Social Media Announce Spikes Fans & Followers

In 2009 I wanted to craft a unique platform to grow our social media base, quickly. As a festival or once-a-year event, there are only a handful of opportunities to capitalize on your media push. One of those times, and probably the most important, is when you announce your performing artists. At the time, Facebook was motoring and Twitter was taking over the world. These two social media buzz words seemed seemed to lend instant credibility (as silly as it sounds) to any business. We were on the forefront of this, it just happened that the timing for the push was right on schedule with the hype machine.

We leveraged the power and reach of the media to help drive traffic to our social networks. Similar events would send out one press release that houses all of their artists who are performing at the event. We chose to dissect this and release small, digestible pieces of information; but spread it out over time and increase the frequency. One press release was sent out informing the media on how we would "leak" the lineup. By doing this we held the attention of our core audience, continuously built of our Facebook Fan Page (grew from1 member to over 3000 in 4 weeks) and drove new followers to our Twitter account (grew from 1 follower to over 1000 in 3 weeks). IT WORKED! Of course there were people who couldn't grasp the concept (or who were just too impatient) but the majority LIVED FOR IT! What we found was they were all watching. Every single day! For three weeks, every day was like Christmas Day to an eager group of loyal followers. There was a wealth of fan-to-fan interaction on the Facebook community. Instead of one big tweet about the lineup, there were hundreds each day about one artist. This continued to spiral into one of most unique marketing concepts to date (and there have been some good ones). The media continued to pick up bits and pieces and increase the frequency of the coverage. Everyone watched as we built the story, right before their eyes. The best part is, they are all still there. Wanting more.

Take a peek at some of the press coverage as it was unfolding.

Denver’s Monolith Festival 2009 is Sept. 12-13: Girl Talk First Major Act Announced –Promoters are Releasing Band Roster on Facebook and Twitter

Written by clubnotes in Monday, May 18th 2009

Girl Talk is the first major Monolith Fest act to be announced

Most music festival press releases give out an entire roster of bands. However, the Monolith Festival is doing something a little different this year.
The festival promoters are very slowly divulging the band roster on Facebook and Twitter, so music fans have to keep checking out the fest’s progress.
This much we know for sure: Monolith will be taking place September 12-13 at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
It feels like we’re getting little clues to a puzzle

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NME (London) , Denver Post, The Colorado Daily, My Old Kentucky Blog, 8201, ZME