One of the biggest questions I had in learning social media was “How do I encourage conversation?” I can post about about products all day long but unless there’s a general interest in it, nobody is going to comment or tweet back and start a conversation. So I began to experiment with my own music pages, trying out new ideas to generate some sort of conversation to see what works.
My first attempt was asking my fans what sort of songs they would like me to write as I work on my new album. Unfortunately, no one responded. I’d like to think that they like what I’m doing already, but I knew it had nothing to do with that. There was no real reason for them to post. I needed to create some sort of incentive for people to get in on the conversation. Luckily I had a show coming up with a new band that at the time was struggling to come up with a cool name. We were opening up for a popular band that was coming in from LA and it was a great opportunity for me to get my fans involved. So I asked my friends, family, and fans on Facebook for band name suggestions and offered two free tickets to the show to the individual who gave the name we would choose. Within the first half hour, there were over 100 responses. Everyone wanted to name the band. It wasn’t even about the tickets (they were only $15 at the door) but once there was an incentive, the conversation exploded. People just wanted to be creative and win. Ironically enough the winner lived in England and he didn’t even care about the tickets.
What I learned from this experiment was that people want to leave there mark, but you need to bait them to some degree. Offer a discount, a prize, anything that catches the interest of your audience and give them that reason to discuss you and your product.
