Let's not pretend that social media isn't important

​I stumbled upon a SAMRO article tonight titled “Artists: How to use social media effectively”. I got excited initially, but I was sadly disappointed at how superficial the article was. It really wasn’t written well. There were literally 6 points there of which 4 were actually giving any advice at all. I’m afraid this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen… I’ve gone to a few conferences where people claim to be using social media effectively. Their talks are also very superficial and lack any real content. It sounds like they read an article online and then condense it into a 30 minute talk whereas I think we’d need a full day workshop to give it the justice it needs. The South African hip hop industry needs to stop behaving like social media is a by-the-way thing. I come from a place where I’ve built the majority of my business online and I’ve seen a niche that we haven’t started monopolizing yet. We can’t treat it like it’s a game that we play once a week anymore.
I don’t think the person who wrote that article was well versed in social media tactics. The ideas shared were super simple and had no real clout in terms of quality of content. It’s the same thing I experienced when I went to music conferences last year. There are clear ways that musicians can make use of to build a solid career using social media. I’m just afraid that South Africa sees it as an auxiliary pathway to augment what you’re already doing while in more developed countries like the USA it is being used as the cornerstone of many artist’s marketing campaigns. If we used it more effectively, we’d all win a whole lot more. Our audiences would be gigantic and spread around the world and we would be able to monetize more effectively. We’d have a much larger reach than we do and we’d probably benefit more in terms of sales, radio play etc.
If you’re an artist reading this and you see the potential that I see then I implore you to take social media seriously when planning out your marketing campaign. There are a little of tools on the Internet, cool apps, paid advertising, my blog and other blogs just like it and more that you should jump on. Get educated and make sure you’re using social media to the best of your ability. Please don’t remain on the fringes like so many people I’ve come into contact with. Leveraging social media can be very very lucrative and if you build yours up swiftly, you can still be among the first few people that really make social media work for them this year.
Do best and be great,

SB