Social Media
January 24, 2011 § Leave a Comment
During the course of the last few years we’ve heard how everyone needs to get on the new web, the Web 2.0, which is full of interaction between the people that post things, and users that are reading said posts. Businesses, musical acts, and all types of celebrities, flocked to sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, in a supposed effort to reach their fan bases. It has been a few years since these platforms have existed, and as a result, I think we can now ask, how social are these platforms? Do they really work? The original concept was to bring you closer to those artists, and bear in mind, I do understand that it is impossible for some of these artists to answer absolutely everything that is sent in their direction. But what’s the point in someone being on say Twitter if they’re still not accessible? To me, this makes no sense.
Why advertise/post, you’re going to be at say The Palms if you aren’t going to make yourself available? Good for you, you’re in Vegas, while the rest of us slobs work, go to school, etc.! We get it, you’ve been invited to play poker, or are going to shoot a round of golf, but throw people a bone from time to time. Ever think this works against you when looking for sympathy regarding your poor album sales? What is posted can both help, and hurt how fans perceive you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked people, are you getting the new (insert band name here) album? And hear in return “F them, they don’t need my money, their guitarist is off playing this or that again”.
Not everyone is like this, there are those like say Mark Morton (@markduanemorton) from Lamb Of God or Nikki Sixx (@NikkiSixx) from Motley Crue, and my good buddy Mark Strigl (@strigl and @talkingmetal) who posting things, and do a good job in following up with fans responses. Again, I understand that you can’t respond to everything, but hell if you can post “flying from L.A. to Vegas, going to be on the net and playing poker online”, wouldn’t that time be better served getting in touch with people that have put you in that position? Touching on the people I’ve pointed out, they all differ in celebrity status, and thus interact in various ways with their fans. Mark Morton often takes questions sent to him on Twitter, Nikki often interacts with other celebrities, and fans alike, while you can read posts from Mark stating he’s going to be at a certain location in New York City so that fans can stop by and have a beer with him.
Being that I’m a big fan of pro-wrestling as well, I follow various wrestlers, and see that wrestlers like CM Punk (@CMPUNK) Chris Jericho (IAMJERICHO) and MVP (@The305MVP) to name a few. They get it, they have fully embraced Twitter, they keep fans up to date with what they’re doing. They respond to fans, make fun of each other at times, and keep thing interesting. I think a lot of musicians could learn from them.
In the end people are going to do whatever it is that they want, and I am in no position to tell people what it that they have to do. The idea of all of these web 2.0 applications is to (as I’ve mentioned above) bring you closer to your customers, in the case of musicians, their fans. So why not leverage these tools to do more than just blab about how cool your life is, or bitch about how illegal downloading is affecting sales? I truly believe the cliché of one hand washing the other applies to sites like Twitter. Maybe if you put an hour a day of your cool life aside to touch base with the people that gave you that life, maybe your album sales might be a little better?
-VMR
