13 Tips on Getting the Best Out of Twitter

I don't how often i have heard people say "No i don't use Twitter, it's just a bunch of people saying where they are, what they are doing and what they had for breakfast" and "What can I do with 140 characters?" Well, it has proven it can do a hell of a lot more than that, from distributing news, social and political commentary, to marketing, distributing not only short bursts of text but also pictures and videos. It has now been around for 6 years, and has pretty much become the leader in spreading information across the world, becoming the social barometer of our times.

It is now an essential tool in any musicians marketing strategy, and there is a wealth of techniques you can use to get the best out of twitter in keeping your fan base informed and engaged.

Not only can you use it as a news service, it also has great potential for you to find new fans, and get them to discover you.

Since its inception, there has become a wealth of third party utilities to help you exploit the potential of twitter to the full. Two i have been using the most over the years are Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. They give you the ability to monitor the 'twitterverse' and search for keywords and hashtags (twitters own keyword system that allows users to find tweets on certain subjects such as #art #photography #ladygaga etc) that could be relevent to you, your music and your goals. They allow you to join in the conversations and connect with people discussing things that could be relevent to you, and in turn, you might be interesting to them.

Chris Singleton over at Prescription PR has put together a list of 13 top tips for musicians and bands using twitter which i think you should take a look at. Here is my favourite peice of advice from his article...

By all means post links to your band's new videos and MP3s from time to time, but do not get too fond of doing so; otherwise you’ll just look like a jerk. Believe me, when it comes to overcommunicating about my own music projects, I’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt…and despite waxing endlessly about the importance of musicians keeping schtum for five minutes, I still see artists (who should know better) bore their friends, family and remaining fan to tears with hourly Facebook updates about their latest creative endeavours. Nobody cares after a while (if they ever did in the first place –geddit?). Instead, post links to great content from other sources – whack links up on Twitter to scintillating articles which don’t happen to be about your music (and rest assured, there are a lot of them). Or make witty observations about cheese and/or the credit crunch. In short, get a reputation for being an interesting dude, not a self-obsessed bore.

Check out the rest of his article here.

We also have an article on our Make It In Music site on twitter for musicians here.

 

Links

http://www.prescriptionmusicpruk.com/the-prescription/2012/5/1/using-twitter-top-tips-for-musicians-and-bands.html

http://www.makeitinmusic.com/twitter-for-musicians/

 

Motivate and reward your fans for spreading the word

There is an awesome idea at the bottom of this post that I haven't seen used in quite this way by a musician.

The post is a very thorough explanation of how to build an iFrame page on Facebook. Of itself that is a great post and worth learning how to do - although I use the 'Static HTML for iFrame' app on Facebook rather than going through the app developer route - you might if you're geeky!

But that's not the point here.

The point is to look at the bit of the post right at the bottom just above the comments where the author offers a reward/prize for people who pass on his post on Facebook or Twitter:

To make this a little bit more exciting, I’m gonna give away one copy of Guy Kawasaki‘s new book “Enchantment“, which I have been reading for a couple of days and can guarantee you it is off-the-heezy. To be fair and give everybody the opportunity, you’ll be able to participate on Facebook or on Twitter.

On Facebook

• Go to the SocialMouths Facebook Page and “Like It” (molto importante)
• Share this post on your wall by using the link: http://bit.ly/iFrameTabs
• When you share the link add this comment How to Build a Facebook Landing Page with Frames | @SocialMouths – If you “liked” me first, that “@” in front of “SocialMouths” will automatically tag me and make your post show up on my wall too, that’s how I’ll see you. If you don’t use the “@socialmouths” in your share you will be invisible to me ; )

He then goes on to explain exactly how he'd like you to share the post on Twitter as well using hashtags so that he will see the tweets.

He then picks a winner at random after a couple of weeks by watching the Facebook shares and the tweets.

At the time of me writing this, the post has been tweeted 1036 times and shared on Facebook 1463 times.

