Crowd To Cloud: Social Media In Music

So your venue has a website. It has a banner in the foyer that says, “Follow us on Twitter.” That marketing manager posts stuff to Facebook. But why isn’t anything happening?

The “Crowd To The Cloud” panel certainly had the bon mots to explain where things might be going wrong.

Nic Adler handles social media for L.A.’s The Roxy – which he touted as having more online followers than any other venue, from Staples Center and Red Rocks on down.

Brandon Lucas’ Carbonhouse is the third-party manager of venue websites and social media because, as he said, venues do not have the time or manpower to properly administer social media marketing. Ian Rogers comes from Topspin Media, built by the founder of ProTools, and handles ticketing, digital and fan club needs.

Aahorn Weiner operates FanKix, a company moderator Kelli Richards praised as the necessary tool to tie up the loose ends between fan interaction and brands.

And, finally, Jaunique Sealey only operated the social media networking for Lady Gaga and Greyson Chance.

Sealey made it clear from the start that it’s not always about what you think you know. The recent author of “Piece of the Fame” noted that being in charge of an account with 46 million followers provides the opportunity to put the rubber to the road.

“Some things speak against what people believe,” she said. “Of 46 million, how many interact? What people need to figure out is how to take small to big, to foster a personal engagement,” to which Rogers added that it’s better to send emails to 10,000 fans than to post generically to millions on Facebook.

It was a point made over and over. In fact, nothing beats good ol’ text messages, which, if not used to the point of spam or simply “come see my show,” will achieve up to 100 percent open rate. Russell said best sales come from email and Google searches. “Don’t do anything in the social platform until you have built your email list and have your SCO [Sharable Content Object] done properly,” he said. Do not do too many emails – a comprehensive one per month is fine.

Lucas says to do one thing and do it well – a scattershot attack across Twitter, FourSquare, FB and Twitter is no good.

But there was some divergent views on the panel, too. For instance, as Lucas said, Google+ is launched and suddenly everyone wants to create a “Hangout.”

“But what’s the point, what’s the strategy?” he said. It’s a matter of the tactical versus the strategic. To look at Google+ as a social media source that needs to be approached is a tactical way of viewing the network, but it means nothing if there isn’t a strategy for applying it.

Sealey agreed, saying she weighed putting Google+ into her book because, even though it has as many users as Twitter at 100 million, it is still a new site and people do not feel they’ve missed anything if they don’t visit it every day.

But Adler disagreed: “The earlier you get on things, the more influence you have.”

Richards noted, too, that some companies can be fleeting. She loves Turntable.fm but Facebook’s new “Listen With” feature can, with just that simple plug-in, render Turntable superfluous.