Monica O’Brien, marketing consultant and author of Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It, recently shared the young singer’s winning social media strategy on the Ypulse youth marketing blog.
Although Gomez was, at 17, already a TV star from her days on Barney and Friends and Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, she was not know for her singing. So she needed a strategy when she and her band,The Scene, launched their first album. They turned to a cost-effective campaign relying on social media to drum up interest and spread the word.
Fortunately, given her previous media exposure, her Facebook page had more than 3 million fans and she had 1 million followers on Twitter. Gomez and the band launched two major initiatives to get people buzzing about the album online. First, they held a contest through her Facebook page, urging users to upload photos or video of how they were helping to promote the album, handpicked 10 finalists and let the fans vote on the winners.
The second initiative was to offer a limited online preview of the album to fans who attended a listening party. Fans could listen to the full album on a website, but they had to gain admission first by posting a message to Facebook or Twitter encouraging their friends to listen also.
The result? In the first week, the album sold over 66,000 copies and went Gold in March 2010.
Check out the other lessons from this case study.
