Social Media Spin

Recently I was inter­viewed by an amaz­ing writer for www.Examiner.com on Social Media for bands. The arti­cle picked up some speed and got picked up by Asso­ci­ated Con­tent.

In it, I share some of the best secrets I’ve learned about how bands are using social media to pro­mote their tours and music.

If you have a band, or work in music pro­mo­tion, get started using social media by using these secrets:

1. Your artist or band web­site: This is really your home base, the hub around which all of the other social media tools can revolve. If we were in the brick and mor­tar world, your own web­site might be the equiv­a­lent of your company’s main office. Some points you may want to con­sider for your site include:

• The site should be, among other things, user-​​friendly, cre­ative in a way that is reflec­tive of your band image, yet still as clear and unclut­tered as possible.
• You want peo­ple who come to your site to eas­ily find all of the vital infor­ma­tion about your act (i.e. your bio, elec­tronic press kit, show/​tour sched­ule, email list sign-​​up, book­ing info, man­age­ment con­tact, music, and mer­chan­dise, etc.). It needs to be a place for fans, yes, but also for the pro­fes­sion­als to come for infor­ma­tion access (for exam­ple, the press, book­ing agents, club and venue own­ers, labels, etc.).
• While you might cre­ate a blog or a con­ver­sa­tion cor­ner where fans can com­ment about your shows or what­ever artist-​​related topic they’re up for, you might also direct them to your MySpace site instead and invite them to par­tic­i­pate in your blog there. This will help cre­ate dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between those two sites.
• Your web­site can also be a great loca­tion for your band store. It can enable you to make your high­est mar­gins on your mer­chan­dise (T-​​shirts, posters, caps, etc.) and your CDs (you may want to con­sider hav­ing a third party han­dle the actual ful­fill­ment of your CDs and mer­chan­dise, unless you have friends or fans who…con­tinue read­ing here:

More about the arti­cle author, Christo­pher Hard­ing: “Christo­pher Hard­ing has spent 20 years as a song­writer, author, film­maker, pro­ducer, and exec­u­tive of film, TV, and music.”