In Indie Band Guru’s exhaustive search to find great new music as well as bands that ‘get it’ on how to expose their music to the masses we came across Waking Lions, a metal core band from the Huntington, West Virginia area. Well in reality, they found us which says a lot more for their hard work in getting themselves known. They developed a good mutual relationship with Indie Band Guru that led to vocalist/frontman Daniel writing an article for us on his band’s use of social networking, especially Twitter. Read and learn:
As an upcoming band, it’s so difficult to gain any attention or exposure. Yeah, you have your local shows, your local zines, and your local support, but where do you go to broaden your fan base beyond the local scene? Where do you go to gain more national exposure? MySpace had it’s day in the sun, and even Facebook has brought more exposure to the table for artists within the last year or so. One social networking site we believe that has reigned supreme in reaching out to the fans, other bands, and even record labels is Twitter.
Waking Lions
Twitter has really started to pick up speed in many industries, not just music. You can follow your favorite celebrities, your favorite football players, even your local news channels all with the click of a button. For us, using Twitter to keep our fans/followers up to date on what is going on in our world is a huge part of “personalization”. Each of Waking Lion’s band members have active accounts through Twitter so that our friends, and followers of Waking Lions can keep up to date in our everyday lives if they do so choose to.
Waking Lions has always striven to be personal with whomever we meet on the road or across the internet. We really strive to be the band that you can just come right up to after a show and talk to about anything going on in your life. There has been countless times in which we see our Twitter followers at our shows, and they might be too shy to come say hello, but from seeing them and talking to them on Twitter, we know who they are and we end up talking to them and thanking them for coming out. We have actually made personal long term friends with so many of our Twitter followers, it’s really astounding! Social Networking has evolved throughout the years, and we have found that using Twitter as a means of connecting with old and new fans alike pays off in gaining major exposure for our band not just on the East coast, but world wide.
One of the most important things about being in a band is networking. Network, network, network. It is one of the greater essentials in creating, maintaining, and sustaining a successful band. You have to really enjoy what you are doing as a band, you have to really enjoy who you are with day in and day out, but to go anywhere you have to enjoy networking and meeting all sorts of people. If someone has a question, or if you are bored and you find yourself just sitting and reading all of your friends tweets, send us a message and say hi! We assure you we WILL respond, and who knows you might even like talking to us!
Daniel
Waking Lions
Go join the movement immediately at:
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Hello, I positively enjoy reading your posts, thank you as a remedy for the expert post!
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It’s nice to know that Twitter and some musicians are making it big because of social networking sites. Keep it up guys 🙂