#blogchat 2-8 recap: Music Marketing via social media!

Last nite was another killer #blogchat, as the fantasmically amazing @misskatiemo joined us to discuss how artists can use social media to connect with their fans! Music marketing is one of my favorite topics, so I was thrilled to participate last nite. If you missed it, here is the transcript.

Some of the main points, and I've linked to their Twitter names so you can follow these smart peeps:

• Musicians should connect with fans themselves, fans can tell if its the artist, or their publicist.
• Fans love it when artists give them a 'behind the scenes' look at how they make music, their performances, secret shows, etc. Social media lets them pull back the curtain. @misskatiemo @krisis
• Twitter is great for instant communication between artists and fans, blogs and Facebook allow for deeper connections and for the artists to share content in several forms. @grtaylor2 @kikilitalien
• The end goal of social media usage for artists is to 'sell something', but artists need to understand that its a goal that will likely take some time to attain via SM. @misskatiemo @zzramesses
• If artists acknowledge and engage fans, it means the fans will promote them to their friends, which creates more fans (Note: Companies can do this exact same thing by embracing their evangelists) @TMariePR
• Fans enjoy reading tweets from artists, it shows them the artists are 'just like them'. @ICT_GURU
• MySpace is now mostly used by labels, artists have moved on to other tools to interact with fans, for the most part @misskatiemo
• @amandapalmer was told by label reps that SM wouldn't work for her. She famously made $11,000 in merchandise sales via Twitter in 2 hours. @krisis

Then, after about an hour of great conversation, something really cool happened. Arlene Wszalek (@Wzzy), who manages Tears for Fears co-founder @CurtSmith was participating, and many people were asking for success stories of how social media has helped artists connect with fans. So Arlene got in touch with Curt, and he joined #blogchat and spent about 30 minutes answering our questions! Please go check out all of his responses as it was truly fascinating to hear how Curt is using social media to connect with his fans, and also WHY he wants to connect with them.

Thanks to @misskatiemo and @curtsmith and everyone that made last nite's #blogchat another amazing event! We will again be on Monday nite next week (Because of Valentine's Day being on Sunday), and if you haven't already, please join the Facebook fan page for #blogchat!