Social Media Marketing for FUNds

Now that you have your audience’s attention, it’s time to focus on the big “F”… funding! Each stage of every business requires capital at some point, especially the music industry. From the creation of a song to the performance on stage, you have to pay to play.

What’s your strategy? Do you have access to unlimited funds? Will you borrow money from family and friends? What about your local bank? Maybe they’ll be willing to fund your projects. Sure, about 6 or 7 years ago!

Crowdfunding is a great funding source for entrepreneurs.

What if I told you there’s a better way? Over the past year or so, crowdfunding has taken the world by storm. Forbes.com defines crowdfunding as, “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.” This reintroduction of an old concept has significantly changed the small business world by successfully funding thousands of innovative ideas that would otherwise be figments of our imaginations given the stringent lending practices throughout the traditional finance world.

You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with social media marketing? Well, many of the crowdfunding platforms use Facebook and Twitter to market funding campaigns. Let’s say you need to raise $50,000 to record a video for your first single on your album. Sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and GoFundMe make it easy for you to create funding campaigns and share them with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Obviously, the greater the influence you have, the greater your chances are of being fully funded. 

I recommend you make your campaigns fun and exciting. Per SECregulations, crowdfunding investors cannot legally claim a stake in your business idea or project (favorable changes coming in 2013 thanks to Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (Jobs Act)). However, incentives such as early access to products or services, other great gifts and the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you contribute to something awesome.

Your fan base would love to have access to your new music before anyone else or an invitation to an exclusive party. Tell your story, get creative with your campaign and offer unique rewards to increase the likelihood of a successful campaign. This is also a great way to market your brand and keep your audience actively engaged.

What are you waiting for? Take Indiegogo’s advice and, “Go fund yourself!”

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Give The People What They Want

Is your customer base excited about your product or service (image courtesy of activ8inc.com)?

Everyone has something to say these days. Millions of people blog and actively participate on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram every day. From my personal experience, not all blogs and posts are created equal. My time is too precious to waste on meaningless information that fails to engage me. Therefore, I track a limited number of people and brands. 

Don't bore your audience (image courtesy of kaldeem.wordpress.com)!

How do you engage your audience? Does your content fill a void in the industry or simply serve as an advertisement for your latest project? Recently, I was forced to unfollow a music producer because he was tweeting at least 50 times per day the same exact message, “Beats 4 Sale @...” He also posted this message on Facebook. It drove me crazy after a while!

Why not give the people what they want? The producer could engage others by requesting feedback on his latest track or by creating a contest offering a discounted/free beat to the winner. I don’t know about you, but I love free stuff! I also love when people solicit my opinion. It makes me feel like my voice matters, it gives me a reason to connect with them and increases the chances of me purchasing and/or recommending their products or services.

Take the necessary steps to ensure you meet the needs of your customer base. Avoid the annoying sells pitch and find out what people really want. Ask thought-provoking questions, respond to inquires and become the industry expert. Your audience needs to know that they can count on you for relevant, engaging content. This will not only boost your number of subscribers, fans and followers, it may also increase your bottom line. Please take my advice and give the people what they want. You will wish you done this a lot sooner.

Take my advice (image courtesy of quinlanco.com)!

Thanks for reading!