Fresh Chat

On the weekend I was at a bbq in Erskineville talking to a musician that I had seen and loved in the 80’s. He still plays around town predominantly in Sydney to middle age (40s) audience.

I mentioned interest in the next time he was playing and he asked me for my email – his main point of contact with fans. He mentioned putting time into building his email lists more than concentrating on social media.

We talked about his marketing efforts and his use of social media. He mentioned using MySpace but had not invested any time or effort to use the Facebook application.

I then mentioned the benefits of putting some time into Facebook considering his key demographic would be 35-45 and MySpace’s audience is considerably younger. I also mentioned that today Facebook is slowing gaining more functionality for videos, mp3s etc that at one time MySpace was streaks ahead.

We also talked about why email lists while useful are not the best way to reach and extend his fan base because the onus is on the person that receives the email to send it out to their friends whereas FB which is intrinsically viral by nature (i.e. my friends can see which group I have signed up to, events etc) can do it automatically.

By the end of the conversation and a few beers later - he got it. Those email lists he was carefully building simply didn’t have the viral power that Facebook did to start conversations and ultimately build his fan base.