RESEARCH | PLANNING | CREATION What is social media?
Social media is an internet-based form of communication. Social media platforms allow users to converse, share information, and create web content. There are many forms of social media, including blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more.
reference: University of South Florida - https://www.usf.edu/ucm/marketing/intro-social-media
For musical artists, social media helps to promote their music and content by engaging with their fans and building a solid fandom base that can support them. Moreover, they can also have interactions with fellow artists that may lead to collaborations or with influencers that can help them market their brand. Through the usage of various social media platforms, artists can reach a wider audience than ever before; they can reach potential fans by using social media to their advantage.
Reasons for an artist to use social media are:
1. Promoting themselves/Creating content: artists can use their page to promote their music and merch, and other content (for ex. tour shows, tv guesting). 2. They can create content that can be distributed on multiple platforms thus attracting new viewers. This content can range from music video snippets, pictures, ads, and funny videos that can demonstrate relatability or personality. 3. Content creation and distribution create the foundation for finding and keeping long-term fans. An artist must be aware that each platform demands different types of content. For example, by using YouTube or Facebook, artists can create longer videos, and by using Instagram or TikTok can create shorter videos. With this, the content and promotion are dependent on the platform, which can be argued to be the market; Facebook/Twitter has more old and professional uses whereas Tik Tok is both but it's more lenient in accepting funny and "messy" skits. This also allows the artist to take a different approach with the content they post; for example, since Instagram is more targeted at short-length videos and for younger audiences, the artist can post trending themes that Gen-Zs can relate to. 4. Building an audience; an artist uses social media to create a community of committed listeners and fans. The consistent demand for new albums, live shows, and merchandise is all promoted on social media pages. The artist uses their social media to find their audience, again dependent on the platform’s user base, and attracts those through content. Their followers/subscribers get on their pages to build a community that should sustain them which in return will allow them to have enough revenue or funds to continue creating music.
SOCIAL MEDIA KEY VOCABULARY
Viral - to have a post bring usually large engagement, a sign of this is a large number of shares, which shows a larger reach.
Trending - hashtag or topic that is popular on social media at a given time
Tag - A tag is a keyword added to a social media post to categorize the content, however, you can also use this to tag certain people.
Reach - reach refers to the total amount of people that have been exposed to a social media post or ad, but this doesn't mean the number of people who have seen the content as they might have scrolled past
Promote - a term that commonly refers to the use of payment to gain access to a wider audience
Hashtag - word or phrase that includes the '#' sign at the start. Hashtags are used to categorize content with others of the same hashtag.
Fan - someone who frequently engages in your content.
Caption - description that accompanies a photo on social media.
Bio - short for biography, the part of your profile that tells new people who you are.
Cover Photo - large picture at the top of your page, all cover photos are public, so anyone can see them. Not all social media platforms have this, for example, Instagram.
About section - contains basic information that helps the visitors quickly learn about your page
Engagement - This is the number of people who reacted to your post by sharing, liking, or commenting.
Page followers - The number of people who have clicked the 'follow' button on your page.
KEY CONVENTIONS
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POST CONTENT An artist’s social media page includes a variety of different posts but it is dependent on the artist and sometimes to their label. Some artists will post updates for the next tour, album release, synergy, or merchandise, whereas some may post pictures of themselves enjoying life, there may also be skits/memes posted. An artist may only focus on one type of content but some do both contents of personal lifestyle and updates on their music releases. For Adele's social media page, she recently post more of her tour updates. However, if you scroll down through her Instagram, she posts more of her public opinion on relevant social issues. For example, she posted about George Floyd and how she condemns police brutality in the US. Despite being a British national, she expresses her opinion as she's based in the US this she is a socially and politically aware artist. Additionally, she also posts some bits of her personal life like a picture of her with her partner. Adele illustrates an end of an audience theory (Shirky); as an artist she makes music making her a producer. However, inferring from some of her posts, we can see that she also consumes other artists' products which makes her an example of a prosumer.
LOGO
Modern artists don’t usually have a logo but this is depending on genre – for example, KPOP artists, usually within group one will have a logo whereas soloists don't usually have one unless they are extremely known both locally and internationally. If an artist has a logo; the convention is that it doesn’t take up much room during post content or profile pictures/headers. In KPOP culture, the groups usually have a collective social media page and they would post their content there; with also leaving which member posted (for example Twice). However, in some cases, each member of the KPOP group will have their own social media page, for example BlackPink, all four members have separate instagram accounts. The downside of this though, is their followings are not equal and it shows whom fans favor and like more than the other members. In Kpop, these fans are called "solo stans".
3. PHOTOS
Reiterating from what I wrote in the post content bit, photos of an artist's social media typically reflect the promotion of their products. However, they can also post about other content such as activism, personal life, and everyday life.
On the left is a screenshot of Selena Gomez's post from Instagram. In this post she captioned it with "where it all began", although the photo was to show a snippet of where she went for a trip, the photo itself and the caption are reminiscent of Gomez's famous Disney sitcom "Wizards of Waverly Places". This post arguably then acts as both a promotion and an everyday post.
