Dan Zarrella, who has a neat person brand in social media, posted an interview with rap blogger Eskay providing a smart take on social media. Check it out here. In a nutshell it suggests social media is a good music marketing tool but not nearly as important as the music. The artist who sits around focusing on his/her Twitter or Facebook metrics is not focused on the art. Not really feeling the audience. Certainly not the way they can by performing.
Most musicians do care more about their art than the buzz, that’s why they are more effective in social. They post things that fans care about. The word “fans” is the operative word. Bands, performers, artists have fans. Cooking oils don’t.
Community building and social media is about fulfilling a need. Filtering and organizing a need. It’s not about selling. It’s okay to make your product or service available or one click away in an online community, but stop hawking. Facebook knows that too much selling on the site will be its downfall. And it hasn’t yet figured out how to deal with that truism as it adds tens of thousands of users each day. Google learned this early, and smartly sequestered the sell from its Adwords program.
Selling is crawling into social media at a higher and higher pace. And it’s coming to a mobile device near you very soon.
So what do smart marketers do? Focus on their art. On their product. Use social media for sure…it’s an amazing tool. Enagage. Learn. Most importantly enable. But stop cheesing the social web. Peace!