That is a HUGE amount of traffic.

Some of these will have been natural from the post's readers but there's no doubt that the contest and specific instructions will have kickstarted the sharing. This has snowballed further as it got shared wider picking up lots of Google +1's and clearly getting the love on StumbleUpon.

OK, this is a great post that is very useful to people as a tutorial and so very shareable.

But you can apply this principal to your own site and use it to get your fans and readers to promote your music.

Simply offer a copy of your album if they tweet your post about it using the same promotional techniques.

Or, perhaps you think you don't have enough clout to get the momentum started?

How about you make a list (or an album even) of bands in your genre or locality and pick one track from each and everyone runs the contest.

If I was in a folk band I might write a post about the ten best up and coming folk acts and add my own band in there as a cheeky final suggestion. I'd then perhaps offer the albums of the top three bands in the post as a prize to a tweeter or sharer. Get the ball rolling by telling the other 9 acts that they are in the post by contacting them on Facebook, Twitter and via their sites. Spread the word to blogs that cover the genre and you ought to see a massive spike in traffic and interest in all ten bands on the list, including yours!

It's also worth noting that all the sharing and tweeting will give your site a very signifcant SEO (search engine optimisation) boost as well that will have a lasting effect on your site traffic.

Use this as inspiration to try it and see what you can do to entice fans to share a post.

We will DEFEINITELY be using this technique ourselves.

 

Click to Tweet - great new Twitter service

If you want to get more people to see a particular post on your website or to buy tickets or take some specific action, you want that message to spread to as many people as possible.

This new service, Click to Tweet, enables you to create a pre-written tweet for people to click on. This will open their Twitter account with your message prepopulated with your Tweet.

So, you can email all the people on your fan list (you do have one of those right?) or put the Tweet in a short post on your site or your Tumblr and specifically ask people to click it and spread the word.

Here's an example:

Please click this to Tweet about our latest post on How to promote your music on Spotify -

http://clicktotweet.com/wev2i

Of course, you could change the text in that link to 'Please click to Tweet about this' or similar.

When clicked, it'll open your Twitter account and have this Tweet ready to go - "Great piece on how to use Spotify to actually promote your music - http://ow.ly/7oQUc".

Please do so we can see how well it works!

As a way of encouraging people to spread the word I expect to see this be very effective.

Use Click to Tweet here.

6 Tips for effective Twitter networking

Have you checked out our mammoth post series on Twitter for Musicians?

It's essential reading and really does give you chapter and verse on how to use Twitter as part of your music promotion efforts.

But, I'm always looking for more tips and loved this post from Social Media expert Madalyn Sklar as it distills the essence of Twitter into 6 simple tips.

Here are my 6 simple tips that will help you build momentum and followers. There is no magic pill for instant success. But if you follow these strategies, you will improve your results. And remember, it’s about building your Twitter network… one follower at a time!

It takes time, consistency and a plan of action. So let me ask you… how effective are you on Twitter? People I talk to either love it (and might even admit to being addicted) or they just don’t get it, not understanding how it can help them.

Read them here.

How to find local fans on Twitter

We look at how to find potential fans of your music in your local area in this part of our Twitter music marketing guide.

Obviously, if you can find your fans near to your home base then you radically increase your chances of getting those people to shows.

This video from Ariel Hyatt looks at another way to do this.

 

Timely Twitter Tip

A commenter on our site the other day put me on to Timely, which one of my clients has been trying out with some success. I'm giving it a go today.

It claims to look at your last 199 tweets and then schedule your tweets at the times that they are most likely to be read, Retweeted or replied to.

My client noticed greater activity - I'll let you know if I do too!

Check it out here.

The power of Twitter

I'm not saying that you should set up a hoax using Twitter to spread the word about our music, like this TV writer did.

But, if you read the story it gives insight into how people trust what they read on Twitter and how Retweets and "quotes" from other users can add instant authority to your Twitter stream and profile - and therefore, to your music.

