Making of our social media - part 8 (the rest of our social media)

The remaining posts from the social media that I used on twitter were all after the album, single and music video release. Although it may not seem that important to post after all the products have been released, it is still good to keep on promoting these products, and also think of some other stuff to try and raise more awareness for the band and their music campaign which is why we continued with the next few posts. 

The first of these was tweeted after the announcement that the music video had dropped. It is a photo of Georgie (the camera person on the shoot day) holding the camera, to try and show the audience that the video was shot in a professional way. 

The next tweet was the second bit of merchandise that we dropped. This drop wasn't nearly as big as the first drop, and it was different items, but we figured that it would be a great time to release some new merch just after the music video was released, as we ca try and get the audience dressing and looking like the band. I designed the merch for this as well. 

The tweet after that was another picture from the shoot day. Again, we were trying to raise even more awareness for the video, also by showing how advanced and professional some of the equipment we used to shoot the video was. 

The next post was perhaps one of the last personal and "goofy" tweets that I did on the bands twitter page. Dotting these kind of posts throughout the page was a really good way to remind the audience of the star image of the band, but it is also a great opportunity to try and develop a more relaxed a personal relationship with the audience. 

The next two posts were announcing that the band is about to go on tour for their new album. We thought that this would be the perfect time for the tour, since everything has been released, and so going on tour is the last bit of advertisement and awareness building for the band. We also started a hashtag for the tour, whilst still using the same hashtags that we used before. 

The next couple of posts that I did on the bands twitter was showing the dates and locations of where the band will be performing on their UK tour, and the second post is stating that the tickets have gone up and are live. Again, this tour is probably the final big way that we can promote our band on twitter (as all the other products have already been released). 

The next 3 posts, we decided to show on our social media that the band was having some success with the tour, and so we chose 3 locations from the tour, and said that they had been sold out (at 3 different times). This not only shows that the band is doing well (and perhaps gets more people wanting to listen to their stuff), but also makes the audience hurry up and buy tickets quickly, as we are giving off the sense that the tickets are selling fast. Again, we used the tour hashtags, album hashtags, and other hashtags that we have used in our previous tweets to show people who are following those specific hashtags. 

For the final post on our social media, I decided that we were going to drop our final bit of band merchandise. Again, this merchandise relates to the music video that we dropped earlier, but since we had to advertise the tour, and also since we wanted to end on more merch, we decided to post-pone the dropping of this stuff till the end. 

Overall, I think that these final posts were good and they rounded up the twitter page quite nicely (especially with the tour). One thing that I think we did quite well in these final few posts was with using the hashtags, because some of the previous posts, I had forgotten to use them, but in the later ones I used them more consistently. 

Making of our social media - part 7

The next few tweets that I did on the bands twitter page mostly consisted of retweets from similar artists that we have already researched into. The band retweeting other artists makes them look more established, shows the audience who their inspirations were and it also just gives them more stuff to post and tweet about, and so that is why we did it. We ended up retweeting Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus, Kelly Clarkson and Gwen Stephani. 

The next few tweets that we did were becoming more relevant to the band. The first one of these was a hint to the music video - a picture of the bears from the music video. This builds up the awareness for the video before it is even announced. 

The next tweet was a behind the scenes photo from the music video. We initially wanted some behind the scenes footage, but twitter never seemed to like any of the videos we tried to upload, and so we were forced to go with a photo. Nonetheless, it again builds up awareness for the video. 

The next tweet that I did was another tweet just reminding the audience that the music video is dropping very shortly, again trying to build awareness.

The next two tweets that I did were again quite silly tweets, trying to humanise the band and make them more relatable to the audience on social media. We took one of the cut up bears from the shoot, and said that Connie was the one that did it (in a funny way) to try and imply that the band are generally quite relaxed and jokey people, whilst simultaneously hinting at themes in the video that is dropping very soon after these couple of tweets. 

The next couple of posts that I did were again, going back to promoting and raising awareness for the music video. I also used the hashtag for the single dollhouse, as everyone who started to follow #dollhouse will see that the music video is dropping shortly. 

The next tweet that I did was the announcement that the music video had finally dropped. Again, this kinda of post isn't as important as the posts leading up to the release of the video in my opinion, but it still is one of the last times we get to promote the video on the social media, and so it is worth it. 

