Author David Meerman Scott made a honest and realistic quote, “if you want 20,000 fans you must do 2000 different things that each generate 10 fans.” This was my favorite quote from 2010 and I am going to take this on as a challenge for 2011 for an ambitious project to give you 2000 different things you can do to generate 20,000 fans.
Some of these items will apply better for larger acts, some items will work for any act. Some may work for you, some may not… not yet. Some these can be done with little effort, some will take some web development, some might even require some significant development. Some of these have successfully worked for me over the years. The point is to create a list of items that would cover a wide range of acts and abilities.
The end result of all this will hopefully be more Facebook likes, Twitter followers, email list subscriptions, more sales and more traffic to your website… more fans!
2000 Things to Generate 20,000 Fans Challenge
22. Promote Yourself at a Twitter Hashtag Event
What the hell is a Twitter hashtag event! Sorry to say it has nothing to do with hash that you might smoke. When a event, seminar, program or gathering wants to promote a discussion on Twitter they tell everyone attending to use a hashtag in their Twitter posts. A hashtag looks like this #XXXXX. XXXXX is replaced with some word or abbreviation that identifies the event. For example I recent attended the Future Marketers of Social Media Workshop, the hashtag was #FMSMW. Then in Twitter you can do a search for that hashtag and see all the tweets related to that event. It is a organized way to hold a ongoing discussion on a specific topic in Twitter.
How can you market your band at a Twitter hashtag event? Even if you are not attending the event you can insert yourself into the conversation. First let me be very clear… do not do this and just spam. Become part of the real discussion. You only need to know the hashtag, many events will publish the hashtag on the events website. If you can’t find it, ask someone who is attending.
First, by following the hashtag results you could learn something as people attending post updates and notes. But if you have something you can add to the discussion, jump in and tweet about it… just add the hashtag to the post. Example, at the seminar I mentioned above the discussion focused on wineries and what they can do to use social media. Well I had written a post on this topic six months ago. So I made a tweet that said for a great example of a winery that was using social media the right way follow this link. That post got picked up and retweeted by a number of people at the event, and I gained quite a few new Twitter followers.
Maybe you are following a event like the SF Musictech Summit, next one is coming up May 10th, and you see a discussion about touring and you have some information to contribute… tweet it with a link back to your site or post. Answer questions others may post, reply to notes that are posted. Retweet information you feel is important. This is a great way to identify social media leaders, as they are often the ones tweeting away all day at a event… follow them!
Great twitter advice! I just started experimenting with using trending hashtags with my band. See what’s trending on Twitter’s home page and put that in your post if you can.
For instance, today is #Happy420 and #uknowurhigh. Two easy ones for bands to jump in on, I would imagine! Heh!
It may not be industry focused, but at least it’s fun!
I notice that a lot of artists utilize this concept when they are releasing a project. Unfortunately the marketing ploy comes across as spam when it is tweeted consecutively for 30 minutes straight haha.