Why Artists Should Really Care About Their Social Media Presences

September 18, 2010

By Hani Arif

Social media, if used correctly provides the perfect platform for promotion.

After going about on the web for years and keeping it as a primary source of news for Pakistani music it’s easy to say that there is a huge gap between the connection that should be between fans and Pakistani artists. The lack of proper web content, i.e interviews, professional recordings of concert performances lack totally. It is easy to find content for artists like Atif Aslam and come to think of it, only Atif Aslam.

Online video posting should be of a good quality as to establish the artist properly and popularize them in a manner they deserve. An example of mass publicizing is that when a certain Kumar Sanu is more popular than say an artist like Usman Shani and Kumar can’t even sing like Usman. There are two sides that need to be looked at, one being the artists and the other being the listening public.

The next Act:

Pact of Artists:

Pakistani artists, need to come up with official representations for themselves. Pages on Facebook, handles on twitter, YouTube channels, and yes all of them need to be official, official, official. Coke Studio was successful in the model and it’s JUGNI is the only Pakistani Music video on YouTube which has surpassed 1.4 million views and this is just because it is being viewed through an official channel. Its all a shame really because of all the great music that is being produced in Pakistan is going unnoticed by the masses. So when songs like Ab Khud Kuch Karna, Yeh Hum Naheen and Humain Kya Hua are made they fail to fulfill the purpose they are meant for as many people don’t get to hear them and is in fact a loss on part of the effort that artists put in producing songs like these. Proper online presence will bring in the results. This is also the very reason why someone of the highest caliber like Mekaal Hasan Band doesn’t have any views that competitively compares with any of the international artists. Updates by Pakistani artists on matters other than the flood (and that too now), have been non existent. Months and months of no updates, doesn’t keep many people holding on to the idea of connecting with the artists. Get official content rights for web content and get all the random user video uploads removed which shall lead to more views. If such proper channelizing is done, I don’t see any reason on why a new video wouldn’t get thousands of views in just one day. Atif’s management has done the job just right by moving all the fans from unofficial fan page to one page and the result? In a single month the page grew from 250k to 386k fans.

Coming back to the Usman Sanu comparison:

Now why would a certain Asim or Rabia (any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental and I am talking about 95% of all web accessing Pakistanis-oh wait, no longer is this fictional, is it?) like to watch a video with 1500 videos over a video which has 55,000 views? It’s all about channelizing properly.

Public Pact:

I know that you love Pakistani Music and you want to promote it in every possible way by putting it up on your channels but you know what kind of an affect that is having? It’s shifting away viewership from the official channel and hence leading to lesser artist recognition. What I was surprised to see was that for Coke Studio uploads some videos had more than 20K+ views. So you are urged that instead of putting it up on your channels direct the traffic to the proper source. If you are Pakistani you need to put Pakistani artists up first, and keep all other artists secondary. Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t listen to foreign artists, yes, listen to them but keep them for yourselves. Posting of a single video of naming a certain song by a person who have lots of online contacts can create mountains of differences, our artists are in need of such recognition. When our artists are globally recognized then you may go back to posting of videos belonging to music industries of other countries. Remember these are the only people that bring any positivity to the image on Pakistanis on a daily basis and it is our individual duty to help Pakistan get recognized the right way.

Shall you comprehend what was just said and make us all happy?

Hani Arif writes full time at HaniArif.com