Who is Monetizing Your Social Media?

Social Media and Momentum

We recently had an opportunity to pitch an indie artist on Daredevil Production’s online marketing expertise. This artist (who shall remain nameless) has generated some serious momentum and attention from a key song placement in an Oscar winning movie. This momentum has garnered them over 30,000 downloads of the placed song; not bad.

Check this out, their social media company has taken this momentum and worked it into just

• 3,900 Facebook Likes
• 943 Twitter followers
• NO EMAIL addresses to speak of

W…T…F

They are smart enough to know what they don’t know

Here’s the snafu. Indie bands like this are quality artists because they are very smart. When you have an indie act that is this intelligent, they are smart enough to know what they don’t know, like social media, accounting, booking, legal matters, etc., and they surround themselves with a team of professionals who are hopefully experts in their respective fields. Of course, the artists build a relationship with these professionals and they (have to) choose to trust their professional opinions; after all these purported experts are part of their team.

This tactic makes absolute sense as long as the professionals are doing their job. I understand how social media is somewhat of a mystery to many people, but many artists are not “inspecting what they expect” with regards to their social media team members.

If the job description is to expand your Twitter influence then you should see measurable daily gains.

If the job description is to expand Facebook likes then you should see measurable daily gains.

If the job description is to monetize the social media you should see money rolling in every day/week/month.

You have to remember that “Social Media”, “Social Marketing/Content Marketing”, and “Monetization” of the social media assets are 3 completely separate processes that are easily confused.

Artists, I implore you to ensure that whoever you are paying your hard-earned money too is taking care of business and earning their paycheck. I have had meetings now with several indie artists, even a few multi-platinum artists who used to have big record deals, and their trusted advisors on social media are completely inept. The artists understandably aren’t aware of all the details regarding social media and therefore remain unaware of any methods to measure the effectiveness of these companies and rely too heavily on the opinion of their chosen experts to determine if they are doing a good job.

This is akin to leaving the fox in charge of the chickens and then accepting the fox’s professional opinion on exactly how many chickens are left in the coop.

If you don’t stick your head inside the coop, you will never really know what the hell is going on.

Btw, in every one of these meetings the social media contact person for the company the artist was using was present or on the call. ALL of them condescendingly responded to our strategies with,

“Oh yeah, we are familiar with email lists.”

“We are familiar with squeeze pages”

“We are familiar with all these technologies”

…as if to dismiss our silly age old ideas. You know what?? I am familiar with open heart surgery but I won’t be performing any operations today because I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FREAKING DO IT AND THE LIVES OF THE PATIENTS ARE DEPENDING ON THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DOCTOR!

The process of targeting, finding, contacting, engaging, and maintaining a core audience online is comprised of very common technologies mixed with, a consistent work ethic, and very common sense…which is not so common.

In an effort to ensure this isn’t happening or won’t happen to you, I have attached a report we regularly present to artists so they can more effectively measure the performance of their social media company against some successes we have had with our clientele (if we have real conversations on the phone with their social media experts online, it ends in confrontational disaster). Think of it as a sort of social media report card. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I hope this helps you.

What We Do Different

Gents, you asked me a question during our conference call that I felt was better answered with visuals rather than just words. The proof is always in the pudding. You asked regarding your current social media strategy, “What will you do differently than what we are doing right now?”

Here is a good look at what we are doing DIFFERENTLY than what your social media company is currently doing with you.

Twitter

We will actively expand your social media accounts. Take a look at daily/weekly numbers that Daredevil Production gets on Twitter.

Take a look at another Twitter account we are working for a Facebook magazine called Real Country Music Fans. Again notice the daily/weekly gains in followers and unsolicited fans.

These are the kind of monthly gains you SHOULD be experiencing. With both Twitter accounts you can see that we average a solid 1500 to 1800 new followers per month with 12 to 14 per day being unsolicited followers.

Facebook

Take a look at the Facebook LIKES for Real Country Music Fans. I should point out that this is our magazine and we haven’t even been pushing it or trying to expand it, yet you can see through clever activity we experience regular gains on LIKES.

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Social Media ENGAGEMENT

This particular case study was with an artist named Collin Raye. Check out the results from a Facebook contest we put together. With this contest we were able to create much needed activity on the artist’s Facebook account. We generated over 70,000 comments in just 40 minutes.

NOTE: there are over 100,000 comments because people kept playing well after we ended the contest.

Additionally, this contest created 5,000 new Facebook LIKES for Collin.

Lead Capture

The image above shows that we added 1,268 emails in 13 days.

MONETIZATION

Of course, getting the emails through consistent online and live show disciplines is one thing. Turning those social media follows and LIKES into email addresses, and the email addresses into revenue is something else completely.

Take a look at this 4-day sale we did for Collin Raye. Note the different product columns and the fact that most of sales happened during the sale days which are highlighted.

NOTE: these numbers reflect the sales that came from the web store we set up for the artist. There was an additional $1,750 of revenue generated from Tunecore as well.

Red arrows below show there are 5 pages of receipts. 172 receipts to be exact

Here is a look at what one of the receipts look like. I show you this to support the data shown in the excel spreadsheet.

Hopefully this will demonstrate exactly what we are doing differently. In my humble opinion, after all the attention you have received from “Insert Oscar Winning Movie Here”, your social media numbers should be much higher. They’re abysmal at less than 1,000 Twitter followers, less than 3,900 Facebook Likes, and no email addresses to speak of.

Again, the technology is nothing new. In fact, the solutions you are looking for to grow your business are about 10% common technology and 90% language and experience. Compare these numbers here to your current numbers and I think you will find the differences compelling. My father always taught me “The numbers don’t lie because the numbers can’t talk.”

Some points to consider:

• If you or your current social media company is aware of all this technology why isn’t it being implemented?
• How do you have 30,000 downloads and hardly any followers on Twitter, Facebook, and hardly any email addresses?
• How have you been using your YouTube activity to drive traffic to your website?
• Why are your social media numbers so low?
• What social media strategy, exactly, has your current company been using?
• What are your financial goals with this project?
• Are you certain you have the right team around you?

 

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