I continue to feel humbled to have been chosen to handle social media for Guns N Roses Live India Tour. I grew up in southern California in the 80s so needless to say I was a huge fan from the first day I heard them on the radio (or saw them on MTV, I honestly cant remember which came first). It was a dream come true to tour with the band, experience backstage moments & sound checks and to see literally every facet of the ‘sex, drugs and rock n’ roll’ lifestyle played out in India.

Like most marketing and communications executives, social media became tied to my team’s objectives back in 2008. It has now been a part of my daily professional life for little over seven years and I’ll admit that I probably love it and hate it at times in equal doses. It’s both amazingly fun AND frustrating as hell. There are indeed best practices that help us all keep our sanity but then … no one can predict the next ‘Gangnam Style’ or #AlexFromTarget!

Although social media engagement isn’t rocket science, I’ll admit that there were a few important practices (that Id say are now best practices) I hadn’t fully embraced until Guns N’ Roses came into my life! The band was signed for their first-ever India tour and I was brought in mere weeks before the Tour kick-off to do my part to help ensure a solid ROI for the promoter and to:

• Drive awareness of the tour
• Create viral buzz to keep advertising costs down
• Engage fans Encourage online ticket sales and sold-out shows

Connect on an Emotional Level on Social Media

It goes without saying that Guns N’ Roses is a legendary band and it was easy to build excitement for them because they evoke an emotional response from just about anyone from 13 to 75. I remember calling my Mom in the U.S. to tell her about it and she was almost as excited as my 17 year old daughter who immediately asked if I could give her passes! To connect with people on an emotional level means NO hard selling, so for GNR that meant feeding the hearts of the fans hoping to spend one night with this iconic band. In the end this strategy worked, and the promoter almost sold out all three shows.

3 Tips from GNR Fans That Your Company Should Follow:

1. People LOVE To Go Behind-the-Scenes!

The pressure was on when the shows weren’t even close to being sold out! The day before the first show, ticket sales were well below break-even and the client and their partners all wanted less posts for the fans and more on buying tickets. I asked for 12 more hours and convinced them to let me take a photographer to meet the band at 4am in the arrivals terminal at the Bangalore International Airport for a quick interview and paparazzi-style photo shoot.

By 6am a quickie blog post full of real-time personal messages from the band to the fans was launched, as well as dozens of edited and watermarked behind-the-scenes photos that we seeded all around social media. The content went viral almost instantly! Later that afternoon from my tiny cam (and trust me, I shouldn’t quit my day job!) I shot a ton of candid photos and video backstage at the sound check, posting those in real time. That was just what we needed to build up the excitement levels and help sell the remaining tickets!

How it applies to everyday social media marketing:

• Whether you have a B2B or B2C company, your target customers will appreciate seeing life behind the marketing messages of your brand.
• Sharing the fun human side to a company engenders the brand to people on an emotional level. That’s why people love them … because they are 100% original and REAL (not sanitised by the marketing team or an ad agency).
• Not every photo or video you post needs to come from a pro. People are smart enough to see when something is staged or when it is a truly candid moment so feel free to let loose sometimes and upload that spontaneous iPhone pic.
• It absolutely does work! Ive seen behind-the-scenes content from many companies garner the most likes and engagement on social media feeds time and again. Just be sure its not always CSR related and that you really show the fun side of your business, people working in diverse roles (not just C-levels) and true candid moments from time to time.

2. Everyone Wants to Be a Rock Star!

Bangalore was the first leg of the tour and we needed to create some buzz to help sell out the next two cities, (which weren’t close to being sold out yet), so I decided to create an impromptu ‘best of Bangalore’ video on the day of that first show. I shot footage backstage, of the fans queuing to enter, the die-hards running to claim a place in the front row, fans enjoying the show (my daughter is even in there!), sponsor branding and of course of GN’R.

I met my video editors at 1am and in 6 hours they quickly created a video that showcased the sponsors, the band and most importantly… the fans! Thousands and thousands of fans…even those in the cheap seats! Within hours of launching it we had 1000s of Bangalore fans tagging themselves and enthusiastically sharing the video on their wall and with friends, as well as our sponsors sharing the video across their social media channels. The Mumbai and Delhi fans loved the preview, and ticket sales increased!

How it applies to everyday social media marketing:

• Customers, employees, partners and the key players in your industry are no different to GN’R fans – they enjoy being noticed and appreciated, too.
• Content goes viral quickly because the people showcased will share it and tag themselves (or the company), extending brand awareness for you.
• Sharing a customer testimonial (always include a photo!), your CSR activities, a case study featuring a top partner or customer, or even the user-generated content from contests will always be a big hit. Those are all social media gold.
• Peers and competitors will always sneak a look to see what’s going on and trending with you!
• #Tip for increasing EVENT ROI: be sure to take photos and videos but never make it all about you. Capture the ‘scene’ and the other booths and speakers … this ensures your content stays ‘social’ and it will definitely be shared more than content you post that is all about ‘me, me, me’!

3. Even When Sales Are Down, Don’t Be Salesy

No one appreciates a brand or company that constantly posts ‘we sell this, we sell that’ or ‘we are located here, we have shops there’ or ‘hey, look at our regurgitated marketing and web content again’! Be a brand people love to follow by surprising them, by being genuine and by treating your followers like dear friends instead of a potential revenue stream. Thats the way to build a social army of evangelists

Finding original ideas and creating ‘social’ campaigns to build excitement and warm hearts translated into more sales than pushing a bombarding stream of ‘don’t miss out, buy your tickets today’ posts every few hours.

The behind-the-scenes content helped to sell out Bangalore, then those impromptu videos of Bangalore and later Mumbai did the same for the Mumbai and Delhi shows respectively. The man-hours it took to create them were nothing compared to the benefits they generated. Seeing how GNR prepares for shows made the fans felt connected to the band members, they were genuinely engaged, and they shared, commented and expressed their excitement all over social media … resulting in ticket sales!

How it applies to everyday social media marketing:

• Content marketing now reigns KING in the social media world so embrace it by sharing genuinely helpful insights, tricks of the trade, use cases and advice from thought leaders within your organisation.
• Think about the kind of proprietary stats and data your company has and figure out how that information – without compromising your business – can shine a light on a topic of interest to potential new clients. Build a campaign around the concept, with an infographic, a trends video, social flyers, blog posts and articles to really maximise the investment in pulling it all together.
• People connect on social media to engage, to play voyeur or to be entertained so DO give them the fun stuff, exclusive discount promotions and exciting news…just not all the time (never be too me, me, me).
• Brands have the unique opportunity to let their personalities shine on social media and it generally takes just as long to post something of true interest to followers as it does to post 100% salesy marketing messages so ask yourself does this benefit our followers or just us?

After one month, we still had less than 42,000 likes on the new Tour page but we were reaching 3.8 million fans during that final week before the tour kicked off. I always try to remember this when Im frustrated over a Facebook Page not growing faster. Sometimes its not about the likes 😉

One thing is certain, every company can be a rock star on social media! Because of the nature of the GNR project and the demographic of our audience, Facebook was the most important platform to help spread the word to fans and Im proud to say that with only $2,700 spent in advertising, the viral buzz of the page averaged 3.8 million ‘reached’ during the peak weeks. Whether you have a software or financial services company, a marketing agency, retail business or a yoga studio, the same principles of social media used for GN’R apply to you. It just takes consistency, a little tweaking of the platforms and some original content to find the perfect mix for your business!