And more again

Permit me to start this by saying that I’ve been a little leery about bringing to print some things concerning these guys that maybe could be working better for them. I’ve spoken with, or have written, to some of you with ideas and questions, but I haven’t really written in public about them for fear that they might be misunderstood or misinterpreted, and get someone angry in the C&J camp.

So please let me make this clear – these are my hopefully very objective thoughts about how we all might help improve, and better, and expand their popularity and salability. I’m not a pro at this, this is not personal (this is about tools, and maybe how to use them effectively), feel free to comment, and know that, come what may, I will be a fan regardless. Well, you know, as long as they continue to not stink. Anyway, it would be cool if we come up with something, and still cool to simply be thinking about it, but do realize that in the end, perhaps this is just meaningless conversation :).

Back to the brand awareness thing one more time. Again, my perspective.

I spent sometime this morning (as you know, I’m one of the millions of long term unemployed, and did the following after several hours of a daily job search) looking into the Chad & Jeremy brand presence on the web. I mentioned yesterday that they were involved with Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and Yahoo’s news groups, as well as an official web site and store.

These are all my findings, opinions, guesses, etc., so please if you note factual errors, keep them to yourselves. No, seriously, let me know if I’ve gone terribly awry factually. Some of this is easy, some takes some faith.

So, Twitter. I see that their (Firstly, I don’t know if they do it or have someone do it for them. I think what would make this work best for them is if they were actually involved, but I don’t know for certain if they are or not) first tweet was on 5/4/09. To today, there have been 22 of them, or a little more than 1 per week. They have 51 people following them, and they do not follow anyone.

Here’s where I go off into assumption land. I heard them first announce their Twitter involvement on 5/2 in LI. It is, in fact, at the beginning of one of the videos I’ve posted. So they have had 7 shows since that time, through yesterday. Let’s say, and I don’t know if this is true, that they have announced that they are on their web site, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter at each show, which will seat, on average between 200 and 400 people. That’s 7 shows times my own rough guess of 300 people per, to give us 2100 people getting the word about Twitter.

Agreeably, I’ve made a bunch of assumptions, but can we agree that a bunch of people now know about it? Yet a mere 51 people have made the effort to follow them. And why is that number only 51? Is it perhaps that their audience just isn’t into Twitter for whatever reason? Is it the lack of tweets? Is it tweet content? Obviously, I don’t know. And maybe it’s me, and maybe it’s their sense of humor, but also notice in the aforementioned video that they make the comment, after telling the audience that they were now on Twitter, that if you wanted to have a conversation with them, they were there, they were virtual:). So, why wouldn’t you follow them?

Well, I may be gullible, and I do know that 140 characters do not make for a good conversation, but I had thought that we might at least be seeing the first step into some real back and forth interaction, which in turn, I thought, might have lead to some word of mouth (at least) increase in interest, fan base, and also perhaps, innovation. And that has not yet taken place.

So, what is it with Twitter, is the cause there lost? Have they begrudgingly agreed to have their names on Twitter because it was thought as the right thing to do in “today’s world,” or is there a commitment to use it for stuff other than “We’re busy in the studio”? I will say that the release of the live cut from Mohegan Sun was a great idea, and hopefully all 51 people enjoyed the download. The skeptic in me says that they might have announced that release on all of their web things so more could have taken advantage of it, but never mind :). And if you’re just now hearing about it, grab it while you can at www.twitter.com\chadandjeremy , from 6/6/09.

And before you all get up in arms, you all should know that I continue to hope that they will continue to prosper, record, and have their popularity grow to be as big as they want it to be. So let’s build on those 51 followers. For one thing, you never know if there’ll be another live song down the road sometime.

In summary, they’ve got web presence. They use Twitter. Not many follow. How do we help with that?

Next time, MySpace, and how to nurture that inner 15 year old in all of us.