Kellie+Rowe's+Skyline+Social+Media+Project

Kellie Rowe I will be marketing Skyline, a student-based band. msuskyline@gmail.com Lead Singer – Theatre sophomore Christopher Pedraza [] [|https://twitter.com/#!/msuskyline] http://www.flickr.com/photos/58502802@N04/ http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=tab_pro Skyline has a Twitter account, but currently has only 9 followers. The Facebook page has 166 likes.


 * Hi Kellie! You're doing some wonderful strategizing here and analyzing the situation each week. Since they don't have performances, perhaps you could have them anyway. You don't need a brick-n-mortar venue to have them, you can broadcast them out to the public with a webcam and an internet connection, though a good video camera is better, using Livestream or Ustream. You can promote that. Google Hangout before? Also, your photos could be more unique. Showing people playing instruments is fine, but we get no sense of their personalities. Super candid closeups of them looking awesome, smiling, kidding around, breaking the law (kidding ;) might be more fun.**

=__**Meeting #1**__= Today I sat down with lead singer Christopher and told him about my plans for the future of his band. Due to Skyline’s poor Twitter following, there isn’t much of a fan-base connection. An example of a band that is EXCELLENT at personal relationships with their fans—despite how famous they already are—is the Scene Aesthetic. It would be nice to talk with their social media/communications director and see how they’re doing it.

So, step one is building up his Twitter following. I asked Christopher what some of the band’s musical influences are, and added them to his Twitter following.

My plan to increase the following is to connect with other local bands with similar music types. There are so many that play at the Loft, (SCENE) Metrospace, Mac’s Bar and many other venues. I will be checking those websites’ schedules to see who is coming, and if their fan-base would like Skyline.

I will also be using Skyline’s current Facebook following to move them over to a Twitter following as well – double the exposure. I saw some of the recent Tweets, and many of them refer to girl’s chests… we might be a bit more careful in the future not to irritate the female fan-base. After all, these three good looking guys in Skyline can get very famous off of being simply good looking, so we cannot offend our female constituents.

We also took a look at the Facebook page. I liked the header photo of the three of them in a recording studio – it looks professional and silly, which is a personable image to have. The posts are not consistent but interesting – they alert to upcoming releases and singles.

But we’re going to start asking our audience more questions. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, what are you going to do?” Showing interest in our audience’s lives is important, and asking for input and giving them a chance to respond is important.

As for the website, Christopher said they had one but apparently they just closed a large Myspace account that they considered their website. So, we will be making our own. Seeing as I just bought kellierowe.com a month ago and had awesome success, should be no problem.

The band has been featured in The State News before for their first debut. ([]) Seeing as I’m a reporter there, I can pass off information about upcoming shows to our Arts and Entertainment reporter, Britteny Dee, for some extra attention to Skyline.

=__**Meeting #2**__= Today, I gave Skyline’s Twitter a makeover. The background was the default light blue, so I changed it to a black and white picture of the band being goofy. I changed the links the red to add interest, and changed their picture to another fun picture.

They had about 9 followers and followed about 15 people. I started by adding all their musical influences, such as Bowling for Soup, Blink 182 and Sum 41, to see interact with the bands as much as possible. By interacting with major bands, some of their fans might see Skyline, decide to check them out, and fall in love.

I know two major social media users at MSU with thousands of followers, and have been interacting with them via Twitter as well, just to make sure Skyline is seen.

I keep making sure to emphasize on these tweets that Skyline is an MSU band, and usually students are supportive of their own kind. I also started following and tweeting at local venues, such as the Loft in Lansing and The Crofoot.

Many have tweeted back already, and several other punkrock bands have added Skyline.

Yesterday’s follower count: 9 Today’s follower count: 16

=__**PHOTOS**__=

I took these photos during Skyline's band practice. Each photo shows the band's look and feel, as what they wear to practice in shows who they are as individuals. In this picture, the guitarist jumping shows they have a fun, edgy side as well. Christopher on drums looks extremely into the music and passionate about what he's doing. The band loved the pictures and will be putting them up on their Facebook to attract more attention shortly.







(Karl, you said grabbing the HTML code from Flickr will help us embed pictures - Why aren't mine showing up?)

=__**3-28-12 Update**__= For some reason, Twitter numbers dropped a little bit. They’re not increasing the way I thought they would, so I’m researching more Twitter techniques. It’s hard to market a band too much when they don’t have any upcoming shows. I found out who to contact to get the band to perform at The Loft in Lansing, which might be a great networking opportunity!

At a show, I can also take more pictures for the website and Facebook, and even tweet some pics.

But on the bright side, Facebook numbers are up. I’m not sure where to go with their Facebook yet, but I’ve been looking at page traffic and trying to figure out our next moves.

The band practices Thursday at 6 p.m., I plan to meet with them beforehand.