As of March 2023, Gomez is the most followed female celebrity on Instagram.
4.STAR IMAGE
THEORY RECAP! ---- Richard Dyer - Star Theory: Suggests that a star’s meta-narrative impacts the consumption by the audience. He argued that the star image is manufactured and artificial and that individual stars have their own unique selling point (brand values) to grab and hold our attention. An example of this is Marilyn Monroe, she's naturally brunette but she's known for her blonde hair. This was controlled by film companies in order to create an icon and attract audiences to the films they were making and therefore make money for the company.
The main purpose of a social media page for artists is for them to promote themselves and their products. For an artist to successfully promote, they would need to market themselves in a way that its reflective of their branding and the persona they have created for the audience.
On the right is The Weeknd's Instagram page, here the color scheme of his posts is heavily associated with the colors of his albums which are blue, red, and black. Through the simple usage of colors, we unconsciously remember his songs and albums.
PLANNING
Our music video is conceptual and we have a lot of symbolism in the video, furthermore, we also have a color scheme followed throughout the music video (red/black/purple-blues). We want to have a similar aesthetic to the color scheme of the music video when it comes to posting marketing or promotional content on her social media page. To distinguish promotional content and everyday life updates, we plan that the latter will be completely unedited posts (ex. unfiltered selfies, goofy captions). This gives a sense of character and breaks the "artists are commodities" feel about our artist.
This planning is heavily inspired by my analysis and research of famous artists, for example, Adele has been recently focused on her tour promotion content, however, she still had older posts (before her tour promotions) about her holiday trips and personal opinion on heated social issues. For having an aesthetic to distinguish promotion and everyday life updates; this is taken from the social media strategy of the weekend wherein he posts aesthetically pleasing and matching content when promoting his shows, songs, and brand. However, this is contrasted whenever he posts about unfiltered and unedited pictures of him or his pets as an update.
Through setup, we hope to have a more authentic interaction with fans as they get to see a personality and character aside from planned and marketing posts of our artist. This approach can be linked to Baudrillard's Postmodernity Theory where the audience craves for authenticity in a modern society full of fragmented meanings.
On the left is a practice Instagram post for a verified cat pet page. This type of content has been increasingly popular and pets are now celebrities. Some of the famous cats are: Arlo (from Tiktok) - his owner is a Marine Biologist and his owner essentially curates videos as if Arlo the cat is the one talking about informative Marine animal videos. This is well-received by the audience because they enjoy the comedic voice-overs of the videos and the cuteness of the cat also appeals to them.
Menchie & Zyler (Youtube) - Their owner is a very famous Canadian nail art content creator (simplynailogical). They are often featured in the background of Cristine's videos. She often uses Snapchat and also has a lot of subscribers there but they also have individual cat pages on Instagram.
The sites I have used for my mockup are: - https://www.wofox.com/ui-editing-tools/instagram-post-mockup
SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE
Above is a post to announce that our artist is releasing a new song, this builds up anticipation from her fans. The photo used is a real photo of when I went to a studio to record a song.
On the right is a still from her music video, the caption is a little reference to the song of the MV. We also announced that the music video is out to reinforce and urge fans to search for her on social media platforms to listen to and watch her new music video.
She also tagged AM Productions in this post, this is to show her gratitude with her label and to also promote the label itself.
On the left is a photo of the current Iran protests. As mentioned before, we brand our artist as someone who cares about societal issues. By posting her support on her social media page, she makes it clear to her audience about her beliefs. She can also be regarded by her fans as someone who stands against things that aren't right and against abuse of power. This can strengthen her relationship and engagement with fans. However, this can possibly affect her promotions in the said country. This post makes our artist authentic as it shows that she's willing to take risks to show her care for an issue, furthermore, this reinforces the idea that she relates to issues that women face in society.
On the side is a picture of our artist's producer and editor. This post shows that she's appreciative of the team she works with. This makes fans to have a thinking that our artist is a person who is true and grateful to others. This also doubles as a promotion for her editor and producer as curious people might look them up on the internet and discover their work.
Again, she tags AM Production to signify a good relationship with her label.
The posted content on the left is our artist enjoying a vacation. This gives the audience a glimpse of her travel and holiday and makes them immersed in her life.
This photo shows that like non-celebrities, she also enjoys a simple day out, away from work for a bit.
Here we see a photo of our artist attending a charity event. This shows that her concern for rampant societal or political issues isn't only for likes and write-ups.
She convinces her audience that she actually does real physical appearance and service to charities and issues she supports.
As mentioned on BLOG#7, we plan to use Tiktok for our promotion, here I made a mock up a snippet from our music video. As seen below there's a "Listen Now" button which is targeted at people who liked the sound.
Tiktok has been increasingly popular for the music industry to promote established and rising artists; here we take advantage of this to promote our content.
The post on the right shows that like normal people, our artist also listens to other artists. This post links to the idea of Shirky's "End of an Audience" wherein everyone produces and consumes media.
Through this post, we also see an engagement of other singers with our artist. This can widen our audience reach as fandoms of the posted artist can also support ours.