Why bands need to be more active on Plurk!
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
by Mark Carras
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So Plurk is a strange beast, but once you get hooked it is like a big bag of crack. I have only known of one person who gave it a real honest chance before giving up on it. That would be the hardest rockin’ programmer in the world…Mr DarkNemesis himself (RockMyMonkey.com & HeavyAsHell.com).Most people who give it a chance are hooked.
Now at first Plurk was looked at as a Twitter clone. I think once you have used both services enough, you will find they have many things that separate them. As far as bands and other music industry types are concerned I will keep it simple. Twitter is for getting a message out instantly to a ton of people at once. Plurk is for conversation. Imagine a band forum, but way more fluid and interactive. Plus a band forum keeps outsiders away. Plurk is part of a very large network, so if a band is conversing with all their fans through Plurk instead they will end up conversing with tons of potential new fans as well. It is about bringing in new people.
Now many people talk back and forth through Twitter, but there is a very large problem with doing that. it annoys the hell out of anyone who follows you that is not part of that specific conversation. Plurk totally separates new topics and threaded conversations. Now we host several official band forums at RockMyMonkey.com, but I honestly wish they would all leave us for something that would serve them better. Plurk would be so much better for a band if all the band members jumped in and got all their fans excited about it.
So Plurk should be a replacement for official band forums, but how else can it serve a band? Well, what if you only have one tech savy band member that wants to be social with the fans while on the road? There is a great mobile version of Plurk that works well on almost any mobile phone browser. Bored on the bus? Talk to the fans.
Now the important thing to remember for both Twitter and Plurk is to embed your profile into the sidebar of the official website, MySpace, and Facebook. This not only gets the message out to all your fans that you are on this exciting new social network, but it also kind of shows them what it’s all about.
So what about the smaller more unknown bands? Well interaction with fans is even more important for the unsigned and unknown. So it’s even more important you spread the widget mentioned above around. Not just to keep fans posted, but with Plurk casual conversation is more accepted. This helps you be more intimate with your fans while probably ending up with new fans at the same time (being part of a large network). I also notice that more traffic comes from links I post on Plurk than any other social network. Because of the more social aspect of Plurk, people are more likely to check out your stuff. So make sure and post links to news on your official site along with the casual conversation with your fans.
So Twitter is for getting a message out, but Plurk is for true interaction and conversation. Being more social with fans will help your band’s fanbase grow.
Most important of course is to follow me on Plurk.