Social Networking

Aside from the podcast I included on my website, another modern tool used to encourage interaction from fans is social networking. The majority of bands in 2012/2013 have a team of dedicated media experts who ensure their presence is known on sites such as Facebook and Twitter where millions of people actively post on a daily basis. To put it in to further perspective there are thought to be around 1 billion Facebook users registered in total today, whilst Twitter boasts around 100 million. That is a massive audience that can be targeted and allows any individual group to communicate with them.

I have therefore decided it would be beneficial to Digitized to follow suit and exploit the fact we can reach out to a wider audience that we may not have been able to communicate with otherwise. I created a public Facebook account and invited a few peers to 'like' the page and become involved with whatever we decide to share on there. Whilst we are unable to advertise any of our music on iTunes like other professional bands do we can still interact with our fans and point them in the direction of our music video. Of course, we don't have our own dedicated media/PR team to control our account so it is manned by ourselves. I prefer the fact we have the freedom to decide what gets published on there and it does create the impression that we are involved with everything that endorses the band. Hard-Fi, one of my musical inspirations, control their own Facebook account as they are a band that have enjoyed success predominantly in Britain, whereas global stars such as Rihanna don't necessarily control their account themselves. We are not worldwide music icons just yet so we are more similar to Hard-Fi in the sense we don't have the resources to employ a media team!

I've also created a Twitter account that will post almost identical information but obviously on a smaller scale because there is a precise word count on the tweets you can send. On there we rely on our followers to retweet our posts and spread the message to other users - thus hopefully encouraging them to follow us themselves. On the Digitized website the Twitter link is not real because at school we are prevented from accessing such sites, so I had to create a made up address for aesthetic purposes. 

SoundCloud accounts are also popular among professional bands but I opted against opening an account on there because it is mainly a place to upload remixes and any other DJ-influenced music you've created. We don't have any tunes like that so we felt it wasn't worthwhile creating an account on there although I do recognise it's usefulness.