Simple Tips for Success: Get Social

For this week’s Simple Tips for Success, I’d decided to use my contribution to Project 100: Marketing in the Social Media Era — a collaborative book project I’m going to be a part of.  Given that you’re here and being proactive about your musical career, I may be preaching to the choir, but you may find some insight in it too.

Get Social: The New Call to Action for Bands

Historically, the ultimate call to action for bands was to “get signed.”  It was the rallying cry, the raison d’être, and rightfully so; for most bands, a record deal represented fame, success, women, and cold hard cash.

That was then, this is now.

The major record labels are bleeding money and the old model for doing business in the music industry is trending towards extinction.  For virtually all bands getting started, record deals are wholly unnecessary.  Modern technological advances have rendered the “life-giving” services of major labels moot.

What does that means for bands?

It is now time to adopt a new call to action: Get Social.

Getting Social means embracing the opportunities created by new technologies, namely the Internet.  Getting Social requires that bands lose the “hands off” attitudes toward business that they exhibited in the past and switch to a focused involvement in the management and promotion of their music.  Here are some of the best tools available:

• Use Twitter to determine where to book your next show.
• Use Facebook to create a stronger bond with fans.
• Use Tumblr to share studio / tour / and other updates with family, friends, and fans.
• Use Myspace to host your demo and tour dates online.
• Use TuneCore to get your music onto iTunes.
• Use Google Analytics to track your website’s traffic.

The above examples all represent a way for bands to utilize modern technology to synergize their offline world (live shows and recording) with their online world (promotion and fan interaction).  Let’s face it, bands can no longer ease through weekly practice in the garage, throw some flyers up on telephone poles around town, and hope to get swooped up by a major label.  They need to get involved and create meaningful conversations with their fans – online and offline – in order to be successful.

Getting Social requires musicians to undertake a monumental shift in attitudes – to become entrepreneurs.  Instead of striving for a record deal (immediate gratification), musicians must take deliberate, paced steps towards career investment (delayed gratification).  If you can use social media to turn 10 people at a show into 20…and then 20 into 100… you have single-handedly increased your chances of long-term success.

To all budding artists… get out there and Get Social.

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What do yall think?  I’d love to get some feedback on the concept.