The HostBaby Blog

Why Be Social?

Selling music online can be tough without first developing a loyal fan base.  How does one go about developing and engaging people online you ask?  Well,  lets start with the basics.

If you use your social networking tools properly, you can easily keep your fans up to date on your new albums, performances, and promotions.  Getting your fans involved with your music career is a great way to get even more fans.  Take this scenario for example:

Joe Schmo follows you on Twitter and learned about your upcoming  show Friday night.   He attended and loved your show.  When he’s at the show he tweets to his friends about how great the show is.  A few of Joe’s buddies, in turn, follow you on Twitter, and decide to check out your website.  They tell more friends about you, THOSE friends follow you as well — you see where this leads.

So, let’s talk about a the two most popular social Networks of the day and provide some examples of how to use them to generate more followers (Twitter) and likes (Facebook).

Facebook

Facebook is currently THE largest social networks in use today.  Who uses Facebook?  The better question would be, who DOESN’T use Facebook?  Tapping into such an enormous population of potential fans is a n0-brainer.  The challenge you’ll face is using Facebook properly.

If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to create a personal Facebook profile page.  It’s free, and easy to set up.  This will allow you to make a presence on Facebook, and start building a collection “friends”.  These could be your band mates, family and friends, or fans you already know.  This is great place for you to make personal updates about your musical life, or to let your family/friends know what makes you tick in general.  Making a personal connection to your fans is always smiled upon.

The only problem with making a Facebook Profile is that you’re only reachable by other Facebook users, and can only be searched within Facebook… unless you make a Facebook page.  These can be accessed without a Facebook profile, but can also be found within Facebook’s search engine as well.  Facebook pages are used to promote artists, businesses, causes and and many other things.  You can use both your Facebook profile and your band page to diversify your updates.  You can make personal updates on your profile page, and you can announce new shows/events on your Facebook page.  This can help keep your fans interested, and can help keep them informed on your upcoming projects.

Here’s 5 Facebook tips

1. Try to post at least 3 times a week.  (We don’t recommend posting more than 3 times a day)
2. Engage people who comment or ‘like’ your posts.  Start a conversation.
3. Upload pictures from your concerts
4. Post a free song on your website and post about it with a link
5. Hold a contest on Facebook and give away a prize like a free album or T-shirt.

Twitter

Tweeting (making twitter updates) is also a really powerful and quick way of keeping your fans involved with your musical career.  For those that don’t know, Twitter is a social network that does a couple of things pretty uniquely:

1. Open communications: Tweets are not necessarily restricted to who you’re following, or who’s following you.  Your audience may be much larger than you realize.  Larger audience, larger potential fan base.
2. Short and sweet: each update has a 140 character limit.  This makes your updates easy to read through on-the-go.
3. Open forum: Tweets are, literally, open conversations.  Fans can make comments, share your updates with friends, or even reply to you directly with questions–this helps break down the artist-fan barrier which is a big plus.
4. Easy access: Twitter can be accessed from just about any device with an internet connection.  Twitter apps for smart phones are really common, and regularly used; so you can even holler at your fans while they’re away from home.

With such a limited space for your updates, you’ll want to be creative on what you tweet.  You can announce the progress of your next album, “Heading to the studio again for another recording session”, or share something that really interested you, “Man, Jay-Z’s latest album is the BOMB!”, or even look for feedback, “Hey guys, check this out [link to song in progress]. Like what you hear so far?”.  Fans love to be involved with their artists, and communicating directly with them is a great way of winning awesome-points with your fans.  Active Twitter users with a lot of fans often get almost immediate feedback, so this is a very powerful method of reaching your fans.

Finally, you can use twitter to keep up with local bookers, venues, promoters and other people that can help your career–as well as, companies you think are super cool.  It works both ways; check up on artists that influence you to get tips, look up record labels to see their new artists; most companies with a web presence (or even without a web presence) have a twitter profile these days.  If you’re curious about how to get started, and how to tweet like a pro, check out their 101 guide.

Twitter Tips:

1. Use a twitter client to manage your twitter account.  There’s a million.  We like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.
2. Use Twitter Search to discover who’s been chatting about your music
3. Retweet other peoples Tweets.  It’s a good way to be engaged and start a conversation
4. Use Lists.  When you follow a lot of people, it can be overwhelming amount of data.  You can use Twitter’s list feature to create specific content streams.
5. Don’t just Tweet about what you’re doing.  Ask questions and share links too.

Final Tips

• Remember to keep updating!  There’s no point in making a Twitter/Facebook profile if you don’t use them.
• Keep involved.  Follow people that interest you, announce events you want people to go to, reply to questions people posit.  Making updates is one thing; diving into the community is something else entirely.
• Find a system that works for you.  Updating multiple social networks can be cumbersome, especially with a busy schedule.  Fortunately, there are some pretty cool pieces of software that make using these tools more easily, like Tweetdeck for example.
• Advertise your involvement.  If you have a website, be sure to announce your Twitter or Facebook profile to get connected!  There are some cool widgets you can use to connect your social networks with your site as well.
• Maintain your artistic persona.  Updating these social networks shouldn’t be a chore; so post what you like.  Have fun with it and let your fans know who you are.
• Put Twitter and Facebook Buttons on your site.  Check out Niftybuttons.com
• You can read more great tips and tricks for free!  Just download our handy-dandy eBook HERE.