Learn how to effectively engage your most dedicated fans in just a few minutes.
Marketing is everything in today’s music business. Between the increased number of artists competing for attention, the constant stream of new content available on every digital channel, and the shrinking amount of attention people are willing to give talent they are unfamiliar with, marketing has become the primary focus of most day-to-day music professionals. It would be easy to say that trend will change in the years to come, but the chances are high that the competition will only grow fiercer from here.
How do you reach your fans? If the answer is social media, you may not be thinking big enough. Social media is helpful, but there is no guarantee your content will reach people who need to see it. You need to know your latest updates will make it in front of fans who are waiting to hear from you. Otherwise, the likelihood your efforts receive the response and external promotion needed to help raise your profile is incredibly low. You need your fans and they, in turn, need to hear from you.
The following post was created by our personal hero, Christopher Biachi. Heed his advice.
For many years it’s proven time and again a pure mystery of sorts. Every day I’d log in to twitter, post my tweet and read around- always coming across the accounts with those different blue things next to the name. After doing a quick google search and finding out what it was, I was immediately intrigued. The almighty twitter badge. How could I myself as well as my artists achieve this I thought?
After a bit further obsessively researching- I found a seemingly repeating pattern on almost EVERY PAGE that had to do with the one golden question… “How Do I Get Verified On Twitter?” with the end result being little to nothing at all. Still leaving the reader completely in the dark. No real direction.
I’m writing to speak of my journey and how it ended up working out for me. To let you know that with a little bit of luck, persistence and determination- The puzzle CAN BE SOLVED.
To begin let’s take a look at the qualifications to having a verified account:
“Twitter verifies accounts on an ongoing basis to make it easier for users to find who they’re looking for. We concentrate on highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business and other key interest areas. We are constantly updating our requirements for verification. Note, verification does not factor in follower count or Tweet count.”
I’ve personally come across people who swore up and down the amount of followers you had- would depend on if you could get verified. Well the statement above proves that to be an incorrect assumption. They also make sure to state this:
“We do not accept requests for verification from the general public. If you fall under one of the above categories and your Twitter account meets our qualifications for verification, we may contact you in the future.”
Now this IS another true statement. Anyone can’t just reach out to twitter and expect to be verified. I’ve also heard the rumor that if a verified profile DM’s the Verified page that your account can be verified. I have NEVER seen that happen.
“Why hasn’t my account been verified? If you think you meet the criteria for verification and have not yet received a badge, please be patient. We are working within key interest areas to verify accounts that are sought after by other Twitter users.”
Upon further research I was able to dig up a friend of a friend who happened to work at the platform. They were able to help guide me in the right direction- that was our “in” From those few hints I was able to unlock the puzzle. With that being said, there ARE certain qualifications for each brand in order to be considered. Since I specialize in the Music department that is where our focus was for this process.
If you are a signed artist and or touring on a regular basis- this can and will help!
It never hurts to buddy up with your publicist or your record label 🙂 They might have the magic ticket.
I will say that they were high traffic profiles but had no advertising budgets spent, nor did our clients need to be “Kardashian famous”. It was a matter of having the proper items in place, timing and ensuring that the platform is ACTUALLY USED and INTERACTED WITH. That is a BIG KEY!
At the end of the day- if you seek, you can find.
To get you started- here are your puzzle clue’s:
1. Use the platform regularly! Support your post, use hashtags and interact with fans! This let’s Twitter know that you actually use and enjoy what it has to offer.
2. Being a signed or notable musician is a BIG KEY. Again from my outlook as I work with musicians for my career. Proving who you are and what you have done will help greatly!
3. Find an expert. Again as a musician or artist perhaps barking up the Publicist tree, the record label or the companies Social Media wizard can help you.
4. The form. That is all there is to say on this topic. It might still exist and might still work. If you are every lucky enough to meet the right person with granted access- befriend them for help.
While this does not give away the EXACT answer to the ultimate mystery. Some things are better left unsaid and when or IF the time if right for you, then the badge will come! Can you solve the mystery?!
I’ve heard as of recent that twitter will offer the verified badge to any page for $1.00 per year in the upcoming future.
What do YOU think of this and would you buy it if everyone had access then?
Christopher Bianchi is an Artist Manager at Mercenary Management who has been involved with the business side of music since he was just 14. Now in his late twenties, Chris lives with his wife, Kayla, in Ohio and spends his days helping artists of all sizes reach the next level(s) in their careers.
Ah, Twitter. Where would our culture be without you? After all, Twitter is one of, if not the best place in the world for people to gather and discuss the events of the day while using names other than their own. You can choose to use your actual name of course, but most people prefer for a humorous or clever nickname instead, and therein lies the problem with any automated Twitter promotion.
You would be hard pressed to find a single artist, brand, or company that doesn’t rely on Twitter every single day for their marketing efforts. The approaches these entities use to engage their audience varies drastically, but they all aim to accomplish the same goal of keeping people interested in whatever product, song, movie, or related offering the account has to promote. In theory, those that feel connected to a brand are more likely to support it, and if they have fun engaging with a brand they’re likely to share their enjoyment with others who in turn may start following the brand as well. This is the entire concept behind social media marketing: Make something people want to click and share, make it easy for them to do those things, then create more content with the same goal in mind and repeat. It has been this way since the dawn of the digital age and it will likely remain as such for the foreseeable future.
Automated promotions, in theory, make it possible to engage more people without doing more work. The idea is that these campaigns, which usually offer followers the ability to create shareable gifs or images, is that brands are giving fans something they will want to share with others that reflects positively on the brand. The most popular approach to this idea so far has been custom jerseys using followers’ Twitter handles, which is an approach that has been disastrously utilized by both the New England Patriots and, more recently, the Montreal Canadiens. Both teams didn’t see the harm in making it possible for any fan to create a jersey with their name on it, but neither team could have imagined the type of ridiculous handles some fans would use to align themselves with their organization(s). Here are a few examples of what happened next…
The above images are all incredibly offensive, but truth be told they are not even the worst examples of automated promotions we’ve seen. Some tweets we discovered were too offensive to even post on the blog!
Both the Patriots and the Canadiens were quick to apologize for any offensive tweet that may have been seen, but the damage to their brands was already done. There are literally hundreds of screenshots from these campaigns circulating online, and they will more than likely continue to appear in searches for custom jerseys for the foreseeable future. Like everything else, once these images were available online they were part of the internet forever, and there is no way any organization will be able to fully erase them for the digital landscape.
while we have yet to see any record labels just on the automated promotion bandwagon, it’s not hard to imagine a point in the near future when some type of similar campaign is mounted by one of the majors or an independent artist who is trying to further utilize their strong online following. If and when that time comes I promise there will be more disastrous results, and there is really no way that can be stopped. As it stands now, there are no tools available for filtering automated promotions, and because of that anyone who chooses to use such marketing techniques is making themselves and their brand incredibly vulnerable.
Learn from those who have tried and failed to make these promotions work in the past. Automated Twitter promotions are simply a bad idea.
