Intern Insights

For those of you wondering, I actually DO have an internship. It's with Nettwerk Music Group (home to the likes of fun. and personal favorites Dispatch) and it's primarily focused on artist management, though I do have a fair amount of interaction with publicity, licensing, and distribution as well. Pretty cool stuff and hopefully will help me to reach my goal of working somewhere in the music industry some day. Can't give enough thanks to my internship supervisor Mike Dunn. Mike, if you're out there somewhere reading this (because I know you are the least busy person in the world), thanks!

So, what do I do you ask? Well that's easy! I sit around all day and get everyone in the office coffee, chat at the watercooler, and every other office cliche you could imagine. NOT! I actually have a good amount of work that makes me feel very involved in the company and like I'm actually a part of the company. I work with Mike on a lot of different projects, and lately I've gotten very involved in digital media marketing.

The Internet can be a confusing world.

Digital media marketing, according to Wikipedia, is basically using internet connected devices and social media to promote and engage consumers. That's a decent description, but not completely what I'm doing. A project I'm working on right now - we're calling it the digital spectrum - basically takes insights from all the popular social networks, or all the networks particular artists are on and analyzes that data. For instance, I have one spreadsheet analyzing the time of day of all the posts. The data from that chart helps management to understand when people are responding the best to posts and what posts get the most engagement (i.e. likes shares, retweets etc.) The more engagement the better. Another spreadsheet analyzes what type of post gets the most engagement, and yet another analyzes which networks are the strongest engagers in comparison to the others. It's pretty interesting stuff and really lets you in on some interesting human psychology. It also tells you what's working and what's not working. If your posts aren't interesting as an artist, then who is going to want to follow and interact with you on social networks.

Bringing me to my last point - how does an artist and a label maintain their authentic voice on a social network, yet still use the network to promote the music and the "brand" so to speak? This is a tough question. Honestly, who wants to be bombarded on their personal social feed with "New album - Get it now" etc. etc.? Yet, there is a way to make your page engaging, exciting and fun. A really good example of this can be seen in marketing madman Seth Godin's blog. He talks about building trust and engagement with your audience, or your consumers - and this is a useful approach to social media as well.

Post things you think are funny, interesting or just plain awesome. Don't be afraid to share what goes on behind the scenes. Yes, you can promote a little bit because obviously people are interested in your "brand," but don't just promote it in the same old fashion as everyone else. Tell the people how excited you are for them to hear your new single. Let them know that you want their opinion. Tell them you can't wait to play in their city. There's a million ways to do it, so go out and do it!