Some Social Media Ideas From NAMM

While most musical instrument manufacturers that exhibited at the recent NAMM show in Anaheim where hip to social media and had their mailing lists, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, most didn't utilize their exposure to 10's of thousands of people at the show.

That being said, there's was one distributor that did an excellent job of utilizing social media and that was Loud Technologies, distributor for Ampeg, Crate, EAW and Mackie, among others. Here's what they did.

First of all, every tag identifying a product carried a QR code (like seen on the left), which linked to to more detailed online info if you had a QR scanner app in your phone. A QR code is essentially a real world web link that's designed somewhat like a barcode. Scan it with your phone and it will call up digital information from an analog source.

The other thing that Loud did was to take advantage of the power of Facebook by setting up 4 iPads. If you logged onto Mackie's (or Ampeg's) Facebook page and registered a "Like," you became eligible to win some Ampeg or Mackie products.

How can you use this if you're an artist?  You can make a sign with all of your Facebook, email and Twitter details to hang at your gigs and merch booth. You can make your own QR code by going to qrcode.Kaywa.com that takes them to your website.

Just having the social presence isn't enough sometimes. You have to let people know about it and make it easy for them to find too.

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