These days tons of  musicians, celebrities and bands are trying to use social media to increase their fan base.  Most of the celebs that use Twitter use it as a 1 way device, broadcasting their tour dates or their next big public appearance. They make no effort to listen to their fans.  They don’t follow back and sending a reply or direct message (DM) is like sending your tweet into a black hole. The odds of getting a reply are next to non and that is where most of the bands & celebrities using Social Media go wrong in my opinion.

You may not know, but I also work as a social media consultant and I’m often asked to talk to companies about how they can be successful in their social media endeavors. One of the questions I’m asked over and over again is “How do you stop or control negative feedback on social media sites”. My answer… you don’t.  Instead of trying to control it, learn from it and take the opportunity to connect directly with your consumer to turn that bad experience into a positive one. I would offer this same advice to bands & musicians looking to use social media to increase their fan base. When you expose yourself on a personal level to your fans,  you never know if they will agree or disagree, the only thing that’s for sure is they are going to talk about it… and blog about it… and tweet about it… you know where I’m going with this lol

Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails recently learned this all to well & apparently it was more than he could handle. He wrote his twitter resignation letter on the Nine Inch Nails forums June 10th. It’s sad really, I checked in on Trent’s tweets from time to time and I was often impressed that he was using twitter just like any other average joe. His tweets were direct, personal and and sometimes even interesting. From his forum post, the biggest reason for leaving twitter behind was the negative trolls following and bad mouthing his every social media move. I don’t think turning your back on the community is the right answer, but I do understand how people twisting your tweets can get frustrating. My advice to him would be - ignore them, do your thing, be yourself and to hell with the crazies.

If you are in a band beginning your social media endeavors and you want to know how to do it right, I highly recommend you start following the well known alternative band Collective Soul on Twitter.  I mentioned how most bands and celebrities use social media to broadcast but not listen… well Collective Soul works their twitter account a little differently; they not only listen, they interact. While most of the celebs use twitter to simply talk about themselves, Collective Soul follows back their fans and is paying attention to what their fans say. When you tweet them you regularly get a response! I’ve even seen them retweet fan concert pictures and tweets.  If you don’t believe me try it for yourself! Follow @Collective_Soul and send them a message or two. If they aren’t sleeping, performing, or writing new music they are likely to respond, usually Dean is doing the tweeting.

These guys aren’t just hanging out on twitter micro blogging either, they regularly post full blogs on their own website and as you might expect from a band who seems to have social media down so well, Collective Soul’s MySpace page is also AWESOME.  These guys are as active as any true working musician can be on social medai and their numbers show it with 60 thousand friends on Myspace and almost 20 thousand followers on Twitter.  These aren’t just empty numbers either, they are watching their profits increase as they promote itunes downloads of their songs via social media outlets like Twitter. Ingeniously, they have been rewarding their most devoted fans with link backs from the Collective Soul Fan pages.  Last week they even gave a link back to KrushRadio, where I do a weekly radio broadcast (Sat 8-10pm EST), from their fan pages - Pretty cool!

Collective Soul is touring through out 2009. Keep an eye on their tour page www.collectivesoul.com/live/ to find out when they are playing near you, you can purchase your tickets right there on the site too.

Tags: Bands, Collective Soul, Social Media, success, Trent Reznor, twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Bands, Blog, Music, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.