Reproduced from Record of the Day's Weekly Magazine. To Subscribe, go to recordoftheday.com
It has been a watershed couple of weeks for Twitter in the UK. Whether it be Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross discussing it on TV, numerous Radio 1 DJs using it live on-air, or just the sheer volume of your business contacts who try and cajole all of us into using it (today's Daily Mirror even had a 'What Is Twitter?' piece on p3), it would appear you're best off just surrendering to its current surge in usage.
If you're not quite sure what it is, then you are probably very reticent to engage in yet another social networking tool. Difficult as explaining it in one sentence might be, let's have a shot: Twitter is a mixture of short status updates to a network of people you're signed up to following.
Traffic on Twitter has grown by a staggering 974 % in the last year, so if you're not already using it for your music business needs, the window of opportunity to join while it's getting hotter is open now. As your daily social networking tasks (update Facebook groups/ check MySpace/ upload to Flickr etc) threaten to overshadow your actual proper work tasks, you might understandably approach yet another network with some cynicism or trepidation, but fear not - the beauty of Twitter is its simplicity.
As we started using Twitter regularly for RotD business last October at In The City, we were instantly attracted to it as a tool of letting other industry folk where we were, which gig we were at, any breaking news and whatever good quotes from panels we could express in 140 characters. It's no surprise to learn then that Twitter's initial explosion in the US happened just before another conference, SXSW 2007 where hordes of tech-savvy visitors to SXSW Interactive used it to swap details of where they were and answering Twitter's founding question: 'What are you doing?'.
As the crowd has shifted from tech-pioneers to mass-market take-up, it would be a shame if industry missed the boat on Twitter. Given how slow the industry has been to utilize the full extent of Facebook as a music service in its five years of existence, Twitter's short, quick, yet personal style of communication cries out to be taken advantage of – in a smart way – by the music industry. The seeds have already been sown by many of the professionals, labels, musicians and media outlets we've seen flock to Twitter in recent times. Some use it successfully, while others are clearly not 'getting it'. So, what are the potential best uses?
Patrick Clifton, in charge of social networking strategy for Darling Social Services, told us that Twitter has the potential to be the first point of communication with an audience or potential market. "Imagine a hotly-anticipated tour being made available exclusively by posting a link first on Twitter then everywhere else, for example."
Artists are using Twitter to open a channel of conversation with their followers, but one which they can control. Lily Allen, for example can tell her fans her fears of appearing on GMTV, Calvin Harris can bitch about his label as he makes his difficult second album and Tinchy Stryder can let us know about his housing situation.. But it's not all trivial updates: we've found artists that interact with fans directly promote an interest in their music. Imogen Heap is one such artist who uses it well, documenting her recording process but also linking to her fresh content elsewhere on the web. Coldplay don't use it themselves (yet), but a web-savvy employee of theirs posts Tweets as he follows their radio sessions and breaks competitions and web exclusives. And, in a sign that the service is crossing over to an increasingly mainstream audience, Jimmy Eat World have launched a tour site which combines concert-specific Tweets into a chat-stream.
Ritch Ames from Online PR and digital PR firm Tomorrow Never Knows advised us that the key approach for music industry users of Twitter is to keep it personal, "Simply spamming the service every now and again will actually see the amount of followers you receive fall - unlike many other social networks, people will decide to break up your friendship…Twitter is based on a quick, precise and to-the-point messages, and they have to come from the person themselves, not a PR and not an office intern."
The labels we currently enjoy on Twitter have the potential to take followers, not just as potential customers to new releases, but also as investors in their brand and ethos. Simply blasting out a stream of feeds to your followers won't gain you an audience, particularly not as that audience explodes and people become more selective about who they follow.
Likewise for media outlets, simply hooking up an RSS feed to Twitter to let them know about new articles won't curry any favour, but engaging with your followers will. One of our favourite online music publications, Popjustice, is also one of our favourites to catch on Twitter, simply because Peter Robinson's updates share the personality and humour of the website – it allows the reader to consume more of what they like, with little extra effort on the publisher's behalf.
To those who had dismissed Twitter as a passing fad, or to those who haven't quite got their heads around it, we urge you not to doubt its potential power and to get on there and give it a shot. We'd add the caveat that, as with any social-networking site, it is not the be-all and end-all of any business strategy. But you should be there as Twitter grows - not just through its main site, but also as an eco-system of applications and sites growing around it will too.
Related Reading:
While you’re there, check out editor Nicola Slade’s (@mislaid) – particularly for the 9am ‘top story’ update.
@drownedinsound have set up MusicTwitters, a feed of musicians and music sites, blogs and labels who use Twitter.
Heather Macdonald has compiled some tips for the best use of Twitter for industry people.
Gerd Leonhard gives seven reasons why everyone in the music industry should try Twitter.
And might endear yourself to your Twitter community by donating your artist's music to Twestival
