Are You Interacting With Your Fans on MySpace?

If you are not effectively interacting with your MySpace friends, you are missing the single biggest key to successful online music promotion. Take these steps now to connect with your fans like a pro and experience how fast your band could become one of the best bands on MySpace.

In online music promotion, your primary goal is to create a lasting impression in the minds of your target audience. This means reaching your friends, or your fans, on an emotional level. It is akin to creating a hit song. When you connect with a person in a meaningful way, you multiply the likelihood of sticking in that person’s mind.

Too many bands forget the purpose of MySpace and make the mistake of being there only for promotional reasons. MySpace was not created as another advertising medium, and in order to succeed with your online music promotion strategy, do not make the fatal mistake of using MySpace only to promote. Promote with a purpose. To succeed with your online music promotion, it is important to remember that people on MySpace want to make a meaningful emotional connection with you. Sure, they want to hear your music, but more importantly, they want to know about you.

The key to making an emotional connection with your friends is to get them emotionally involved with you. In other words, treat them like friends. Interact with them. Get them to play on your team by implementing these advanced strategies for online music promotion used by the most successful bands on MySpace:

• Deliver the news In case you forgot, there is more going on in the music world than just your band. Try posting a small opinion piece or just a hilarious link you found in your bulletin. If you choose chosen your content correctly, this will humanize and build your relationship with your MySpace friends. Use sites like Digg.com and Fark.com to get some random news. For a specific example, if you hear that Caleb fired their drummer, immediately post a bulletin concerning the change in their lineup and how you feel about it. The response will be immediate and extensive! Yes, it will draw attention to Caleb, but if this is a band many of your friends and fans are familiar with, it will create an emotional link between them and your band. Try to do this once or twice a month and you will increase loyalty.
• Encourage fan contributions By doing so, you let your music provide an opportunity for fan creativity. Try putting up demos and perhaps asking your network of MySpace friends for help choosing names for the songs. Or perhaps you can encourage your friends to suggest videos or remixes. Let your friends play with your music using their own talents. Giving it to them allows them to take ownership and get emotionally involved. Letting them feel free to do their fan thing without interference will take your online music promotion viral.
• Set friends loose with promotional tools If part of your online music promotion goal is to go viral, then remember you need to make your stuff spreadable. People who love you and are emotionally involved naturally want to tell others about you. Try creating widgets your friends can embed on their pages, e-cards for your music, MP3s they can post legally, etc. Whatever it is that you want others to know about your band, give it to your MySpace friends in a form they can easily spread to others.
• Make your friends part of the team Learn the American Idol lesson. Nothing will boost your online music promotion faster than getting your fans to root for you, and rally others to do the same. Sign up for some online indie or unsigned band competitions or songwriting competitions where fans can rate performances. Let your MySpace friends know your band is competing and ask them to vote for you. When you start campaigning for votes, your friends will do the same. It will not matter if you win the competition or not because if you do this right you will be the big winner by having ten times as many friends and yours will be highly emotionally involved with your quest. Nothing gets people going like a band or music competition.
• Follow up

The fortune is in the follow up and it is even more so when it comes to online music promotion and interacting with your MySpace friends. It is one thing to spread, listen and engage, but it seals the deal when you follow up and pay attention to what is being said and written about your band and your music. The second you upload songs they are subject to public opinion. And it is critical that you catch what the people have to say. If you get good at keeping track of and detecting who likes what you do, you will create a foundation with your friends. And your friends are your most important components of your future musical achievements. Google Alerts lets you subscribe to a specific search string. Set up a subscription for your song titles and you will be notified when someone comments about it. To close the loop, you then can copy the links with texts written about your band to your Mindmeister document and mark that blogger, newspaper or whatever as complete.

Over time, you will acquire a network of MySpace friends and link into their network, creating an almost ultimate “Six Degrees of Separation” game. Your extended network will easily reach into the millions. When you connect with your MySpace friends the right way, you will be doing something 99% of bands on the net are failing to do in their online music promotion. The results will blow your mind.