We All Need Friends
MySpace is designed as a networking site, and because of this, many resources exist on the site that allow you to search for people all over the world. When you first create your MySpace account, you should start by adding your friends - people that you know are already on MySpace. These people will tell their friends about your MySpace page and they will tell their friends, and so on. When you decide to start exposing your music to a larger online audience, you can approach this task using numerous techniques. The Browse and Search features found on the MySpace menu bar are ideal places for finding fans to befriend and expose to your music. For those unaware, gaining friends on MySpace is achieved by sending a person a “Friend Request” message. This message comes up on the user’s admin page and displays your picture and the option to accept or deny your request. The person you are befriending has the ability to click on your picture, view your profile, and decide whether they want to be your friend. Many people consider the number of friends a band has on MySpace to be directly related to their level of popularity and success. Because of this relationship, many bands put a lot of effort into adding friends to boost their friend count. In order to ensure that people you are befriending will actually enjoy your music, it’s best to target suitable audiences. MySpace’s “Browse” feature, also found on the menu bar, allows you to do an extremely detailed search for MySpace users based on information such as gender, age, relationship status, location, ethnicity, background, lifestyle, etc. As you can imagine, searching within these specific details can be very beneficial in reaching your target audience. MySpace’s “Search” feature, found right next to Browse on the menu bar, is a bit more limited in its search options but can still yield excellent results. The Search page allows you to find one specific person by searching for their name, display, or email address. This page also has a Classmate Finder, which allows you to search by people at a certain school and a Networking search, which allows you to search by people’s general interests. If you are looking to add friends from certain age groups, locations, interests, etc., these tools can be extremely helpful.
Finding Your Niche and Keeping It
There are many more inventive ways to search for and add friends on MySpace. These techniques include adding friends who listen to bands that sound like your group, friends who like local bands you play with, friends that are friends with a certain venue, etc. All of these resources will yield a variety of fans and aid you in exposing your music to groups of people that will be interested in your band.
When doing anything on MySpace, especially something like adding friends, always be professional and polite. There is no difference in the way you choose to communicate with a fan, band, or club owner in person compared to communicating over MySpace. Be thankful to the people who support your music, no matter who they are. If a person or friend requests you, don’t just accept the request, take that extra step and send them a comment or message saying thank you. I often try to take a look at the person’s profile and then leave a comment about their interests, in hopes of establishing a relationship with them and ensuring their support. When you are adding many friends at a time, consider sending each individual a message saying you hope they like your music and you’d be grateful if they took a few seconds to check it out. A lot of companies advertise on MySpace and send out billions of friend requests; sending a message along with your friend request can help avoid losing a potential fan that may ignore your request just like a friend request from a company looking for advertising. The main idea in adding friends is to be considerate and professional and always encourage communication. Establishing relationships with your fans can only help your career and get more and more people talking about you.
You’re Nothing Without Your Fans
Once you’ve added a considerable number of friends and you have a large group of dedicated supporters, there are several different ways to assemble your fans on MySpace. One way is to create a MySpace Group for your fans. The Group feature is found on the MySpace menu bar. Once a group dedicated to your band is created, your group page hosts a forum for your fans to talk about your band and the option of posting news bulletins on this page. Two other tools to get your fans together include creating a MySpace page for your Street Team and a Fan Club MySpace page for your band. Both of these pages increase your online presence and increase promotion and support for your band.
MySpace, I Love You.
One amazing promotional tool MySpace has created for your friends is the ability to add your song to their profile. On your MySpace player there is an “Add” button under each track. Users can click this button to add your song to their profile and your song will stream from their page with your band name, the song name, a link to your page, and an option for other users to add the song to their page. Users are only allowed one song for their page and the song plays immediately when their page loads. I can’t get over this feature. It makes me so happy to see fans who have one of my band’s songs in their profile. I know that all of their friends go to their profile and they all hear the song automatically; as a result our exposure spreads. If your fans begin putting your songs in their profiles, you are definitely doing something right. Be sure to thank them for their support. These types of opportunities should also motivate you to post quality recordings of your songs on line. No one wants a poorly recorded song playing on their personal profile.
