Ariel Publicity

(via The ASCAP Expo Blog)

I’m going to be honest. Initially, I went to the “Your Digital Tool Belt” panel just to stalk Alison Sudol ofA Fine Frenzy for a while. Little did I expect that it would end up being the most engaging thing I did all day. As an 18-year-old in the modern age, I find that I’m constantly plugged in — Facebook, Pandora, Gmail, you name it. Since I’m also one of those people who gets exhausted by too much input, I was less than enthusiastic when Twitter came up with a way for people to share their most mundane experiences. I hate the pretentiousness associated with assuming that anyone in the world cares what you ate for lunch, or what fabulous thing you just did that they should be jealous of. My philosophy is generally that people should get out there and live their own lives without bothering me with the details.

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I’m just back from an amazing trip to Los Angeles where I attended and spoke at the ASCAP Expo. I also hosted a networking mixer at the house for 50 musicians from my community in Brooklyn and so I have been thinking a lot about community lately, and I have some thoughts:

Every artist has three separate communities.

Community #1: Your Super Fans

These are fans who are primarily Your Live Audience. You know them by name. If you play out live, they attend your shows regularly, and buy many things you offer (not just music). If you have a street team they are on it and they evangelize strongly on your behalf.

Community #2: Engaged Fans

These fans are your Active Online Audience. They are newsletter subscribers, blog readers, video watchers, RSS subscribers, active Social Media engagers who frequently comment & engage with you on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Community #3: Ambient Fans

These fans are your Passive Online Audience and they are your social media friends who are aware of you via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Last.fm, etc. but don’t actively communicate with you and may not have ever even heard your music (yet).

There are many different communities to tack on to this list but these are the primary three.

The problem is most artists have only one strategy for marketing and promoting to three totally separate groups.

The way you maintain your relationship with each of these communities requires a different strategy because you have varying degrees of engagement with each of them.

The way you create and develop your relationship with them should also take some careful consideration.

Yes, there will be overlap between them but not as much as you may think.

This article is broken up into three parts, one for each community.

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