Justin Boland: “We’re All Just Numbers…”
(#mashsmday #smday) I want to thank Kyle Bylin for the opportunity to speak on this, because I add a dissonant note to the Social Media Day celebration.
See, I'm not the biggest fan.
The most important thing for artists to keep in mind about Social Media is that someone else owns it. Someone else makes money off it, someone else ultimately controls the content. So for artists, the goal is to get people off Social Media and onto your media. quickly and reliably.
Definitely, engage people, be sociable, leverage the internet — but do all of that through your channels, your platforms.
Social Media is a business model that makes money off the people who use it. Facebook users who get offended about privacy invasions are very naive (and also cute). Zuckerberg literally founded that company on stolen personal information from fellow Harvard students, but in 2010, that's just a colorful anecdote, right? Business is like that.
We're all just numbers on a spreadsheet to the men and women who run these companies. So my only advice to artists today is this: don't let them use you without using them at least five times harder. Social Media is where you advertise for free — not where you do business.
– Justin Boland, World Around Records and Audible Hype
Great piece. First social network that came to mind is Ning, and their decision to start charging creators. The best decision I made in my year and a half of using their service was to make people register to see beyond the front page. I now have all of those contacts and can continue to communicate with them without Ning’s help. Ning served its purpose, and taking advantage of it’s features made it very easy to move on.
Though I seldom find much common ground in Justin’s posts, I’ll have to agree with this one.
Thank you for making this clear, Justin. There are so many musicians I run into that think their social networks are potential profit centers…but it shouldn’t work that way, because like you said, you don’t own your social networks. They are merely funnels that can easily and obviously lead/tempt fans to visit your own platform (aka website).
Use social media to engage and interact with your fans, and then give them obvious methods and reasons to visit your official store at your official website.
Thanks for this one Justin. Your readers can always count on you to shoot straight from the hip.
Cheers!
Kevin
Justin is right on with this one! So important for artists to use social media as a tool only and not to become fully reliant on it.