Overall, this lot of posts have been quite a mixture, but I think because Tegan and I planned it out on the social media timeline before hand, it went pretty well. It was quite an impulsive decision to retweet some of the other artists, but I think that it worked quite nicely in the social media, and gave the audience a break from just the stuff about the band. 

Making of our social media - part 6

This is the 6th update of the making of our social media. The next few posts that I did were all around the time of the single drop and of the album drop, and so there were a lot of posts specific to that to try and build up as much awareness for the album and for the single as possible. 

The first post from this update is the single release. Tegan designed the album artwork for the single, and we posted it on the instagram and on the twitter. The is very clever as it hints at some of the references to the music video that hasn't been released yet, but will be. 

The next post that we did was announcing that the album is going to be dropped the next day. This is a very important post, trying to build as much awareness for the album as possible before it drops. I decided again to go with no photograph so that the words were not distracted from and also we did not have an appropriate photo worthy of perhaps distracting from the caption. 

The next post was announcing the albums arrival. This was fairly similar to the single arrival post, but we had to use slightly different hashtags to try and develop a new following for the album specifically. We were going to launch this with the album cover, but that wasn't ready yet and so I went for a nice picture of the brand. 

The next few posts were promoting the brands first launch of their Merchandise. I designed the Merchandise, and decided to keep the logo plain and simple, with just "The Michelles" written in a spray paint. For the first launch, I decided we would go for clothing (since that is quite a broad decision that most people buy). 

The next post that I did was a thank you tweet to all the fans that listened to the album. This was something that I found Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne did on twitter and instagram, and so it was definitely something to include on our bands social media. In addition, it creates a more personal connection between the band and the audience. 

In conclusion, these tweets I think went quite well, and they were all posted very closely together (since it was quite a hectic time in the bands campaign), but I think they all went quite well. I think the next move is to start trying to show or reflect some of our influences so that we can try and add a bit of back story and share who the band like to listen to with their audience. 

Photoshoot for our social media / digipak

We decided to have a post shoot day photoshoot for the whole band in the photography studio at school to get some cool images primarily for our social media, but also for our digipak design and so Tegan, Georgie and I organised one and let the band know on the Whatsapp group chat. The reason that we are doing a photoshoot is to get some more unique and different photos. Also, it would be good to get some photos of the band in different settings wearing different clothing so it looks more like a real band and a real music campaign. Here are some of the photos that we managed to get. 

Making of our social media - part 5

Here are the next bunch of posts that I put on my twitter. These first posts are quite fundamental to the whole campaign and so for all of these next tweets I didn't use a photo, but I still needed to make sure that I included these particular tweets on the bands social media as they are fundamental to the whole music campaign. The later ones from this update are still very important, but for different reasons as they are more about creating a more personal relationship with the audience. 

The first tweet is reminding the audience that the single from our album drops the next day. This is crucial as it ensures that the audience knows and gets ready for the drop of the single. Also, considering the fact that the single is the song from the album that we shot a music video for, it is most definitely the most important song from the album. 

The second tweet that I sent out was announcing the drop of the single. This is not quite as important as the previous tweet in my opinion, as the single has been dropped already, but it still is just in case anyone who is following our bands twitter feed hasn't seen the previous 2 or 3 tweets, they now know that the new single is out. 

The tweet that I did was a more casual one but it is still very fundamental to our social media. It is a more goofy and relaxed post, but in this way it creates a more personal relationship with the audience, and gives them a sense of what the band are really like. 

The next post that I did was another post promoting the video for the single that we are about to announce the drop for on social media. This is again, just a reminder post, but it plays a very important role. 

The next post was quite a unique tweet. I thought that it was a good idea to introduce some musicality into the actual social media of the band, and so I tweeted something that mainly applies to Connie (the guitarist) but that also shows the audience that they enjoy the music that they have produced as well. 

I think that one thing that Tegan and I have done well at throughout this whole experience of updating the social medias is making sure that the semi-rebellious young teenage girl star image type culture that the band is all about is present throughout the social media. This is something that we have had to be careful with and we have had to make sure we don't get caught up in all the posts and tweets and forget about the star image. It is something I have found challenging to do on the tweets without photos, but I think that it is getting easier now that I am more used to it.