Gaining and communicating with fans is a crucial part of the MySpace networking experience and there are certainly right and wrong ways to go about approaching new fans and friends. Always be sure to be professional and thoughtful in your efforts. One last important point is to make sure you have a quality “product” before you expose it to thousands of people on MySpace. Wait until you’re getting a good response from fans on a local level, then take your marketing campaign into cyberspace.
Informing Your Fans About Your Upcoming Shows
My favorite way to inform fans about an upcoming show is to post bulletins about the show and make the show flyer the default picture on our MySpace profile. A MySpace bulletin is a message you send to all your friends. I include the show flyer in the bulletin message along with text encouraging our fans to attend. When your friends log into their MySpace accounts, there is a list on the left hand side displaying all the recent bulletins posted by their friends. So, if you post a bulletin titled “Upcoming Shows!” or “We are coming to California!” – your fans that have an interest in these shows can click on the bulletin, read it, and reply back with questions and comments.
In addition, if you make a show flyer your default profile picture – that flyer will show up everywhere your name is posted. For example, everywhere you’ve left a comment, all of the Top Friends lists in which your band appears, all of the inbox’s you’ve left messages, and so on. This results in your flyer showing up in a lot of places making all of your friends as well as people who’ve never heard of you, aware of your upcoming show. This also serves as an inspiration to make eye-catching flyers that people will want to check out.
You’re Invited!
MySpace also offers a built-in event announcement creator. If you go to Events in the MySpace Menu bar you can click on Create An Event. This feature enables you to fill out all the information about your upcoming show and then send the invite to all of your friends. This is a great way to contact friends who may not pay attention to bulletins or maybe some folks you haven’t spoken with in awhile.
Tour Promotion Tips
I have also developed techniques for getting the word out about shows while touring or playing a specific college date. While on tour, bands may be traveling to states they’ve never even been to before. Luckily, due to the diversified number of people on MySpace, they may already have fans in that state! There are many ways to access these fans including: using the Browse feature on MySpace to search and message people by their location and age, message friends of the venue where you’re playing (assuming the venue has a MySpace page), message the friends of local bands on the show, etc. Any one of these tools will put you in contact with people in the area you’ll be playing and these new relationships will give you a greater chance of having a bigger crowd in a state you’ve never played before - that is an incredible advantage.
College Shows = $$$
Many bands play college shows because a lot of colleges have a budget for events such as concerts. Depending on the budget and the popularity of the band, an artist can make a decent amount of money from a college show compared to a Tuesday night at a local venue. With the use of the MySpace Search feature, you can search for current students at a certain college and let them know all about your upcoming show. The student body at many colleges can be very supportive of campus events. Thus, MySpace messaging college students is an excellent way to spread the word about an upcoming performance at their school.
Oh My God! We’re Opening Up for Aerosmith!
One last recommendation regards playing on the same bill as a very popular band. If a band is super popular, they’re going to have a MySpace. One way you can contact kids attending this show and convince them to show up earlier for your set is to monitor the comments that the popular band you are playing with has on their page. If your band is from New Jersey and you see a person who comments on the popular band’s page saying, “can’t wait to see you in Jersey!” you can then send a message to this person asking them to check out your music and consider coming to the show on the early side to check out your band as well. If a touring band is popular enough, they’ll receive a lot of comments like this and you’ll be able to contact a number of potential fans for your group’s show.
As you can see, there are many ways to inform the MySpace community about your upcoming shows. One thing to keep in mind is to start sending messages well before the show date. Some people don’t check their MySpace accounts every day and people often have plans ahead of time for evening activities. In order to ensure you have a good chance of reaching people before your show date, start promoting your upcoming shows several weeks in advance. This time frame should give people enough time to read your message, check out your songs, and plan to come to your show.
