It is widely discussed that celebrities from different fields like acting, sports, music, politics—are using social media sites to connect with fans and promote their brands. Some of them have actually used it so well that they have gained wide popularity in the online as well as offline media. To understand how celebrities are using social media to connect with fans and promote their brands, we are analysing the top 100 celebrities from the Forbes Top Celebrities list.

This is the first post in the series where we will review Celebrity engagement on the social media. To look for the post series across our staff blogs use the tags “Celebrity Engagement” or “Celebrity review” at http://2020social.com

Dave Matthews Band (DMB), is an American band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991. Founding members include singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, violinist Boyd Tinsley, and drummer Carter Beauford. Saxophonist LeRoi Moore was replaced by Grammy Award-winner Jeff Coffin after his demise.dmb

The band is a multi-Grammy Award winner, and was awarded the NAACP Chairman’s Award. Their newest album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King debuted at number one on Billboard 200, giving the band their fifth consecutive number one debut. DMB features at no 38 on the Forbes Top celebrity list.

We recently reviewed DMB engagement level and touch points on the social media landscape and here is what we think about the DBM engagement on social media.

What we Like?

DMB is engaging its fans at four social network sites and their own Band website. At the time of research, DMB had more than 600,000 fans on their Facebook fan page and 350,000 friends on their Myspace Page.

We value the fact that Dave Matthews Band’ Facebook and Myspace pages are rich in content where fans can check out their latest music and videos, talk about the band and the upcoming concerts. Their Facebook page has iLike application integrated so that their fans can rate their music and video. In addition to this they also have a store on Facebook where fans can buy merchandise and music.

DMB ran highly targeted niche advertising campaigns on Facebook. For example: Special campaign for 500,000 U.S. active users who list “Dave Matthews Bands” in their profiles, as well as users who list ‘similar artists’ as defined by Last.fm. DMB chooses to run different creative content to target users based in different locations e.g. users in San Francisco will receive highly relevant ads for concert tickets to an upcoming show. Similarly, there will ads with different creative content targeting a different location. Also, when users interact with the band’s Page (say, become a fan or write on the wall), a personalized ‘social’ story goes out to that user’s friends when they view the ad (Source: Facebook)

On Youtube, the band has a very well designed and content rich channel. They have more then 19000 subscribers and more then 960,000 channel views, which is commendable. The number of followers /Fans on these networking sites is quite commendable.

Band members; Dave Matthew and Stefan Lessard tweet and engage followers on Twitter. Between them they have around 850,161 followers. Dave Matthew is very high on fan engagement as 75% of their tweets are replies to fans and friends.

Source: tweetstats.com

Source: tweetstats.com

Overall what we liked about DMB social media presence –

  1. They are engaging their fans and followers and they are authentic (they manage their own profile)
  2. They provide fresh and location specific content
  3. They have successfully transitioned their fans from online music and video consumers to serious DMB music buyers.

Area of Improvement

Dave Matthew and Stefan Lessard have their own twitter profile with a large fan followings. However this needs to be replicated across all members of the band with individual twitter accounts in addition to a band twitter account.  Additionally, their online interactions are very sporadic which we are sure is not fun for their fans.

Given that DMB are so active on the other social media platforms; it is striking that they have not upgraded their website. The website needs a major facelift to converting it into a fan community from its present web 1.0 avatar. One of the most glaring things is that their website dose not have basic feature like blog where band members can publish their thoughts and interact with fans. Their “Warehouse” section offers to registered members allotment of tickets prior to public on sales, “live fan club only release” of songs each year, provides opportunities to meet and greet, ticket upgrades etc., for the reasonable annual fee of $35. However, the feature is not aptly positioned to convert regular site visitors to paid fans; “warehouse” member registration is completely left to user self discovery.

Summary:

DMB is an evolved band which has adopted social media technologies for engaging fans. Having said this, we think, DMB can perk up their presence by expanding to more social media platforms, using more exciting social apps and participating in more conversations regularly with fans.  DMB certainly have the right online elements in place and with few adaptations, we hope DMB will be able to create many more evangelists of their music.