Recently, Rocks Off was rolling the List o'Craig like we do when an all caps entry screamed at us that for only $50 they would gain us thousands of Twitter followers and Facebook friends. $50? That's less than a the price of a good Lego set! However, is it a good deal?
Rocks Off firmly believes that social networking is the key to an independent artist's ability to remain independent. With enough followers actively sharing your work, it spreads far and wide at little or no cost. Look at our own Mary Sarah and Payton Rae. Granted, both of them did a lot more than just Tweet and update their status, but together they command an online audience larger than the population of Dallas.
Granted, having that many people following you doesn't mean they are necessarily going to buy CDs and T-shirts.
The posting led us to an errant thought. Suppose we were the devil, and we had an infinite number of imps spamming for bands in order to get followers. You don't have to trade your soul in, chances are if you're taking that route you already have. Would it be worth it? Apparently Houston bands don't think so.
Dremaceo Giles, Lotus Effect:
You're going to spam enough people to get me a million followers on Twitter? At first it does sound intriguing but in the end I'll have to pass, because a million followers on Twitter means nothing if they aren't personally invested in your music.
I think young bands have a tendency to think that bigger numbers mean people will take them more seriously no matter how they get them, and it might help you book a gig from a promoter's stand point, but 10,000 MySpace friends and only 10 people show up to your shows, it'll all even itself out pretty quickly.
I'd much rather [have] ten Twitter followers who found out about us naturally, dig what we do and tell their friends about us than 1,000 friends that will send our newsletter to their spam folder. So no thanks, Satan. Now if you want talk about getting me some extra girth, that's an entirely different conversation.