Social Media for performers...

[Matthew Moran]

As I pursue living my "rock star" dream - no '80's spandex for me thank you- I am interested in thoughts and examples on how independent artist (singer/songwriters) can or are using social media to gain exposure, attract/engage fans, and book venues.

If you have ideas on this or even better, if you can point at examples, that would be great!

I am less interested in social media being used by larger media companies or big stars - but those that can be reasonably implemented by the independent.

[Steven Groves]

Matt, I think that social media is perfect for a performing artist. What you might be asking about is what strategy can a performer use to gain exposure to his audience. I might first get a unique domain / URL that I would then put on my blog.

The be aggressive about promoting your online presence through the blog and make sure that I had the 'Big Four Social Technologies' working in conjunction with one another; blog posts, pictures, video and micro-blogging. My choices would be TypePad, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter - but that's me.

Tweeting as a performer, blogging about the performace experiences of the trials of traveling to gigs, dealing with venues and then the elation of an audiences response would be things that fans and other performers would connect with. Using pictures and video wold only add to the desire of your audience to connect with you. Maybe work a stichk into your performance where you take pictures form the stage and promise to post the recordings of the best comments on the web.

Post your performance dates on Google and Upcoming; put pics on Flicker, videos on YouTube and connect them to your blog. All this is very inexpensive and lends itself to the multimedia experience fans will want to connect to.

The research needed to determine what else might work might be done by using the Google blog search to find other performers and being agressive about using your blog URL in everything you do.

[Adam Nollmeyer]

Check out local artist Jody Gnant.

http://twitter.com/jodyg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jody_Marie_Gnant
http://www.jodygnant.net/

~AcmePhoto