Personal Branding and Professional networks

Identify community with social media

You’ll want to determine where your target audience lives online so that you know exactly where to look your community. There are certainly any number of starting points for the hunt: Facebook, Google+, or any other social media outlet that’s appropriate for your customers. But just so that we have an example to work with, we're going to use a company called Accent Branding Solutions (who is, of course, just getting started out building their online community), and we’re going to start with Twitter.

The above is a brilliant article and methodical approach of how to find, cultivate and grow your community online. The first rule when trying to build community is to join it. The gem find in this article is www.followerwonk.com. Strange name, but amazing app. It helps you find and really identify the people on twitter you want to follow and eventually have them follow you. Followerwonk allows you to use keywords, location, etc to generate a list of folks. One you've honed in on a specified list 9which the article helps you do) FW can help you analyze twitter accounts to see what or who is in it for you.

Choosing a community online is as important as choosing your community in your personal life. Be selective and open at the same time.

This kind of research for your band is time consuming so it is not for the artist who feel they do not have the time to talk analytics. But or the artist that is in the business of remaining one, rea the article and receive the advice I offer below. 

SA Suggestion: This is for the artist who is new to twitter or feel they can't seem to make a dent in their followership. And this advice is without saying, you must also develop a following the old fashion way, face to face engagement with fans at shows.  

Read this article. Good stuff in here. Sign up to Followerwonk.com and begin your search. Conduct a brainstorm with yourself or bandmates to describe your msuic, what genre does it fit into, who else with a larger following souds similar (this last brainstorm is very important). Once you have these keywords, get to searching. I say work with followers in your regional area first. These folks have to most potenetial to actually show up at a show. Follow people who are followed for their taste in music; they are refered to as influencers. If they follow other groups similar to yours and you genuinely like as well, connect on common ground first.

When they instinctively though quickly check out your Twitographeraford a good photer feed it should have a couple things apparent and in their ace:

1) you are actually tweeting on somesort of consistant basis (just dive in, the momentum will sweep you eventually)

2) It should be apparent that you are a band and the imagery should reflect your sound if not just a good photo of the band. If you can't  afford a pro photographer then fake it with filters from instagram until your worth a damn, I say. 

3) Atleast once of your tweets a day should be a link or embed of yoru music. I say embed because Twitter is trying ot become the next Spotify and will allow you to embed yoru soundcloud files for instant listening. 

The rest is up to you really, but as the article states, most people dive in and come up for air just short of momentum. Social media should not just be a lifestyle but a part of the business of staying in business with your art.