Editorial
The Social Media Conundrum
4
IMC Magazine Staff
Mark Lamdanski - Editor
Carol Riordan - Editor/Design
Kiva Johns-Adkins - Contributor of Behind the Music
Chancy Johnson - Contributor of Out of the Woodwork Music Review
Tamela Plaine - Contributor of the Book Review
Social media web sites are obviously here to stay and becoming more popular by the minute. According to eBizMBA, Facebook is locked in at the number one position for average monthly visitors with 900,000,000. Twitter is in the number 2 position, far behind Facebook, at about 310,000,000 average monthly visitors.
If you're curious, LinkedIn is next, followed by Pinterest. You can check out the rankings for yourself here: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites
One would think that these sites would give you access to a windfall of publicity. That may have been the case way back when Facebook didn't limit the number of page fans that see your posts. Now, if you're lucky, about 10% of fans will see any post on a page, unless you pay for more exposure. So, for example, World Wide Indie Radio has a little over 15,000 likes. On a good day, 150 people will see something that is posted on the page. Yeh, pretty crappy! You think, “Wow! I have 15,000 people following me on Facebook! That's a lot of people that are going to see me talk about my new album!” Yeh, only if you pay for it.
Let's talk about Twitter for a second. They don't charge for your posts and, in theory, every person that follows you will see what you Tweet! BOOM! Like I said, IN THEORY. The problem is, the more accounts someone follows, the faster their feed flies by. It's so easy to miss a tweet unless you specifically get notifications for a particular account. Tweets move pretty quickly unless you're following just a handful of people.
Of course, the above doesn't even take into consideration 'ghost accounts', as I like to call them. You can have 15,000 likes on Facebook and 10,000 followers on Twitter, but how many of those are active accounts? How many are people that signed up and liked or followed you and then left Facebook or Twitter? How many are duplicate accounts for the same person with different businesses or subjects?
So, what are you to do if you don't want to pay for exposure? Pfft! Heck if I know! You just keep plugging. Post like crazy and hope that someone in the right place at the right time sees your post, takes a look at you and discovers you! What it comes down to is that Social Media is a good 'support' system for promoting yourself but you just can't rely on it solely. Even in this day and age, you still need to pound on doors, make phone calls, hire managers or promoters, and beg for your chance.
It' still a numbers game. The more people you reach, the better your chances. Don't stop what you're doing. This is just meant to set expectations. Use Facebook and Twitter to network. Become friends with people in the industry and just keep on plugging.
All the best,
Mark Lamdanski
Editor