Today I will be doing a very different social media audit. As I turn to a heavy concentration of entertainment and sports in my business endeavors, today I’m performing an audit on a fella that I’ve listened to for decades and have had the distinct pleasure of successfully doing business with on several occasions.
I’m talking about a great American, Charlie Daniels. I’ve been a fan of Charlie Daniels and the CDB since I was in high school. I’ve watched the evolution of the man and I’ve seen how his music has been a staple of Southern Rock for decades.
In case you are new to my site, I regularly perform social media audits on brands, celebrities and sports teams to assess what they’re doing right and what I think they may be doing wrong…and how they can improve upon the success of their social media endeavors.
These audits are very similar in nature to the audits I would perform on a client’s social profiles. However if I have admin access on Facebook, I can dive a little deeper. But even in this format, the profile being audited can get a very good assessment as to the health of their social media marketing.
Charlie Daniels, my wife Robin, and I on Charlie’s bus after a great show circa 1999
What’s specifically interesting about reviewing the social media profiles of touring acts is their ability to truly capitalize and monetize their audience with compelling content and promotional activations. Creating, developing, managing and executing social media activations for entertainers and sports figures is what social media is truly all about.
Charlie Daniels Background: Charlie Daniels is a 77 year old, multi-platinum selling recording artist who still performs over 100 shows per year to audiences as large as 100,000 people. He is perhaps best known for his number one Southern Rock hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia“.
Daniels won the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance in 1979. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on January 24, 2008 and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009.
In this post, I will examine the social media profiles of the Charlie Daniels Band. I will also be making recommendations as to how I believe they can better engage with their audience. To review the results of the audit performed on the social media profiles of the Charlie Daniels Band, please click on the tabs below.
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Facebook: ( page link ) As of the day of this audit, the Facebook profile for the Charlie Daniels Band has 767,682 fans. This report covers the measurement period of the month of 10/24/2013 – 11/23/2013. For an artist that is in the twilight of his career, Charlie Daniels has a very engaged audience. Most brands and businesses would kill to have engagement rates in excess of 13%. That’s awesome and truly underscores why sports and entertainment rule on Facebook.
The Charlie Daniels Band currently averages over 3 Facebook posts per day. In the last 30 days or so, the band published 98 posts that generated over 558,000 engagements for an average of 5,690 engagements per post.
What’s very interesting is that it’s my opinion that the engagement could be even higher. This is because the data tells us that most of the updates published on the page are simple text based status updates.
System wide, data has shown that images and video garner substantially higher engagement. If the CDB published more visual imagery, I believe the engagement rate would more than double!
As for sentiment, 91% of the activity is neutral or positive in nature. This is obviously a by product of the page being frequented by fans of the band. This is despite the vocalizing of the potentially polarizing political and religious convictions of Charlie Daniels.
The ongoing support and great engagement that the CDB enjoys underscores what Simon Sinek has proven to be true. We like to associate with those who believe what we believe. Or in this case, that pretty much defines the nature of a fan.
The optimal posting time is on Monday morning between 8AM and 9:00am. (to see a full size chart, please click on the image below)
Recommendations: Facebook is a performing artists dream marketing tool. Zuckerberg got it right when he called them “fan pages”. Bands can take advantage of Facebook’s interest graph better than any brand can hope to. The people who like band pages are truly fans. There aren’t many true fans of party supply stores.
But the fans of a performing artist are extremely loyal and in the case of the Charlie Daniels Band, can be multi-generational. This is often an anomaly that makes even artists in the size and scope of Charlie Daniels extremely valuable.
I would recommend that the CDB begin posting more photos. I also believe that with a modicum of response commentary, the CDB would see a great value exchange with its audience. The name of the game in entertainment and sports is access. Giving fans an exclusive peek or something as simple as a personal response on Facebook would drive even more engagement.
What I often see, and is the case with the CDB, they are leaving substantial revenue on the table. The CDB audience provides the band with a marketing vehicle that many major brands would want to have access to. The band may want to listen to some of the ways that brands may want to integrate with the CDB audience.
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Twitter: ( page link ) The Charlie Daniels Band currently has 151,619 followers on Twitter and are following 212 people. The time period for this audit was 10/24/2013 – 11/23/2013. Currently the CDB Twitter account is “verified”.
The CDB is averaging over 37 tweets per day tweets per day with very good follower engagement and they have 74% positive or, at minimum, neutral sentiment. During this sample period the CDB gained nearly 3,500 new followers.