Or maybe it's just time to set up a hoax!

Read about it here.

For the right way to use Twitter as a musician - go here.

5 ways to lose fans on Twitter

Great reminder post from Dave Cool (yes, really!) on Bandzoogle's blog.

Common sense maybe - but you still need to be reminded.

Most artists and bands now use Twitter to promote their music and connect with their fans. But like with all promotional tools, there are certain things you should avoid doing. I’ve searched through literally thousands of artist accounts on Twitter and noticed some alarming trends. Here’s a quick Top 5 things that could cause you to lose your fans on Twitter:

Read the 5 tips here.

Of course, when you have a day to spare, you can read our definitive guide to Twitter music marketing.

 

How to build your Twitter Tribe

There's some great advice in this post on Twitter.

Primarily written for business/ brand users of Twitter, all the advice is applicable to musicians.

Of course, you need to read the definitive guide on Twitter music marketing on our site as well!

We cover some of the same ground but this has good info on how to find people to follow and, in particular, how to make your tweets stand out as interesting - the answer is to treat them as headlines.

You don’t need to dedicate the time to a tweet that you would give a full blog post. But there are a few simple things you can do to make your tweets achieve a better reach among your followers.

Whenever you tweet an article, try to link it with the interests of your community.

This means that sometimes the title of the article will fit this purpose very well, sometimes it won’t. Try finding a quote in the article that particularly relates to your community’s and followers’ interests.

Read the whole thing here.

Twitter for Musicians - the basics

Ariel Hyatt posted these two short videos on the basics of how musicians should use Twitter and although I have posted the first one before, it makes sense to have the two together!

Here's part 1:

And here's part 2:

Of course, once you've got the basics you should regularly dip into our masterclass series on Twitter for Musicians.

What do you use to Tweet?

I found this interesting as I am, belatedly, finishing off my series on Twitter marketing for musicians.

I'm just writing the bit about using third party clients like TweetDeck and Hootsuite and came across this infographic.

I assumed that loads of people use these options - and clearly many do, but it's interesting to see that the vast majority use the interface at Twitter.com.

You're missing out if you don't use one or several of the available clients. We look at these in the final part of the Twitter series on the main blog.

Image by Rosaura Ochoa

Twitter Search and finding out what's happening right now

Mashable created this video and posted about it here yesterday.

I've embedded it here though as it goes perfectly with my 5 part post on Twitter for Musicians - which I am desperately trying to finish today!

Dead simple - this video shows you how to use the advanced Twitter Search to find out up to the minute and more personal tips on anything - searching on Google is obviously 'the daddy' but it can take ages for good material to get indexed and if you're looking for the latest view on something, Twitter Seacrch is where to go.

This can be applied to music, music promotion tips, local venues to play - anything you can think of that's connected to your music career.

Find the advanced Twitter Search at http://search.twitter.com/advanced

How to make your tweets go viral

So, I've been beavering away on my magnum opus - Twitter for Musicians - for weeks, and it's finally getting published this week.

I'm therefore pleased when I find something to add to it in the Dailies.

This is a great post on the ever amazing CopyBlogger site that looks at some of the statistical data about sharing and retweets on Twitter.

Publishers can complain and wistfully wish for the good old days of blog links and Google juice, or they can adapt to the new reality Twitter represents. Getting your content “ReTweeted” on Twitter (i.e. getting people to repeat what you’ve said, usually along with a link) can drive significant quality traffic to your site, which in turn can boost your subscriber numbers.

So, how does ReTweeting happen, anyway? Well, here are the 5 factors you need to take into account when trying to get your content to spread virally on Twitter.

Read the post here.

 

15 Social media Tips - free PDF

I'm all a bit busy on the main blog now that it's getting towards the end of the re-design process.

So, head over there to get a brilliant free PDF from Social Media expert Mari Smith with loads of excellent information that you can apply to your social media music marketing.

Get the 15 Social Media Tips PDF here.