Image by joelaz
This is part 2 of a 6 part post which will are all collated on this page – Twitter for Musicians. You can find part 1 here – Twitter Basics for Musicians.
8. Spread the word
This is one of the golden keys to Twitter for me. You can be informative and reveal interesting stuff with links.
Some of it (again not more than 1:5) can be links to your own stuff or stuff that refers back to you – blog reviews or online radio stations playing your tracks etc – but the majority should be stuff that you’re interested in and that you think your followers will like as well.
If you’ve engaged a following by revealing your personality as well as your music then you should, as we said before, have some idea of what you have in common and what they’d want to know about.
Links will generally be to a piece of music on a band site, MySpace, YouTube or other, or to news stories on news sites and blogs, or perhaps to a flickr group or a forum thread. Your followers should feel that clicking on the link will benefit them.
For most musicians it can be very good to comment on and talk about other bands, big and small, to reveal a rounded musical appreciation – and one into which your own work can be placed in the mind of the follower.
If you’re particularly focused on a niche as a musician, as you most likely are or should be as an indie musician, then it can be worth your while becoming a scene leader as a commentator as well as an artist. Tweeting links to other bands and articles about those bands and the genre can very quickly build the respect amongst your followers that you and your band know their stuff when it comes to your genre.
Many DIY musicians create a micro-niche and get to know all the bands in that niche. Even building a separate site that deals with the genre – in which their band plays a key part. This is something that Twitter amplifies very effectively – either by tweeting with the band username or using a separate niche username.
An example would be if you were part of a Cajun independent rock act and you built a local scene and website talking about your band and the others in that scene, and then tweeted about that scene from both perspectives.
But links should also be about other things that are relevant to your audience. If you’re a hippy folk act it might well be acceptable to tweet about left-wing politics and global climate issues for example. If you’re a gothic horror metal act, you might regularly tweet links to sites and articles about piercing.
Your followers will appreciate it!
As you only have 140 characters to work with, most links need to be shortened. If you’re tweeting from the Twitter web platform, this is not done automatically (although they want to be able to do this and are working on it) so you’ll find yourself needing to use a URL shortener.
My favourites are tinyurl.com or bit.ly but there are many alternatives – see point 21.
Tweeting links that appeal to your followers is a key part of your Twitter strategy – it engages people, starts conversations and shows people that you’re active as both a musician and in Social Media and it reveals your personality.
You can tweet links to anything that fits with your previous behaviour on Twitter and that your followers will like. But, balance all link tweeting with one-on-one interaction and remember, not too many links back to your own site.
If you’re doing it right people will go off Twitter and check out your band website anyway – the URL is on your Twitter page after all, isn’t it?
9. Retweet
Passing on or forwarding the wisdom of others is the art of the ‘Retweet’. It’s done by adding ‘RT’ in front of the username of the person whose tweet you’re passing on – so ‘RT@MakeItInMusic’ followed by our tweet will send that to all your followers.
It also lets your followers know that the tweet came from us originally – as well as letting us know that you’ve passed it on as we see it appear as a ‘RT’ in our stream.
Clearly this pushes any tweet into another realm of viewing figures. It’s generally accepted that a Twitter user with a vast following (such as @StephenFry) will cause a massive bump if he RT’s your tweet, but, there will then be another massive bump as all his followers do the same as they repeat his wisdom!
It’s a form of flattery, of course, toward the person whose tweet you are forwarding to your followers. But, and this is probably more important, you’re demonstrating that you’re using Twitter, reading what other people are saying and getting value from it that you want to pass on.
That will make people follow you and believe that you want to pass on good stuff, rather than just promote your music.
People whose stuff you should be re-tweeting are definitely other local bands (to promote their shows and releases as well as your own – share the love!), happenings in your genre or niche and links that others have found that you like.
Of course, a great effect of being a solid RT’weeter is that many of those whom you re-tweet will return the favour sending you traffic and hopefully promoting your stuff when you need them to.
It’s not to be seen as tit-for-tat and you shouldn’t make a habit of asking for the RT, but it will happen organically. In some cases you can ask your followers to RT for you, but, again, don’t just do this when it’s for a self-promoting tweet.
Don’t be a bore and just retweet everything someone says. That shows a lack of imagination
You can get a load of information about what’s going on with your tweets as far as RT’ing goes by clicking the ‘Retweets’ link on your Twitter timeline.
And should the person who retweets your stuff be thanked? – generally yes, but if you have too many followers and don’t do it all the time people will mostly understand and not be offended.
One last thing about RT’s and thanking. When someone has RT’d one of your tweets, a golden opportunity has opened up. You could just thank them on Twitter as we talked about, or you could use that moment to open up a new relationship on an entirely deeper level – and who knows where that networking might lead.
How so? Well, go and look at their profile (again, as you should’ve already done it if they’re following you or vice versa) and see where else you can connect with them – Facebook, MySpace or, hopefully their own site or blog.
Is there a blog post that you can tweet a link to, a comment you can leave, maybe subscribe to their RSS feed?
If they’ve RT’d a few times, send them a DM (this is the time!) and give them your email address, IM / AIM or even Skype address or phone number and see if you can take the fact that you’ve had some common interest that little bit further.
Networking = the lifeblood of the music business!
