It seems like you cant go
anywhere in today’s society without running into Beyonce, she’s on a variety of
different television commercials, she always on the radio and she’s all over
the internet! But no matter how you feel about Queen Bey and her artistic
talents, you have to respect her business talent and marketing savvy. Beyonce started her solo career with
the challenge of leaving the already successful trio Destiny’s Child. After 16 years, five successful albums and one
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Beyonce had to prove that she was
substantial without backup. With four successful albums Beyonce expresses that
she’s officially found her sound in her self-titled fifth album.
An article on retrieved from TheGuardian.com;
Luca Maione explains the importance of creating a consistent brand
experience and what businesses can learn from the global icon. The unprecedented surprise release of “Beyonce” turned traditional social media
as well as her fans, upside down selling 365,000 copies in the
United States on its first day according to the NYTimes.com.
Instead of promoting her album in the “traditional” way that has proved
positive for her last four albums, Beyonce and her team decided to hold off on
the slow single releases, television appearances and media interviews to
surprise the world and her fans by releasing the album and all corresponding
videos PLUS bonus videos all at once, according to INC.com.
A short 16-second video posted to Instagram announcing the album and visuals
with the caption “Surprise!”. An interview retrieved from NPR.com,
listed all of the other female pop vocalists releasing albums the same year “Beyonce” was released including Katy
Perry, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus who utilized traditional methods of marketing
by releasing the single and making appearances to promote the album.
According to Forbes.com,
Twitter reported 1.2 million tweets in twelve hours, before the media later
amplified the story of the surprise album. In my opinion Beyonce started
marketing herself as well as her surprise album years before the release. The
buzz that would “traditionally” be generated by the TV interviews and
appearances was replaced by months of self-promotion over social media that
included photos and videos of hot Bey topics such as #tbt’s of young Beyonce, a
peek into her family life as a wife and mother, past concerts and future
appearances. Even though Beyonce’s album made the end of 2013 unforgettable for
her fans, the beginning of the year was just as noteworthy, with her inaugural
performance and corresponding controversy and who could forget her Pepsi Super
Bowl performance that she began promoting via social media near the end of
2012, all kicking off her Ms. Carter World Tour.
Talk about great timing, just as one begins to
forget the last amazing thing she did, Beyonce swiftly comes back to one up
herself and that’s just great marketing. The key to Beyonce’s budding social
media presence is consistency. Beyonce and her marketing team have developed a
motif that is consistence across all of her social media platforms. From
Facebook, to Twitter and Instagram, Beyonce maintains her fan base by keeping
all posts concise and closely related.
For those interested in maintaining a consistent
and prominent presence on their check out a couple screen casts that I have
provided studying work of Beyonce's brilliant marketing team, and how to
accomplish similar results.
In the first screen cast I’ll narrate a tour
exploring Beyonce’s social media presence on Facebook and Twitter.
>>
In the next screen cast I’ll walk you through
setting up a Create
Hootsuite Account, which is an app directory that can be used to
stay consistent and current with your social media presence. With HootSuite
users have the ability to post one message across multiple platforms.
A. Set
up an account
a. HootSuite
is a paid app so this step will not be included in the screen cast for privacy
measures
B. Pick
which platforms you would like to utilize
a. Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Foursquare
b. Log
into your chosen platforms with your current login information
i. No
new sign up required for pre existing accounts
c. Once
the user has created a HootSuite account, they are now able to select which social
media accounts they would like to ad.
d. Once
the sites the accounts have been added the user can now begin posting to each
account all at once.
Beyonce’s social media presence is expanding with
her ever expanding fan base and the future for social media and the music
industry has forever changed. Now that Beyonce has somewhat branded the
surprise album sneak attack as her own anti-marketing tactic, it is only a
matter of time before another artist, director or producer tries their luck at
going the same route. However if they do not successful at creating
a consistent brand experience before hand, they may not be so lucky. TheGuardian.com
