30 Seconds to Mars soar on social media

30 Seconds to Mars launch their latest album, “Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams” this week. It’s a stonker, full of power songs and contemporary rock anthems destined to be sung at many a music festival and stadium in 2013. It builds on the global appeal and marketing of their highly rated “This is War” album.

There’s lots of material to go to work with when it comes to social media too. The lead singer is a photogenic articulate actor, their sound is crossover between Linkin Park (without the rap), crossed with Marilyn Manson and the drama of Muse and they use all the platforms of social media possible to spread their marketing word with varying degrees of engagement.

30 Second to Mars have also been busy creating a few cool brand partnerships too that have been used in social media to spice things up. The album artwork features the piece 'Isonicotinic Acid Ethyl Ester' from Damien Hirst's Spot Paintings series. Another Hirst piece from the Colour Charts series appears on the CD itself. 

The first single from the album 'Up In The Air' was launched from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station in the SpaceX Dragon Cargo Capsule. Allegedly the first commercial music launch in space!

 

The band also put their full weight behind various charitable projects such as their Echelon project which is driven by 30 Seconds fans and helps raise awareness as well as fund to build homes for families in need around the world.

Let’s start at the top, facebook being the oldest and most used music industry marketing vehicle and one that has the most users is bound to be top and it is with almost 10 million followers on the 30 Seconds page. Nothing you wouldn’t expect on the site, no particular exclusives that can be seen.

While hundreds of thousands are engaging on facebook only a handful are doing so on Google+, not surprising as they only have 13,000 followers. A wasteland indeed!

Twitter has over a million followers but the feed is dominated by adoring fans rather than compelling content!

Instagram has some very cool photos but only just over 100,000 followers to the 30 Seconds account which is a shame as the content here is better than on facebook.

Tumblr doesn’t have much engagement at all with only a few hundred notes on each post which aren’t remarkable.

Pinterest actually has some of the more interesting creative pieces of all the social sites but only has 6,000 followers, a shame considering some of the innovative content here.

The forgotten myspace has almost a million people following the 30 Seconds channel and that has been built up over years with little more than tracks to be played rather than additional compelling content on offer.

Vevo, (which I can’t get in Singapore due to rights issues), has 5 million views of the latest single “Up in the Air” while YouTube was at the centre of a teaser campaign for the single with excerpts available in various creative teased over a period of time. The reward for reaching so many views on Vevo was the release of the new lyric video of the fantastic “Conquistador” which already has over a million views on You Tube.

In Singapore Spotify does not yet have the new album listed but the US/UK versions are more geared up for the release and have apparently been streaming the new album for a while.

Many of the social sites share the same promotion to match a colour buttons from the new album cover and with specific songs which have been released over time. This is a shame as they could have created something different for each site rather than rely on the same or similar content. The NME interview for example is on every platform.  

It must be the greatest challenge of a brand like 30 Seconds with so many social sites to manage and trying to deliver a truly compelling content rich experience for fans – how do you make every social platform unique and engaging?

Interestingly the 30 seconds website highlights only a few of the platforms that they are on, presumably the most important to them: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. No YouTube or Google+.