At music conferences, my favorite panels are the ones that feature artists who are out there doing it, rather than vendors trying to sell the newest widgets for sharing your music on Facebook or creating the ultimate EPK. Don’t get me wrong, we need that technology and I love those companies. But when it comes to learning how to get the job done while booking, recording, managing a merch store, touring… while still leaving time to cook dinner, go to the gym and, oh yeah, write songs… let’s hear it straight from the artists, please.

At this weekend’s Southwest Regional Folk Alliance Conference (SWRFA), we heard some sound advice from KC Clifford and David Broyles of Dr. Pants on connecting with, and more importantly, ENGAGING with fans via social media channels.

KC and David focused on basic resources and troubleshooting some of the issues brought up by those in attendance, and I volunteered to recap the session in a blog post. Yes, sometimes I just can’t help myself. Plus, there were some interesting questions, some new resources I hadn’t heard about, and an enticing Facebook problem to solve from the Kerrville Folk Festival.

The Dilemma of the Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Presence

When the folks at Kerrville decided to create a Facebook presence, they started with a Profile rather than a Page. This is a common issue with organizations and artists because once you hit Facebook’s 5000-friend limit, you’ve got some decisions to make. Organizations like Kerrville (and artists developing a large fan base) are best served by a Facebook Page. Kerrville established a page, but has had difficulty getting people to switch over to fan the page. Right now, the Kerrville Festivals Facebook Profile has 4948 friends, while the Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Page only has 807 fans.

The obvious move is to try to encourage the Profile friend connections to transition over to the Page. Easier said than done. KC suggested increasing the posting frequency of the “please fan our new page” plea to the Profile page.

One more simple thing they could do would be to link to the new Page in the “work” section of the existing Profile. In the photo, you’ll see that Kerrville Festivals “works at” Kerrville Music Festivals. The problem is, if you click on that link, it takes you to a Facebook-generated Community Page that aggregates conversation about Kerrville Music Festivals. The steps to create a proper link from Profile to Page are here on my 5 Things You are Doing Wrong on Facebook post.

Here’s another idea for engaging fans to help with the transition.  How about creating an image badge to say “I”m a Fan of the REAL Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Page” and encourage fans to post it on their walls? When the photo is created within the Page, and people follow the link to comment, they’ll be right where they need to be to hit the LIKE button and become a fan. To make it more effective, the Page should be tagged in the caption of the photo as well. As for what you want, and make it obvious how to do it.

For now, I’ll do my part:

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE REAL KERRVILLE FOLK FESTIVAL FAN PAGE

Another option for Kerrville might be to take advantage of Facebook’s new(ish) option to change a Profile to a Page. Facebook offers information and instructions on the conversion here. This is irreversible, so it’s not to be taken lightly. In the case of Kerrville, though, it may be the best option. It will be easier to move the 800+ fans of the existing page to the “new page” than trying to get nearly 5,000 “friends” to take action.

Blogging

KC and David hit the points I always bring up about blogging. I’m reminded about a friend’s comment a few years ago: “does the world really need one more guitar player blogging about life on the road?” Maybe not, but what if that artist has a specific interest that can develop into a connection point with fans? In my musical life, Greg and I blog about ways people are actively changing the world by looking at each other with love rather than fear. This is a theme for us, so our Love Can Change The World blog ties in with our new CD by the same name.

KC shared that after a period of completely unplugging from engaging online, she was ready to blog again and chose to video blog her discovery of cooking and crafting with her fans. Cosy Sheridan, one of the artists I regularly work with, has started a blog called Persephone and the Pomegranate: The Musings of a Modern Day Persephone as the platform to begin her book of the same name. After writing blog posts for some amount of time, the book will be ready to be refined and taken to the next step.

Resources Mentioned

It never hurts to hash over the resources available for making social media and online marketing easier. Here’s a list of resources discussed at SWRFA:

Tweet Deck and HootSuite - aggregate your social media channels (Twitter feeds, Facebook page) in one place to make it easier to listen and effectively engage.

Nimbit and BandCamp- create your own merch store on your Web site and Facebook page. Nimbit is widget-based, which means you update it once at the source and all the sites where you’ve placed the widget will be updated. The main difference with Nimbit is that your fans stay on YOUR site. Clicking on the download or purchase links in a Bandcamp widget will take you to your separate BandCamp page.

ArtistData - update your calendar once and sync with your Web site, etc. ArtistData was bought by SonicBids a year or so ago. It’s a terrific free resource, but no one is sure how long it will stay that way.

CrowdBooster and Visibli - understand what’s working and what’s not. Re-tweets are a good way to judge the reach and effectiveness of your engagement on Twitter. Each of these resources offers a free version with basic analytics. The paid versions provide more in-depth information about who is engaging with your tweets.

Here’s an analysis of Austin-based Jean Synodinos‘ tweets for the past 14 days using Visibli. Jean mounted a social media campaign during September to offer a free download of her new album, “Girls, Good and Otherwise.”

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Like many of these analytics products, you can get information on anyone’s Twitter account or shared link. I chose Jean’s because I personally re-tweeted her link yesterday and I was curious about how many others did as well.

I think that covers everything. Whew. Back to SWRFA now. If you haven’t been and you’re interested in the folk and acoustic music community in the Southwest, put it on your calendar for 2012. Its a terrific conference of a manageable size, so you can come away really feeling like you’ve met and connected with a lot of people!