not apply I guess, but anyone trying to create a business like this, if they’re going to be successful at all, the privacy of this info has got to be fully respected… they wouldn’t dare compromise that.)

I only wish you could use it to send messages out to members of a Facebook Group, a list of email addresses, or more info beyond a “status update” but the reality is this service is still in beta and I’m sure they’re working on this.

For musicians, this is great simply because when you want to send a quick promotional news item or reminder out to your fanbase, if you’ve been active online you probably have many different places where you connect with fans, which makes updating each one of them separately a very tedious process.  So to only have to type your message once, and have it sent out across all your networks just makes things so much more efficient and easy, which, I hope, will make you communicate more often, thus strengthening the bonds you have with your fans, and keep you top of their minds.

A Quick Test Of Your Band’s Promo Ethics and Effectiveness

February 28, 2009 in Build with 3 Comments

A quick way to measure how effective and how ethical you're being when you are promoting your band.

It's easy to measure how effective and how ethical you're being when you are promoting your band.

As a band who wants to spread the word about your music, promoting yourself is a great investment of your time and money.  Just please think twice before you spend your money on promotion, and also make sure you’re being smart about how you promote yourself.  A simple way to check and see if you’re being both ethical and effective, is to imagine yourself on the receiving end of your own marketing.  Imagine that someone else is communicating to you about their band, using the tactic you’re considering using.  Be honest with yourself, and if you would either ignore the effort, or be annoyed by it, then don’t use it yourself!

Some common tactics that I’ve seen bands use, that I don’t recommend you try, include  “flyering outside another artist’s show” and “parking a van with a banner on it outside a major concert.”  They are perfect examples of bad promotional behaviour that simply comes off as noise.  Flyering is like “shouting from a rooftop” and it doesn’t work anymore.  Can you remember the last time you were handed a flyer for a band as you were leaving another artist’s concert that actually prompted you to look that band up online, go to their concert or buy their music?  I can tell you when the last time I did it was… never.  That’s right… not once in my life.  It’s simply not an effective way to spend your time or money.  A van with the banner on it is just another example of the type of in-your-face interruptive advertising that modern consumers have trained themselves to ignore.  This is the same as billboards, print-ads, pop-ups, banner ads, spam email, TV commercials, etc. and they are becoming increasingly ineffective, and so please if you decide you still want to try some of these methods, know that one of the only ways you can possibly be really successful with them is to do them differently or more creatively than people are expecting you to.  And be aware that even then, it won’t work every time.

Also, being in an independent band, your funds are most likely very minimal, and I would like to suggest that as an independent artist, paying cash for any form of online advertising is never a good way to spend your hard-earned money.  You can’t simply buy success, (this theme will be the central idea in my next article) and I bet that with a bit of thought and effort you can think of many really great ways you can more effectively engage another artist’s fans online without spending any money advertising to them.

Another absolute no-no, is to trade email lists with other artists.  While this may seem like a great shortcut to growing your own list, it’s not.  Don’t do this, ever.  Not only should you have so much respect for the privacy of the folks who give you their permission to contact them that you should never want to give your list information to anyone else, but this type of privacy breach is actually illegal in many countries.  Even if you’re in a country where this is not illegal, it is still a bad business practice that will only harm the relationship that both bands have with the particular fan (the band who gave the email address, and the band who sent the email).  The fan is going to be angry with the unsolicited email from a band they know nothing about, and they’re going to be even more angry with the other band who has obviously given away their personal email address to someone else.  Please never do this.

To close this article, I’d like to repeat what  I said in the beginning.  A simple way to check and see if you’re being both ethical and effective, is to imagine yourself on the receiving end of your own marketing.  Pretend you’re the music fan, and someone else is trying to sell you on their band, using the tactic you’re considering using.  If your initial reaction is to ignore the effort, or be annoyed by it, then don’t use it to promote your band either.

For more suggestions on how to ethically grow your fan community, check out these articles.

Building A Community Offline

February 25, 2009 in Build with 3 Comments

Okay, so this post is a little bit overdue, but life happens, right?  And it’s Wednesday now, so time to get back on track.

When I wrote about building your community online by thinking like a fan, I mentioned that a similar philosophy can be applied to the offline world as well.  The same type of actions, getting involved in existing communities, asking questions, getting involved in discussions, frequenting sites, supporting other artists… it all works online and it all works offline.

