Online Friends Are Not Whores

IIf you invite someone onto your page and just leave the automated message “Xyz wants to be your friend” then you’re treating your prospective new friend like a whore.

After all you wouldn’t go up to someone in a singles bar and just say “I want to be your friend.” You’d chat them up first, find out something about them, pay a genuine compliment and so on.

So why don’t people do the same when looking for online friends on the social networking sites?

Image credit: Scott Crighton on Flickr

And of course A & R peeps aren’t fooled. Nor is anyone else for that matter. On the other hand if you have many friends and the number of well thought out comments they post is high in percentage terms then people might prick up their ears.

So make your online friends special by doing the following:

1. When inviting them show that you’ve visited their page and say something nice (but be genuine) about their site such as the design or you like their songs or comment on something in their bio etc. Anything to show that you’ve bothered to look at their page properly.
2. If possible address them by name in your message.
3. When they accept you as a friend post a comment on their page thanking them but don’t leave it as a bare “thanks for the add.” Make the thank you different if possible and also say something more about their page/music etc.
4. Aim to post a comment once a month, open a spreadsheet to keep track if necessary. Yes it takes time to do that but it will show that you are a person who cares about your friends.

Remember an online friend is a fan you’ve not yet met! :-)

Frank is passionate about the music scene at the unsigned level. He feels that unsigned musicians need to realise that more and more the onus is on them to do effective marketing and managing all aspects of their business. He regularly contributes to the Free From Gravity blog as the blogs there are hard hitting thus forcing bands to keep doing reality checks on how effective they are both in sales and marketing.