Summit 2016
April 1-2, Washington DC

Session 6: Friday 4:45
Moderator: Timothy Channell

Stephanie Kellar
Assistant Professor
Berklee College of Music

Tone of Voice Can Make or Break Social Media Marketing Success

Social media outlets—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and many others—play a vital role in music marketing, especially in the early years of a young artist’s career when DIY promotion is the compulsory first step to building a fan base. However, a comprehensive audit of social media postings by a variety of new artists and bands reveals a compound problem—the majority use social media as a broadcast channel on top of a counter-productive tone of voice that compromises the goal of engaging new fans. This outcome is shown by low page likes and low post engagement.

This objective of this presentation is to shine a light on the problem and help faculty create classroom exercises to help students, both artists and managers, develop a positive and effective tone of voice and better understanding of the nature of social media. Specifically, it a) states the observed problem, b) underscores the difficulty of teaching the concept of tone of voice, c) compares and contrasts the basic human communication model (a two-way looped system incorporating feedback) and broadcast media (a one-way system sans feedback), d) shows multiple examples of good (engaging, compelling, interesting) and bad (begging, demanding, excluding) postings, then e) proposes a classroom methodology to better teach students how to analyze and master tone of voice while using social media correctly to achieve the goal of growing a fan base.


Mark Carpentieri
Assistant Professor of Music Business
Five Towns College

Managing Musician’s Social Media Campaigns Through Analytics

As musicians, artists and bands use social media more each day to market themselves, understanding what works and what doesn’t is paramount. According to eMarketer* the entertainment industry spent 1.5 billion dollars in mobile advertising in 2015. For musicians, being able to connect with fans on a deeper level can be the difference in having a successful career or one that underperforms. There will always be some trial and error management in social media for musicians. This is due to the fact that what works for one type of musician may not work for another. This can be due to various demographic differences. The point is to reduce the amount of error by finding out via analytical tools how to improve and manage campaigns.

Many social media platforms have their own built-in tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Some do not like Instagram. There are three types of analytical tools that will be discussed: free built-in, free external and fee based. Understanding how these tools work is important if musicians want to increase their audience engagement. By utilizing and investigating the outcomes with these tools, the artist has a much better chance of succeeding in creating social media plans that create desired outcomes.

* (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1012497&ecid=MX1086)