Social Marketing for Celebrities: Five Lessons from Neil Young

He isn’t on Twitter, he has no official Facebook fan page, and his website is a Flash disaster stuck in the ‘90s.  So what can Neil Young teach celebrities today about social marketing?  Canada’s legendary mutton-chopped musician was leveraging 5 key principles of social marketing decades before the Internet came to be.

Generate lots of content

“I recorded everything and kept everything. We were not about saving tape. Our whole message was just be rolling all the time.” - Neil Young quoted in the L.A. Times Music Blog

Young’s massive collection of recording studio outtakes and radio interviews since 1963 makes him an early lifestreaming pioneer.  Today’s celebs and TV shows would be wise to follow his lead and provide us with their own outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.  Look to the Rachael Ray Show website for an example of backstage exclusives and celebrity soundoffs on the site, and behind-the-scenes pics from their Twitter account.

Be great

After the Gold Rush went viral in 1970 because it was a great album.  Danyl Johnson’s X Factor audition has over 5 million views on YouTube because it’s an impressive performance.  Most “viral videos” share one thing in common:  they’re entertaining enough to make us want to watch it again and share it with others.  All the web marketing tricks in the world won’t compensate for simply average material.

Be shareable

Ever sit around a campfire where somebody isn’t strumming a Neil Young song?  Young believed early on that music should be shared and he wrote his songs with that intention in mind.  Learn a few chords and you can play recognizable versions of many of his best songs.

Want people to spread your material to their friends or share links to your sites and profiles?  Make it easy for them.  Provide short clips and posts in addition to your longer material.  Roger Federer has an 8-second video clip on his Facebook Page that received 95,856 likes and 29,259 comments.  Simple, easy to consume, and easy to share.  Look to the newly launched ArtOfTalk.tv for a great example of community sharing and commenting around bite-sized content.

Compliment others publicly

“Bob Dylan, I'll never be Bob Dylan. He's the master. If I'd like to be anyone, it's him.” - Neil Young in an interview with Time magazine

Compliments are a powerful force, and not just for their karmic potential.  Recognizing your peers and competitors enhances your own image.  Compliments spread and make headlines. When John Mayer praised Demi Lovato's musical abilities on Twitter, everybody won: Mayer for supporting another artist, Lovato for the publicity, and the tabloids for being able to report on a positive little celebrity exchange.

Get out there

“I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.” - Neil Young, quote from tv.com

Gary Vaynerchuk’s initial Wine Library TV webisodes were clunky but he found his groove somewhere between #1 and his latest, #737 .  After a somewhat shaky start trying to integrate Facebook and Twitter into their show, MTV’s It’s On with Alexa Chung quickly gained speed and is now actively including their 74,000 Facebook fans and 384,000 Twitter followers.  Getting solid advice and creating a smart plan are important but once that’s in place it’s up to you to summon up the courage and get out there.

Neil Young is a marketing-savvy pioneer who continues to build his fan base thanks in part to his embrace of social marketing.  Today’s social web and tools simply make it easier and faster than it was when the Godfather of Grunge started his career back in the ‘60s.

 

Follow Andrew Cherwenka on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cherwenka

Comments

[tweck]

Flash disaster stuck in the 90's??? That's the most bogus thing I've heard. Obviously you aren't a web designer.

Flash has been in heavy use way into the 2000's, and though it is being replaced by these newfangled Javascript Interfaces and other MooToolsy things and web 2.0 technologies, and is fading, it's still widely in use, particularly on musicians' websites.

In order to qualify as a disaster, it should not work, or be slow to load, or be a giant bulky mess. Contrarily, Neil Young's website is very beautiful, and it works, and load times are acceptably reasonable.

The only issue it has is the mystery meat navigation, but even that is part of the FUN with Neil Young's website. You get to mouse over all the car parts to find all the different pages on the website.

So to call it A) a disaster, is an absolute falsehood (because it works and looks fine!) and B) stuck in the 90's, is simply not true AT ALL, as Flash is STILL in heavy use today, and has remained a viable tool for graphical web sites. It may be getting old, but its not obsolete, and remains viable to this day.

Yes, I am getting picky about one sentence of this otherwise good article. So sue me.

[studiowide]

Hi, I read your post with interest, thanks. I wanted to clarify your meaning of Social Marketing?

You discuss Social Marketing in the context of marketing oneself through social media sites. I understand this to be just marketing though digital mediums, ie, the social networks.

My understanding of social marketing is that it's primarily concerned with the application of marketing knowledge, concepts and techniques to enhance "societal" as well as "economical" ends. It's also concerned with analysis of the social consequences of marketing policies, decisions and activities.

Also, by nature, Social Marketing predominantly exists in the not for profit sector, ie, charities, public sectors, road safety. However it can use the digital mediums like social networks to reach it's audiences

I personally like this punchy definition about social marketing: “If marketing can get us to buy a Ferrari, then social marketing can encourage us to drive it safely.”

Further info here: http://www.studiowide.co.uk

Cheers, Carl.

[Charlie Oliver]

Great post! I agree 100% that if we want to learn how to be leverage social media, we need look no further than at the very people who mastered this medium long before the internet was created. I especially love "get out there!" Don't hold back (even if you're not sure exactly how you're going to execute your content - just get it out there or you'll sit on it forever while the boat passes you by).

We did a great interview with Gary Vaynerchuk for Art of Talk where he says the same thing (it's his mantra).

Thank you for mention ArtofTalk.tv. We strive to incorporate all of the elements you have mentioned in this article because it truly is the key to social media success!

Charlie Oliver
Dictator-of-Talk
Artoftalk.tv