the dead record

In today’s fast-moving, digital society keeping completely on top of your online presence is absolutely vital to your success.  This series of posts discusses how you can do just that and provides tips and advice on all aspects of your online image management, whether you’re in a band or a business.

Pretty much everybody uses social networks these days, many on a daily basis.  As a means for personal communication they are utterly unparalleled, but many are also increasingly becoming a business essential.  This article discusses how social networks should form an integral, fundamental part of your band or business’ promotion and gives some detailed advice on how to go about this.

There are many social networks out there, some focusing on one particular type of niche area and others open to any and everybody on the planet.  Whilst other social networks will eventually be discussed later in the series, this post will focus on arguably the two biggest out there; Facebook and MySpace.

Whether you’re in a band, run a recording studio or hire out lighting rigs to venues; you really should be on both facebook and MySpace. In my opinion there are two major differences between the two sites (aside from obvious ones such as the layout and so forth) and they are as follows:

1 – Facebook is mainly about your friends.  The vast majority of a facebook user’s contacts will (probably) be people that they actually know in real, 3D life. You can join networks for your geographic area, school, company or university and then join clubs and groups based around your interests or membership of teams and societies which send you messages, organise events and stimulate discussions through their pages.

While all this activity does result in a slight broadening of an individual’s circle of contacts, what it really amounts to is a vast increase in the number of internal connections that that circle contains. Just look at the number of groups and events that you and your immediate friends are all members of on the site.  See what I mean?

MySpace, in contrast, is far more based around making contact with unknown people and organisations. Whilst many of the activities described above can be carried out on MySpace, it is much easier on the ‘book.

2 – MySpace loves the music industry.  And vice versa. One of the biggest reasons why this is so is simply because it is so easy to upload and present your own music on the site and many MySpace users spend time on there only to find and listen to new music.

But this goes even further.  Because so many bands and fans use MySpace the site is therefore also vital to any and every other kind of business or individual in the music industry.

Facebook, whilst it does contain some infrastructure that can be used to share and promote music, can’t really compete with MySpace at the moment.

So, with these two differences in mind, what is the best way to utilise social networking as an effective part of your online promotion?

Be consistent. As mentioned above, you really need both a facebook profile and a MySpace page to take advantage of both sites.  Just make sure you use the same logos, profile descriptions and mission statements on both sites. Don’t confuse anyone, don’t put up any conflicting information and if you change something on one site, make sure you update your profile on the other.

On the ‘book, make a profile, not a page. If you make a completely separate profile for your band or business (as opposed to a group, fan page etc.) you are then free to use any aspect of the site to the full. Yes this will mean you will have to handle two accounts (and remember that all members of the group should have access to the profile) but the added benefits of increased functionality and the bonus of showing up in your friends’ contact lists which may generate random interest are not to be understated.

Your MySpace page is an advert. The higher level of profile customisation on MySpace means that you can make your page look however you want it to. As has also been discussed above, users on MySpace are quite likely arrive at your page randomly, by clicking through your messages on another page or whilst browsing or searching miscellaneously. The vast majority are not your friends and aren’t likely to become your friends.  But they can become clients, contacts, associates, customers or fans, as long as your page is attractive and useful enough to interest them. And you may only get one chance to do so before they press the back button and click on to the next profile in their search results.  So spend a little time to sort your page out properly, don’t rule out getting a professional to design a profile for you; first impressions are important.

Facebook is a communication tool. The site’s capacity to initiate and maintain contact with literally hundreds of like-minded people is incredible, especially when compared to MySpace.  So utilise it. Be active on the site and it will pay off.  Here’s an example:

A new ragga punk band The Sweet Chemists is playing a gig in London and is trying to promote it.  They log on to MySpace and make a short blog post about it and note it in a few other relevant pages on their profile in the hope that people who come across the page and like the tracks that they have uploaded there may be interested in coming.  The band then also use one of the other popular techniques of promoting gigs on MySpace, by commenting on each of their 600 friend’s profiles as well as adding 200 more random people who they think may be interested and doing the same to them.

The band then logs on to facebook where they only have 350 friends but also have a group about their live gigs to let fans know.  They post an update on this group and spend some time creating an event which they invite all of their contacts too and maybe update their profile status explaining that they are excited about the upcoming gig.

So where will they get visitors from?  Well, the simple fact is that MySpace is fairly full of spammy behaviour like this and people just don’t read their comments any more.  And as there is no function to directly invite an individual contact it can easily drop out of people’s heads. On facebook however, each friend must make a conscious choice to click attending or not which immediately makes it a more memorable prospect.  In addition, positive feedback on previous gigs from fans on their facebook group adds a little more excitement to the gig and the ability of their friends to invite others gives it momentum.

Be interactive. This should almost go without saying.  If there is nothing going on on your pages, why would anybody look at them?  So use the facebook status update feature to interest people (post things like “The Sweet Chemists are thinking that Friday’s gig will be bigger than Jupiter!” to tantalise your friends and fans) and keep posting updates on your MySpace blog.  This will pay off.

So there you have it, some basic advice and information about how to get the most from social networks and details about why you should be using them. These sites really should form an integral part of your online promotion and, if used effectively, can add so much to your organisation.  There is far more to discuss on these topics and I’d be happy to answer any more specific or technical questions on social networking that you may have, just go to the Your Questions page.

In the next post on Managing an Online Presence I will be discussing the ins and outs of spreading the word about you and your band/business.  This will include advice on how to incorporate Twitter, Youtube and more into your online promotion and detail the best way to do so.

Until next time, much love and please leave some feedback below.  You know, for karma purposes.  Yes.