While reading a recent set of tips for turning your fans into superfans, I was struck by how the list and related explanations made it sound like they were describing how to build a cult. If that sounds a bit too sinister, perhaps thinking of turning your fans into superfans by treating them like insiders will make these tips work for you.

via 13 Step Guide To Building A Cult Of Superfans – hypebot.

I notice many companies using social media to talk at their clients, not with them. Social Media should be viewed less as a marketing tool and more as a communications tool. The most valuable feature social media offers you and your company is the opportunity to listen to your audience and to learn from them what you could be doing. Stop telling your audience what they want!

via Yellow Pencil Inc. :: Blog :: Social Media – The Friend You Need to Stop Ignoring.

A great way to build excitement amongst your fanbase leading up to the release of a new album is to organize a pre-sale campaign. Hold a contest, where everyone that makes a pre-sale purchase is entered in to win a prize. Prizes could be additional merchandise, tickets to the CD release show, or if you really wanted to get crazy, offer to write and record a song about the winner. From your online store, you should have a few different pre-sale packages at different price points available. For example: – Tickets to CD release show and digital album – Autographed CD and tickets to release show – Autographed CD, T-Shirt and tickets to release show and make sure everyone who purchased the album during the presale gets their purchase by the release day (that’s the point of the pre-sale!), so mail out any packages a week beforehand and send them a digital download of the album by release day or better yet, the day before.

via Marketing Plan Tactics For Independent Musicians – Part 2 of 3: Album Launch – MTT – Music Think Tank.

Chris Hacker here, I create Marketing Plans for artists at Cyber PR® and really enjoy working with my many clients. I’ve noticed a huge problem though. Artists call the Cyber PR® offices all the time looking for us to promote their new album, totally fine of course, but the problem lies in that many of these artists call us when their albums are coming out the next week!! It completely baffles me that an artist or band will work so hard on an album, spending hours and hours writing songs and practicing these songs and then spending large sums of money recording, mixing and mastering, to only rush the release with no plan in place! Not planning enough lead time for a press campaign isn’t the only issue, but many people we talk to try to release their album when some of the basic music promotion elements aren’t even in place, for example a website where you can sell the music!

via Marketing Plan Tactics For Independent Musicians – Part 1 of 3: New Album Preparations – MTT – Music Think Tank.

Someone asked me recently how to do something I realized wasn’t so obvious. So I did a short 1-minute screencast for it, which you can watch below. The confusing part is that you’d think you would want to start in the FANS section and there would be a magic button to “email all fans”. But, Topspin considers emails primarily a promotional tool. So, you need to start over on the PROMOTE tab.