Street Team Handbook for 2008

I wrote this to help a band develop their street team, and decided to share it with you.

Flick

Street Team Handbook for 2008

Thank you for your interest in supporting this band. You’ll play an important role in helping us get to the next level. We’d like to explain our street team and how you can be involved. Whether you’re internet savvy or not, you’ll have a place in this street team.

None of us can be everywhere at once, but we all have places we live. Most of us have at least one social networking website or blog that we utilize to connect with our online friends. Some of those friendships overlap in our daily lives, though most of them are friends we rarely see or will never meet.

We wouldn’t ask you to relocate to a different city to promote this band, nor would we ask you to move to another virtual city. Instead, stay where you already are at and get ready to hand out virtual fliers.

We’ll set up a password protected page on our website where we’ll give you inside information about the band. If we’re going to announce something, we’ll give you a few days to prepare. You’ll receive an email when we update this page.

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Facebook
A few months ago Facebook began to offer pages that bands and businesses could create. These pages are still being tested out, but we wanted to be among the first to have a page.

The goal of the Facebook page is to have as many fans as possible. Every time the page is updated, the changes are announced on each fan’s news feed. Fans are invited to write on our wall or interact with other fans on our discussion board.

Since Facebook shares statistics from page visits, called Insights, showing us what demographic of our Facebook traffic is… which helps us understand how to market the band.

There are also Facebook groups. Unlike pages, groups are driven by the community. Members of a group can upload photos, videos, and audio. They can also interact with each other by writing on the wall or chatting on the discussion board.

An easy way to introduce your friends to this band is to invite them to visit the band’s Facebook page or invite them to join the Facebook group. Click on “invite your friend” when you’re on the page or group and send your friend(s) a personal invitation.

There are other ways of promoting this band on Facebook:
Anyone can create an event and invite their friends to the event. Events do not have to be a concert, so you can get creative. For example, when we release music, you can create a listening party and invite your friends to the band’s website to listen to the new music.

Facebook has an open API, which means that third party developers can design applications for Facebook. If you know how to program, consider helping us create Facebook applications to promote this band.

Myspace
If you have a Myspace account, you can help us in numerous ways. An easy way is to list our band in your top eight friends. You’d be surprised how many people discover artists by clicking on the top eight friends.

Another way to promote us on Myspace is to add our songs or videos to your profile. This helps drive up our play count, and exposes your friends to our band.

When we announce a tour, you can send out a bulletin to inform your friends, or write a blog post about it. Videos are easy to blog; simply click “blog this” to post a video on your Myspace.

IMEEM
IMEEM is a website where you can create playlists of music, and these playlists can be shared with your friends. What makes IMEEM a powerful tool is that the playlists can be embedded in other websites, and you don’t have to understand HTML to embed a playlist.

Once a playlist is created, you can embed the player on your Myspace or Facebook profiles (and others). The songs can be shared with your friends via email, and your friends can share them with their friends. This is a prime example of viral marketing.

We have a group where we connect with IMEEM users. Members of the group can upload video, photos, and audio, or chat with other members on the forum. Invite your friends to join our IMEEM group.

You can also upload our songs to other groups. By targeting groups that have hundreds of members, you are providing us with a lot of exposure.

Last.fm
Last.fm is different from other social networking sites because the artist pages are wiki driven. In other words, most of the information about the band is updated by Last.fm members. This includes a bio, photos, and event information.

As a Last.fm member, every time you listen to a song in iTunes or Windows Media Player, it reports the play and song information to Last.fm. Over time your musical profile will develop and you’ll be introduced with your neighbors that have similar taste.

Your profile page temporarily lists the song as a recent play, and your friends can see what you’re listening to. Clicking on the artist name will take you to the band’s page.

Beyond listening, you can tag artists, albums, and songs with keywords. You can love a song, and it’ll show up as a recently loved track. Playlists work similarly to IMEEM’s playlists, though not as extensively. One of the most powerful ways to promote a band on Last.fm is to share the song with a friend.

An effective way to promote us on Last.fm is to write journals. When you mention us, link the band’s name, song, or album in the journal. The journal will be listed as a recent journal entry on the band’s page. But if you mention other artists and link to them, the journal becomes a tool to expose fans of other bands to our band.

Last.fm has groups, which can be useful ways to connect with other Last.fm members. Create a group and invite friends to chat about the band, or start discussions about the band in other groups. Songs can be shared with groups, translating into wide exposure if handled well.

If Last.fm is the place you spend your time, help us keep our concert information updated. When we announce new shows, you can create the even on Last.fm. Photos from Flickr can be posted to the event page after the event is over, and you can blog or review the show.

Blogger (or other blogging sites)
If you have a blog, there are numerous ways to promote us on your blog. The obvious way is to write about the band in a post. When you do this, be sure to link to sites you are writing about.

It’s important to have other websites linking to your site, also called incoming links. Google ranks the search results according to the number of incoming links, among other criteria. A website that has a high authority will boost a search result, so networking with other blogs is important. Technorati is a great tool for researching incoming links.

Embed IMEEM playlists in your blog so people can hear the music without having to leave the page. If you have a blogroll, add our sites to the list of links.

Flickr
Flickr is a website where you can share your photos with your friends. Each photo is tagged with keywords, and can be submitted to photo streams.

If you take photos of our band, be sure to tag the photo with the band’s name, and include other tags such as “band”, “music”, style of music, or whatever is appropriate. When someone searches for our band, your photos will likely show up.

Photos that you upload to Flickr can be blogged by connecting your blog account with Flickr. Anyone else can also blog your photos, unless you mark them as private.

Del.ico.us
Del.ico.us is a bookmarking website that allows you to take your bookmarks from computer to computer. When you bookmark a link so you can find it later, you’ll tag the bookmark with keywords.

Why would I mention Del.ico.us as a list of tools to use? If enough people bookmark the same link, the link will rank as a popular website. By tagging the band’s websites, other people will discover them.

YouTube
YouTube videos can be embedded on other websites, which makes it a valuable tool in promoting bands. Since most YouTube videos are viewed thousands of times, it’s important for our band to have a presence on YouTube. Be sure to tag the videos with keywords so other people can find it.

If you frequent our live shows, talk to us about filming the band’s live performances and posting them on YouTube. If you do, we’ll consider posting the video on our site.

Much like other networking sites, take advantage of YouTube’s groups, add friends, create playlists, favorite videos, send out bulletins, and subscribe to other members. The more active you are on YouTube, the more traffic you’ll attract to your videos.

YouTube is not the only video service to submit videos to. Last.fm, Myspace, and IMEEM all have video services. Last.fm videos also allow you to embed videos on other websites.

StumbleUpon
StubmleUpon is a great way to bring a surge of traffic to a website. When you want to share a link with your friends or bookmark it so you can find it later, you submit the link to StumbleUpon. Then your friends can stumble upon these links. By adding up to 200 friends, your friends can provide a quick surge of traffic, though it’s usually quick and unpredictable.

If you use StumbleUpon, be sure to tag your links well. Submit links regularly so your friends can rely on your judgment, and they’ll be more likely to frequent your profile page.

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There are hundreds of other networking websites that offer similar social networking services: Bebo, Tagged, Friendster, Buzznet, Mog, to name a few. Understanding how these sites work will give you a basis to explore the others. We’d rather you focus on one or two though, so don’t feel like you need to maintain a dozen different blogs.

Thank you for supporting this band! We’ll do our best to keep you informed.

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