“Follow me on twitter” .. “Like us on Facebook” .. “Check out our MySpace”
These sayings would have made absolutely no sense 10 years ago in any languages. And yet today, there are close to 200 million twitter users, and over 200 countries have Facebook users according to Socialbakers.com.
Today’s promotional companies and talent agencies may take advantage of the ‘Fan Page’ feature on Facebook to attract new clients, keep people informed of their activities and involvements. It is also used for various contests, to increase traffic to their official website, and also to send out invitations to public & private events.
Artists and musicians make use of the Fan Page as well, to submit their work or to direct them to their YouTube page, and keeping in touch with the supportive fans.
Follow us/Like us
As it can be seen all around us; social media is such an important tool in marketing that more and more industries are starting to anticipate the use of such interactions online. It is very common to hear “Make sure you check out our Facebook page” or “Follow us on twitter” to persuade the audience to dig for more information.
It has helped original hip-hop community grow significantly over the past few years especially when international b-boying events became more popular and attracted new countries all around the world. Getting the word out through the social media channels became a key component in successful event marketing for many reasons. It lowered costs on invitations, provided a way to keep in contact with a large number of invited guests, gave them an opportunity to forecast the size of the attendants, and it allowed everyone within the culture to get connected instantly.
The following image shows the official Facebook invite page for an upcoming b-boy event, in comparison to a traditional flyer from the late 70’s:
Trading video cassettes of old-school footage has become uploading it publicly and sharing on YouTube. Handing out flyers and posters has turned into a simple click of mass invitations to your entire friend list on Facebook. Day-long trips across the country became weekend-long celebrations in a whole new continent.
As some would argue the shift in authenticity of this hip-hop culture, it is no doubt that social media had a huge role in closing the international gap in the b-boy community. In order to continue to grow this scene and inspire the rest of this rapidly-changing world, there’s no slowing down in usage of social media.
Sources:
SocialBakers: Facebook Statistics by country
(http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/)
Mashable: New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers (http://mashable.com/2009/03/04/new-facebook-pages/)