Oh, and you can get people to retweet your messages on a paid basis or an ‘earned credit’ basis using a site like Retweet It . There’s obviously the upside of getting extra traffic from such a retweet, but perhaps it’s not the sort of traffic that will be easy to turn into fans.
Test it to find out if it works for you.
10. Direct Message
The DM is very often misused and it can do plenty of damage to the speed of your follower growth and the way they perceive you.
It can be a great way to make a deeper connection by sending someone a message that isn’t broadcast to the whole world.
But, a few thoughts.
Firstly, you can only direct message (this is done by adding ‘D’ in front of the username) a user who is following you back. So, unfortunately, many users who you might want to message are out of your reach, meaning that you’ll need to use the ‘@reply’ to try and get their attention – which will be public!
There are various hacks that purport to allow you to message someone who doesn’t follow you but I have never been able to get them to work (you may have seen my failed attempts in my Tweetstream from time to time!). But, even if you can manage it, then it’s a pretty abrupt interruption and not the best way of introducing yourself. Better to stick to DM’ing people that you’re connected to.
One of the bugbears for many Twitter users is the auto DM that people can send when you start following them. Does it have its place? That’s a tricky one.
Conventional marketing wisdom loves the idea of ‘hit them while they’re hot’ – so send a DM as soon as someone starts following you – but Twitter is about long-term engagement and conversation and the conventional Twitter wisdom is that the sending of such a DM is too pushy.
If it is, you’re getting a new relationship off to a poor start and may well get instantly unfollowed.
If you really want to send an automated DM to all new followers, DON’T ask them to do anything in it – particularly don’t ask them to sign up on Facebook or your site or go anywhere else – just say thanks!
If you’re going to do it, the best way is to do it through an account at SocialOomph, which offers a bunch of other cool functions that you might find useful.
But, my suggestion – don’t do it. When your following is small enough to be manageable, send some personalised DM’s to find out more about your followers soon after they’ve signed up, but keep it low on the hype!
11. #Hashtags
Using Hashtags is a way of putting your tweet into a stream of related tweets and conversations and helping them to spread further. That way the idea is that all the tweets about a specific subject are united and that they therefore become a searchable category.
This is done by putting the ‘#’ symbol in front of the keyword to which your tweet relates. Most commonly they’re used to refer to a specific phrase, a group, an event or location. Examples would be ‘#SXSW’ used by people referring to the South by South West festival in Austin, TX or ‘#musicmarketing’ that I could add to my tweets in that vein.
Although people think they are the best way to alert people to the fact that their tweet is on a certain topic, it seems that they have been somewhat misled.
In fact, the latest data shows that hashtags are not as often searched for and as commonly referred to as people think and that a standard search for the words you’re after will generally give better results. This is because they aren’t universally understood nor used by the majority of Twitter users. It could easily be argued though that searching for a hashtag is more effective since it’ll stand out in a search result.
Nonetheless, that is a revealing fact as it means that those using and searching for hashtags are the Twitterati elite and therefore people who you definitely want to be able to reach and influence.
There is no doubt that this group of users is monitoring the hashtags that they find interesting, so you can easily drop your tweets into that stream.
A lot of Twitter traffic also goes through the front page of Twitter where people can look at and search through ‘Trends’ to see what people are talking about right now. The importance of influencing trending is increasing all the time as more and more people use 3rd party applications (see point 27) and with the roll-out of new Twitter which has trending more prominent on your own home page.
Used intelligently therefore, adding hashtags to some of your tweets ought to bring you to the attention of new followers. For example, tweeting your forthcoming gig with the relevant location hashtag could bring in new gig-goers in that local area.
Often a hashtag comes into being for the wider community and offers a chance to reach everyone taking part. In recent weeks there have been many – such as ‘#tweetyour16yearoldself’ or ‘#whatwomenwant’ that offered just such an opportunity.
Can you think of one that would spread and appeal to your target audience?
Many hashtags come into being in a de facto way just because people start to use them and see others using them so they get adopted universally. There is no set procedure to follow if you want to introduce a new hashtag for a particular event – but do let all the people who might want to use it know about it.
However, you can look at Tagalus for a list of definitions to see what is being used to refer to a specific phrase and you can submit a new hashtag to them there or via Twitter (‘@tagalus’). But, it’s not required.
Hashtags.org is the site behind the Twitter tags – use it to find out more about a particular tag and to see trending information.
My personal favourite for delving deeper into the whole realm of hashtags is Twubs which will dig up all sorts of data on a hashtag, give you similar tags to spark off ideas and lots more. Give it a look.
A word of warning – don’t overdo it. Like anything on Twitter don’t just tweet with a hashtag in every one. And don’t put loads of different one word tags in one tweet. ‘#London #North #Pub #Pint #BeerGarden’ isn’t how it works!
The two classics for the music business are #FF (or#FollowFriday) and #MusicMonday. The former applies to all Twitter users but obviously being recommended as someone to follow (on a Friday!) can only bring you more fans. You should use this both ways and be recommending people as well as looking to get recommended – don’t ask random people to #FF you – maybe your closest friends on Twitter now and again.
#MusicMonday is a simple tag that people use to tip a band or make a listening recommendation. Again, be involved both ways.
This is part 2 of a 6 part post which are all collated on this page – Twitter for Musicians. If you wish to link to the post, you might decide to link to that page instead.
You can find part 3 here – Twitter for Musicians – Facebook, Pictures & Video