CDB followers clicked on nearly 10,000 links that were tweeted by the CDB and nearly 21,000 unique people were responsible for 86,000+ engagements that had the potential reach into the tens of millions. (to see a full size chart, please click on the image below)
As with Facebook, the CDB enjoys an above average, healthy engagement rate with their followers. Nearly 14% of their followers are engaged. (to see a full size chart, please click on the image below)
The best time for engagement on Twitter is between the hour of 9:00AM and 10:00AM. And the top day for tweeting is on Saturday. Over 18% of the mentions that occur on Twitter regarding the CDB take place on Saturday. (to see a full size chart, please click on the image below)
Unlike most celebrities, the CDB actually takes the time to respond to people. It’s amazing, you don’t have to respond to everyone but the mere fact that Charlie Daniels does actually respond, creates an even stronger bond with his audience.
Unlike Facebook, the CDB posts a lot more images on Twitter. People love it! Not sure why the same strategy isn’t employed on Facebook.
The CDB could improve on its already impressive engagement numbers by posting more multi-media to Twitter. Videos, micro-videos and pictures do far better with the band’s Twitter followers. Tweets with images and videos get 79% more engagement.
That can’t be ignored. (to see a full size chart, please click on the image below)
Recommendations: The CDB Twitter profile is robust and engaging. To increase the value exchange with the audience, I would recommend integrating micro-videos and more images. It would be cool to give more exclusive access by taking shots during soundcheck, or backstage or even making a shoutout to a fan from the stage.
Increasing activity and engagement not only serves to provide the band with more loyal fans, but as mentioned earlier, it affords the band substantial revenue generating opportunities with prospective brand partners.
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YouTube: ( page link ) Currently the Charlie Daniels Band has 4,582 subscribers to their YouTube channel. The band has uploaded a total of 42 videos. Total views of all videos is 1,594,094. This gives the Charlie Daniels Band an average of 37,954 views per video.
We may have stumbled upon what may indeed be the social media equivalent of the Achilles Heel for the Charlie Daniels Band.
This audit is being performed on a legend. A man with nearly 50 years of experience in the music business. The CDB doesn’t even have a video published for every year that Charlie Daniels has been performing! Video is the fuel of social media for an entertainer and there are no Vine videos, no Instagram videos and just 42 videos chronicling the career of a legend.
Video of a touring artist should be the cornerstone of a vibrant social media strategy. Obviously the CDB has the resources and the content to build an amazing community on YouTube. In addition, by building a catalog of videos, Facebook and Twitter would benefit as well by implementing a cross promotional strategy.
There are HUGE opportunities simply not being utilized by the CDB. Private messages to fans, awards shows, charitable endeavors, armed forces benefits, tour performance excerpts, …there is basically no shortage of video opportunities available to the CDB.
Recommendations: Immediately begin increasing the video catalog for the CDB. There’s no reason why the video library shouldn’t have as many subscribers as the CDB Facebook page does.
These videos are what the audience wants to see. These songs are what the audience wants to hear and relive. Social media is for the fan. Accordingly, a successful social media profile gives the audience what they want. The CDB is failing on YouTube and in their video creation as a whole as there are no micro-videos to speak of either.
What an amazing promotion we could put together to help the CDB grow its video library…and we could have the entire promotion sponsored by an approved brand. “CDB TV” brought to you by…it’s an idea just waiting to be implemented.
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Instagram: The Charlie Daniels Band doesn’t have an Instagram profile. We couldn’t find one and there wasn’t one presented on their main website. In this day and age, this is unfathomable.
Instagram is arguably one of the, if not the, most appealing social networks and the CDB has no presence on it. I’m not sure who is managing the social operations of the CDB but by not having an Instagram account or a Vine account, the CDB is missing a big opportunity to connect with existing fans and to bring in new fans.
Charlie Daniels is a legend and as a fan of the CDB I for one would be a follower of the band on Instagram. I know for a fact that I’m not alone.
Recommendations: Fortunately, this isn’t an insurmountable problem. The Charlie Daniels Band is iconic. It wouldn’t take long for the CDB to build an active and thriving community on Instagram. I recommend that the CDB begin building an Instagram profile immediately and populate the profile with images and videos.
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Google+: The Charlie Daniels Band doesn’t have a Google+ profile. As a performing artist, this isn’t immediately critical, however with the integration of YouTube with Google, and coupled with the auto-backup of images, it wouldn’t take that much of an effort to build out a great Google+ page for the CDB.
One very big benefit for building out the G+ page for the CDB is the ability to conduct hangouts and stream special opportunity shows and excerpts with fans.
Recommendations: Begin posting exclusive content that the audience can’t find elsewhere. Use Google+ for more long form content than you would normally post on Facebook. Begin using Hangouts to provide the audience with real-time interaction that they can’t get anywhere else. Many people forget about Google+ in their social strategy. They’re making a big mistake.
Google+ is very important and is becoming even more important to an overall strong social media strategy. And as has been stated a number of times herein, the ability to partner with major brands that want to reach the CDB audience is a revenue generation opportunity that isn’t being realized.
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If you would like a free, comprehensive social media audit performed on your social profiles, please click here to contact me.
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