BandCentral’s Weblog

Hello again, band people.

We know from personal experience that being in a band can involve a lot of hard work – the incremental slog of rehearsals, the logistical puzzle of organising a tour, the endless task of updating you social network pages in order to keep your fans informed and interested in your band. If you are running the show yourselves, there is a risk that the administrative side can sink the creative venture.

Fortunately BandCentral’s job is to condense the work that goes on behind the scenes, streamline the self-management process and remove the headache from the everyday admin tasks. After all, bands want to concentrate on what they do best – making music!

Any band who’s worth their salt will already have a presence on the social network’s du jour: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. And rightly so. Used creatively you have a lot to gain by using these free ‘connect with fan’ services. But, as you may have discovered, it can be a lot of work to actually do social networking well. With your information scattered across multiple sites on the web, lots of bands fall into the trap of neglecting one site or another, or letting outdated information linger long after your fans have gotten out of the habit of checking for updates.

To help you avoid these pit-falls, BandCentral’s dev team have come up with a neat little tool which allows you to publish status updates directly from your BandCentral HUB to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter with just one click, thus centralising and minimising your efforts.

This tool also makes it possible for you to create a Facebook event from within your BandCentral Band HUB and publish gig info directly onto your Facebook Band Page and MySpace Event Calendar which means that you can avoid the needless repetition of entering gig info across your many sites. Phew!

This post, the second in our series of feature focuses, is going to be dedicated to showing you how to sync your Band HUB with your Band’s social network sites. We’ll show you how to create a gig with the Gig Manager and publish the information directly to your band’s Facebook and MySpace pages in the next installment!

Already have a BandCentral account? Read on for tips on how to get the most out of your social networking tools…

SOCIAL NETWORK SYNCHRONISATION – THE NUTS AND BOLTS

• When you log-in to your BandCentral HUB, you will see an area called ‘Status Updates’ on the left-hand side of your dashboard. Follow the link to begin the synchronisation process between your Band HUB and your social network sites.

• Tip: You can also navigate to the social network page by clicking the ‘Band HUB Settings’ link on the top right-hand corner of the page.

• Select the tab “Social network settings” – the second one along – and it will lead you to this page:

• We’ll start with Twitter, which is the most straightforward.

• First: Click Sync your Twitter account




• You will navigate away from your Band HUB when you do this, but don’t worry, you will be sent back in just a moment.

• Enter your Twitter log-in details and click “Allow”. That’s it!

• Tip: make things that bit easier while you’re going through these steps by already signing into your Band’s Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts in the same browser.

• If you are already signed into your Twitter account, then Twitter will acknowledge that. It looks like this:

• Once you click “Allow“, Twitter works for a moment to synchronise with your Band HUB. You will then be automatically returned to the Social network settings page of your BandCentral Band HUB. Here you can see that you have been synced with Twitter:

• Tip: If one of your bandmates does a Noel Gallagher then you may need to start up a new social network site. You can change/re-sync to a new social network account at any time, although you can only sync with one account at a time.

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• Next comes MySpace – which has a two-part process.
• First: Click on “Sync your MySpace” account.

• You will again be re-directed from the Band HUB to MySpace, and asked to enter in your MySpace account details.

• If you are already logged into MySpace it will look like this:

• Again, as with Twitter, MySpace will work for a moment, and then redirect you back to your Band HUB, where you will see confirmation:

• Note: This action has synchronised your Band HUB with your MySpace status updates only. Please ensure that you follow this final step to sync up with the MySpace Gig Event…

• Finally – In order for your Band HUB to be able to sync your gig data to MySpace, you will need to enter your login details in the MySpace Settings field and click “Save MySpace details”.

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• Next: Facebook. The Facebook process is a little more drawn out, as there are a few steps of consent required by Facebook. We’ve made it as quick and easy as possible though so don’t despair – it is totally worth it!!

• First: Click on “Sync your Facebook Band Page”.

• Unlike with MySpace and Twitter, Facebook opens up in a new window.

• Log-in to Facebook here, to be taken onto the step-by-step process.

• If you’re already logged in to Facebook it will look like this:

• Synchronising your Band HUB Facebook requires a few more steps that Twitter and MySpace. To get you through we’ve developed a simple and thorough step-by-step process. In the interests of keeping this tutorial short, I won’t re-paste each step here, but the instructions look like this:

• At the end of these steps, you will be re-directed to your BandCentral Band HUB. And you will see this:

• You should now have a pretty ‘social network settings’ page that looks like this:

• Now you’re ready to get in touch with your fans from one centralised place!

• At the Dashboard you will see a box ready for multiple status updates. Enter in a pithy observation, a sentimental quote, your favourite song lyric or the details about your next gig, and marvel as they fly out into your major social network pages:

• Tip: You can check the box against which site you would like to publish to. Perhaps you will use Twitter ten times a day, but reserve MySpace and Facebook status updates for once-a-week band news.

• You will be notified when the updates have gone through successfully.

• “Gosh! It really works!”

Twitter:

MySpace:

And Facebook:

Coming up next…

…we take you through creating a gig with the BandCentral Gig Manager and synchronising it with your Facebook and MySpace Gig Event listings. Using the Gig Manager to send your gigs across to your online social network presence, means that you only have to input the data once. There’s no duplication of task, which means no wrong dates or missing ‘0’s when transferring the information.

But, we did say many-faceted, so that’s another story for another post.

We sign out with a nod to some excellent words of advice from the Interweb, post-scripted below!

Kind regards, good friends.

B.C. Man Friday.

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THOUGHTS, QUOTES AND FURTHER READING on harnessing the power of Social Networks for bands:

In our day-to-day at the BandCentral HQ we continually come across interesting news articles and expert-opinion pieces about the new music industry and what it takes to be in a band in 2009. There has been plenty of talk recently about how bands can harness the power of social networks and use them to their advantage. In the interest of spreading the knowledge and continuing the conversation, here are some of the most interesting bits…

The Indie Digest argues that in this age the power balance in the band-fan relationship has shifted firmly in favour of the fan, and, as such, band members should offer up a lot more of themselves as greater incentive for a fan’s attention.

Meanwhile, Heather McDonald has some good advice about when bands should draw a line at over-sharing:

“Let your fans in on the behind the scenes news that concerns your music. Tell them about being in the studio. Let them know you’re booking some dates. Keep them informed about how the new merch design process is coming. Tell them your plane to your next show has been delayed. Those are all things that are relevant to the relationship you’re trying to foster with your fans, and it’s exciting for them to be in on these things in real time in a way they haven’t been able to before. As for the live streaming of your life and such, leave a little something to the imagination. This is one instance where that old entertainment adage rings true: always leave them wanting more.”

Some pearls of wisdom courtesy of Michael Masnick at TechDirt’s ongoing analysis of Trent Reznor’s engagement with fans:

“…due to the way the industry is these days, the musician does need to be somewhat involved. You cannot connect with fans if you’re in seclusion. If you don’t want to make the effort to connect with fans, then that’s fine: you won’t have that many fans. It’s a choice you make.

“That said, there are tremendous opportunities allowed by new technologies, new communities and new methods of communicating today…. Those who look at the past and complain about what’s been lost need to turn around and look at the vast open fields of opportunity in front of them.”

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An extract from Trent Reznor’s widely re-posted blogging advice for new bands:

“Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.”

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And finally, an informative and pretty graphic depicting fan loyalty. Posted as part of The Indie Digest’s Long Tail of Fans series: