BTTV BLOG

Info overload! We know it all too well. If you have a little time you can put together a pretty potent Twitter list the lets you keep tabs on the music industry or any area of interest. RWW breaks down the steps for building out a solid list that helps separate the feedback from the sweet tones of distilled information.

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There is simply nothing like Twitter for being a fly on the wall. People sit at work and tweet about what they’re doing. They tweet at night, they tweet in the morning and they tweet a lot on the weekends – find a vein of good tweets from a group of people you want to learn from, watch it over time and the world is your oyster.

That’s my theory, anyway. One of the things I’m interested in tracking are the streaming music services. So tonight I built a Twitter list of people who work at Rdio, Pandora, Mog and Spotify. (Then I remembered Grooveshark!) Give it a click and you can follow it too. I’ll show you how I made it below – and of course this process could be applied to any field.

Go to RWW for more info on how to hook this up.

If this actually works like it’s supposed to, it’s pretty brilliant. Even though finding a band on Twitter isn’t all that hard, this definitely makes it easier. Especially if you’re the type of person that wants to keep up with hundreds of bands.

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No matter how dedicated of a fan you are, it takes time to add all of your favorite bands to Twitter. Track them down. Determine if they’re worth following. And add them. TweetLouder is a new service that seeks to simplify this task.

It’s about being creative people and 50 Cent is on his game, though the SEC may say otherwise.  50 decided to drop a little knowledge about H&H Imports causing it’s stock price to rise. That’s a good plan if your a major investor in the company…like he is.

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Here’s a new way to make money on Twitter if you’re a big star – and it has nothing to do with selling music, merchandise or tickets. Earlier this week, 50 Cent started tweeting about a company called H&H Imports, tipping its shares as a canny buy for investors. “You can double your money right now. Just get what you can afford,” ran one tweet from the rapper. “They are no joke get in now.” A decent chunk of his 3.8 million Twitter fans did just that, sending the company’s share price soaring. Co-incidentally, Fiddy owns 30 million shares in H&H Imports, meaning that he made a paper gain of $8.7 million from the upswing. Digital Music News wonders if any SEC rules have been broken, but concludes that even if not, encouraging fans to invest in a money-losing company purely to boost your own fortune is somewhat ’stinky’.

via Music Ally

In celebration of Facebook raising another ungodly sum of money ($450 million) we thought we’d show you who is using it and Twitter. Thanks to Digital Surgeons for the snazzy infographic. Why does it matter to you. I guess it depends on what kind of music you play and where your fans are spending their time.

I’m sure the Dr. Pepper ads help too but here’s an interesting case study about how KISS built huge followings on Fbook and Twitter. Yes, I know it’s KISS and not a struggling band that blew up online but there are some good bits of info to read with your Rum Slush over the holiday.

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KISS Facebook Fans Pass 2 Million

Congratulations! That is great! Two million fans is a huge achievement and is no easy goal to meet. Then I decided it was time to discuss how to use Facebook and Twitter if you are a band, and sorry, KISS, you are the subject matter. This is not meant to put down the band in any way. I am having discussions weekly with various people about the benefit of Facebook Likes and Twitter followers. They ask what can they do to get more Likes and followers, and then what can they do with them once they have them. I only pick KISS because it is subject I know very well and a Facebook page I visit daily.

KISS has an official website, www.kissonline.com, that I built and launched in 1998. I moved on from managing the site in 2005. KISS is very active on Facebook, www.facebook.com/kiss, and Twitter,www.twitter.com/kissofficial. When I was managing Kissonline, I tried to drive as much traffic as I could to the site, and create an experience that would keep the fan on the site as long as possible. I was also looking at new web technologies to interact with the fans and get them back to Kissonline. One such example was a website called Upoc.com.

Read more @ Music Think Tank

Should you tweet it up? Billboard seems to think so….

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Eight percent of the U.S. online population uses Twitter today, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

While only 2% say they use it on a ?typical day,? the demographics that make up Twitter users are interesting. Young adults aged 18-29 are ?significantly more likely? to use Twitter, while African-American and Latino users are more than twice as likely to use it than whites, and urban residents are twice as more likely to use Twitter than rural residents. Sounds like a good cross section of the music industry.

Read more @ Billboard

So entrepreneurs and bands have a bit in common. That goes with out saying. Each need to be as scrappy as possible about hustling what they do/create and growing their respective fan bases/customer bases. That said, today’s ditty comes from such a business minded man who breaks out how he grew from 0 to 100k+ followers in 2 years. While it’s not all killer, there are some good pointers for anyone looking to find new ears for what they do.

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Two years ago I started my website The Rise To The Top in October 2008. The goal was to create a non-boring resource for entrepreneurs centered around a combination of video interviews (RISE…the web show) with successful entrepreneurs, big thinkers and “doers” (as opposed to people that just talk about doing) as well as blog posts, videos and other goodies.

Of course, like many of us, I really had no idea what I was doing. I constantly tried different things, had some lonely days (weeks, months) in the beginning, but eventually things started to click. I want to share this story with you to show you that this can be done by any hustling entrepreneur looking to grow a community and following. I’m no more special than you (even though my mom told me so) and the principles below I bet you can apply to your business and online strategy.

Here’s the raw facts, then I’ll explain exactly how I did it.

A Snapshot Of The Beginning In Fall 2008:

* Total viewership: My dad, mom and grandma. Maybe a few random friends.

* About 500 Facebook friends, mostly folks from high school, college and random friends.

* Every post I would put up would have an average of one comment.

* Zero media appearances in traditional media. None. Zippo. Or really any connections for media.

* I’d never really hosted an offline event before.

* I invested my own money to get everything going…basically funded by my Bar Mitzvah plus some random savings.

* I didn’t know any influential entrepreneurs, authors or really anyone that interesting in the business world.

* I had just started with Twitter and had 4 followers.

* No connections with big bloggers or online influencers.

* My marketing “budget” was a whopping $0.

Read more @ SmartBear

Are you all up on the Ping? I know I’m not. I’m not sure who else is either, but maybe this Twitter integration will grease the wheels for old Jobby Jobs. I guess since Fbook blocked him a couple weeks ago he’s got to move on to the #2 network.

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Ping users who connect their Twitter accounts will now automatically share their Ping posts, likes and reviews on Twitter. The features are turned on by default, but Ping users can also disable the auto-tweets from within the settings portion of the iTunes social network.

“Last month, we launched a new version of Twitter that gives users the ability to see embedded photos and videos directly through the details pane. Adding the ability to listen to music previews makes that experience even richer,” says Carolyn Penner of Twitter’s communication team.

via Mashable