Taylor Swift recently wrote an article in the WSJ titled, “The Future of Music Is A Love Story.”
We couldn’t agree more, Taylor! Social media is meant to be a relationship former between a brand and a consumer. Social media connects and strengthens the bond between an artist and a fan, and opens a wide door for communication that would otherwise be closed.
It’s expensive to break an artist. Labels fully understand this and like any investment, they want to invest in an artist with the least amount of risk. It’s not just musical performers. It’s anyone. A large and engaged audience to top decision makers says that you’re an influencer and if we’re going to invest in you, we think you have the audience to give us the return on investment we need. Taylor notes
“ A friend of mine, who is an actress, told me that when the casting for her recent movie came down to two actresses, the casting director chose the actress with more Twitter followers.”
Take a look at the correlation between Twitter followers and album sales. The more twitter followers an artist has, the more album sales they have. I would love to see if the same holds true for tour sales.
Your customers are giving you signs of what they want: it’s time to listen.
If you’re diligent about listening to how people use technology, you’ll see changes long before anyone else. Have we long passed the days where a tangible picture with an autograph is obsolete? Taylor seems to think so.
“I haven’t been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera. The only memento “kids these days” want is a selfie.”
Taylor understands what her fans want because she genuinely wants them to have the best experience possible wherever they go. Just do a quick google search of “Taylor Swift selfies with fan”
Obvi, she totes gets it. -yep that was just typed!
Taylor also practices something that at Parachute Media, we love doing for our clients. Taylor takes the time to comment on her fans pictures. She doesn’t just comment, she takes the time to write a thoughtful and authentic response. When our clients, especially restaurants, have an Instagram account, we take it to the next level. Many times, your customers are talking about you but not directly to you. They only hashtag instead of using the brands @ name. Or they will use the location tag for the picture they took without ever mentioning the brand. It’s our goal to let your customers know we are listening and we care. We go through those pictures tagged to a location, follow the key hashtags and we comment, like, and reshare the customer experiences. I’ll go back to a Dennis Yu quote that I love so much:
“Be so awesome at what you do that your customers do your marketing for you. Thus, social marketing is not about tech tricks but amplifying customer love through content marketing.”
Regardless if you’re a business professional or an up-and-coming artist, take some notes from Taylor Swift and Parachute Media on how to build your brand and use social media as a love story. It’s all about building authentic relationships. Taylor gets it. We get it. Are you on board yet?
