I think that there are some individuals that understand social networking sites and how to leverage them effectively, but most don’t.  Typically, the larger the company/corporation/label/band the more they -don’t- get it.

The power in social networking sites doesn’t have anything to do with your own individual or your group’s/company’s presence on it.  You don’t need a twitter account to leverage twitter to your advantage.  The power of social networking sites are in the PEOPLE that comprise it. From a marketing standpoint, twitter is best viewed as the ultimate in word-of-mouth amplifiers, NOT just another place to plaster plugs for yourself.

You’re hyping your new album drop next week on your twitter feed?  *Yawn*…you and 500 other people this very second.  Traditional media types see social networks as just another point of broadcast, and that’s why they can’t leverage them with any sort of success.

500 people are talking up your new track, that you just recorded 30 mins ago and posted on your website, on their twitter feeds?  Now we’re getting somewhere.

Twitter, in this sense, can be condensed to a stadium full of people.  Most everyone’s yelling something, and as a whole it’s an incomprehensible wash of noise.  Every once in a while, someone will start a chant…others pick it up and it grows…maybe to the point where it’s audible over the rest of the noise to a good portion of the stadium, causing other people to take notice of something they otherwise might have missed.  The object is not just to amass a small army of followers, but to get them to make noise about YOU.

Marketing over social networks and the internet, as things sit now, is not about yelling the most and yelling the loudest yourself; it’s getting other people to do the yelling for you.  As it pertains to the music business, people will be happy to start ‘yelling for you’ IF your music is good, with very little extra effort on your part.  But if that takes up 95% of your efforts…well you’re doing it backwards and doing it wrong.

Chris Schetter