Since you make a certain genre of music, and since that means you probably LIKE that genre of music, then you’ve already got everything you need.  You know the local nightclubs/bars that cater to that music, you know the local bands that already play similar music, and you probably know some of the other people in your town that like similar music.  So get out there, and have conversations.  Get involved in the existing community.  Support the other musicians making music in your scene, get to know the bar owners, bookers, and fans of the genre you make.

The key is to get out there and get involved BEFORE you need something from them.  The first time you talk to the local bar owner better not be when you want to perform in their establishment.  The first time you talk to the local band that’s filling that club better not be when you want to open for them.  And so on.  Get involved, be supportive, ask questions, get to know the fans, the bands, the bars, everyone you can.  Be a solid member of the existing community, and you’ll slowly build your own community.  People will know you, and you will know them.  And that will make them want to support you.

Start locally, in your own town.  Stay active, and stay involved.  And since you can’t play in your own town every week, that gives you lots of time to start getting involved in similar communities in the surrounding towns.  Before you know it, you’ll have a network of bands with which you can swap shows, a network of bar bookers that you have personal relationships with, and a network of fans who feel a strong connection to you and will be willing to support you.

That’s how it begins.  And it’s up to you to continue to nurture it, and make it grow.

Build Your Community Online By Thinking Like A Fan

February 14, 2009 in Build with 1 Comment

First become part of a community, and then focus on leading it

First become part of a community, and then focus on leading it

There’s a lot of talk these days about community-building, and many look to that as a modern strategy for spreading a band’s music.  While I do believe that it is a great strategy, many bands tend to overthink or underthink this strategy – some are too selfish, and for some reason it seems all natural behaviour of interaction and human nature can go out the window when it comes to promoting a band.

To build a community online, one not-recommended method is to take a passive approach… like start a myspace page, post some tunes, and wait for people to find you and friend you.  Then only communicate with those people that have reached out to you.  That’s okay, in that, at least you’re only talking to people who have expressed previous interest in you.  However, it’s certainly not enough, unless you manage to catch lightning in a bottle, and make a song that takes off virally, spreading through the online space like crazy.

Another poor approach to community-building could most-politely be called “the aggressive approach.”  You know this approach when you see it, and the results are the bands who have a billion friends on Myspace, and very little plays.  These are the bands that send email after email (or facebook event after facebook event) about their songs and their shows to anyone they can find, regardless of whether they have permission, and regardless of whether it makes sense or not.  Some “clever” bands even think that if they friend all the attractive women on Myspace, that their true target fans would be fooled into thinking the band attracts those folks to their live-shows, and that somehow the true fans would be more inclined to be a fan of the band because of this.  Does this make any sense to anyone?  Seems to me it would be much easier and more effective to focus on your target fans to begin with.

The truth is, the best way to build a community online is to start by getting involved in existing ones.   I guarantee you there is already at least one, and most likely several places online that exist for people who might like your particular sound to already be congregating and discussing other bands who are somewhat similar to you.  Take a minute, think about your band, and your music.  Think about yourself too.  You probably make a similar sound of music to the type of music you personally like to listen to (or at least one of the types of music you listen to.)  That’s because you’re a fan! So get in touch with your inner-fan, and think like that!  And don’t ever forget, Online is the same as “The Real World” because it IS the real world.  It’s still people talking to people.  We just use new tools to communicate.  But the rules don’t really change.

Let’s for one minute pretend you don’t make your own music, but you are an avid fan of punk rock… you would go online and find messageboards, facebook groups, myspace friends, twitter friends, blippers, fan-pages, artist websites, blogs, online magazines and local-scene websites that all focused on the music you like, and you would get involved in the current conversations.  You’d ask questions, make comments, have discussions, talk about music you like, check out the music that other people were talking about, etc.  What would end up happening, naturally, is that you would develop friendships, meet new people, find a group of folks who you agreed with often, bonded with, and felt connected to.  That is called building a community online.

You wouldn’t go on, only post things that you wanted to say, never comment on anything that is already being discussed, never answer any questions people ask you, and only talk about one band.  That’s ridiculous, no humans interact that way, and no one’s ever made a friend or bonded with anyone from having a one-sided conversation like that.  So don’t promote your band like that!

Think like a fan, be a part of the existing community, have conversations, make friends, and talk about all sorts of bands…yours included, of course.

And if you’re in a band, and are having difficulty getting started, email me. I’ll try my best to help!

Next post… I’ll talk about how this can apply in the offline world.  Or in the meantime, maybe you can tell me?

See you on Wednesday.

- The idea for this post came out of a conversation I recently had with @withabullet.

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