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Building Fan-Band Relationships In 420 Characters Per Day
So you’ve signed up for Twitter. Congratulations! It seems to be all the rage right now in the music industry. Bands and industry people are registering for the site like crazy. So how do you make this Twitter thing work for you? How can you use it to help promote your band?
The key is to make sure that’s not your only goal. What you should be trying to do is become part of a community of people who most likely will enjoy your music, and want to hear what you have to say. And build your numbers up slowly and organically. Don’t just sign up, start following a bunch of random people, and make your only tweets promotional in nature, like saying “check out my band on our myspace” over and over again. In fact, a really good idea is to upload a profile picture, customize your profile page, fill out the BIO line, display the link to your website/myspace, and post at least five to ten tweets (see below for more on that) all before you start following people you don’t know.
On Twitter, it IS okay to follow people you don’t know in real life, so that’s a plus. People are far less protective of their Twitter followers/followings than they are of their Facebook friends. So go ahead and search Twitter for key words of conversations that might indicate that a person may like your music, and follow them. For example, if you are in a band that sounds like MGMT, try searching for things like “Hipster Runoff” and definitely “MGMT”. Find people who are already talking about the genre, follow them, and start talking about them too. Be honest… “hey, I love MGMT as well. I play in a band and they are a major influence on our sound.” is a good start. It’s honest, to the point, and conversationally promotional. Then, if the person @replies, and asks you for the link to your Myspace, go ahead and give it to them. @replying is a public conversation, so then anyone reading that conversation will see your site as well. And the people who are actually reading the conversation, are the people you want to reach! Jump in, and start talking to people. Just don’t come on too strong… you wouldn’t walk into a house-party full of strangers and just start shouting “HEY, I’M IN A BAND… CHECK US OUT!”, so don’t do it online either.
The other key to twittering effectively, is to tweet often, but not too often, and to balance your tweets between promotional tweets, personal tweets, and conversation tweets (either asking a question, or @replying to one of your followers posts). Working Twitter into your daily routine takes a bit of getting used to, but you need to make sure you do it. Here’s an easy way to get into it.
Start by tweeting three times in a day.
Make one tweet your “promotional tweet”… things like “in the studio, laying down vocal melodies,” “just posted a new song on our myspace, hope you like it!” and “new tour dates announced! check them out here.” are all basic examples of promotional tweets. Give a bit of information that people who follow you would care about.
Another of your tweets should be the “personal tweet.” These are designed so your followers feel connected to you, the way your friends in real-life are. Say things like “Deciding between Pizza and Chinese Food for dinner.” or “going snowboarding tomorrow, stoked!” Basically whatever is really going on in your life outside of the band. Even though they seem mundane, when you’re a fan of a band reading these tweets, they can seem really exciting because they are the window into the band members personalities… and that deeper fan-band connection is what they are looking for.
Finally, the third tweet should be your “conversational tweet.” These are designed to further embed you in the community, and stimulate interesting discussion. These don’t have to be about music, or your band, because they are to show that you’re interested in what your followers have to say, and that you’re paying attention to them too. Things like “@follower, nice new tattoo you got there!” or “Question – what do you think of the new U2 single?” And if someone asks you a question, make sure you @reply back to them too. These tweets all show that you care about what the people who follow you have to say. And again, just think about this from a fan’s perspective… imagine if your favorite band was actually listening to what you had to say, responding to you personally, and asking you questions… you would immediately recognize that as a sign they cared about you too… and think how that would make you feel!
This is the power of Twitter for musicians. Promotion, fan-connection, community-building, relationship-developing. Use it to truly endear your audience to you. In three simple tweets per day. (a measly 420 characters of daily effort.)
PS – Fan relationships are precious…don’t abuse them. Don’t do any of what I’ve mentioned above if you don’t actually care. A one-sided relationship is really easy to sniff out, and it’s more detrimental to you than if you didn’t do anything at all.
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