Interactive Award: Edition´10

About a year ago, Krause (Susanne Clermonts) joined Twitter. Where other bands hardly reach 400 followers, Krause has a troop of 1325 followers, and counting. This has a reason: Krause uses Twitter to personally connect with her fans.

This relates to 'The Long Tail', a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. Given the enormous supply of similar products on the market, it's is better to focus on 1000 true fans wanting to buy everything you offer, than to have 10.000 fans that download a track every once in a while. Krause focuses on her relatively small amount of fans, by giving them the feeling they're actually part of her life. This strategy is effective, and can only be carried out by the artist him/herself, not
by the record label.

Krause's tweets are amusing. Her tweets are also informative and sometimes they even start little riots. But most importantly, Krause uses Twitter to personally connect with her fans. She has asked her followers advice when she was working on her debut album 'No Guts, No Glory'. She asks people to give their opinion on her new live show. She asks people to star in the video of 'I Want A Pony', which already got more than 40 entries so far. Her followers can get on guestlists, they get to pick which songs Krause has to play live on national radio, and they can win prizes for example by explaining crazy dreams Krause often has. Krause is a synesthete, she has a taste by every word she hears. She has asked her followers to tell her their real names, after which she gave them a personal description of what their names tasted like. She asks her followers to help her decide whether she should buy a certain stage outfit or not, or if she should cut her hair. And on top of that, her followers also got access to some very funny NSFW pictures.

And the good part is, it is free and very easy accessible. It is also a realistic way to promote music. Krause on Twitter is maintainable, long lasting and thereby very effective. She may not have invented Twitter, but Krause is an example how to effectively use a communication tool to interact with her crowd.

The media is also very keen on Krause's Twitter usage. She got attention for it in De Wereld Draait Door. Krause posted a video on Twitter in which she was eating a herring in a fairly disgusting way. This video had reached the editors of De Wereld Draait Door, and it was broadcasted to a number of 1.2 million people.
Other media like a.o. Nu.nl, 3FM, De Pers, Elle, NRC Next paid attention to Krause's Twitter usage, all media with ten-and hundred thousands of readers/listeners.

Another specific example of how many people Krause can reach by using Twitter. A few weeks ago, Krause posted a tweet about a development concerning her music videos. This tweet has been retweeted by many of her followers, some of them with quite an impressive number of followers themselves. Media experts Andrew Dubber (5000+) and Erwin Blom (6000+) retweeted Krause's tweet, and one of their followers, Gerd Leonhard (10.000+) retweeted it again. So Krause's message has reached 22.300 people within several minutes. Without even counting the retweets that have been done amongst these 22.300 Twitterers.

And it showed, because in the days after Krause got a great deal of media attention. Her story showed up at the front page of a.o. 3voor12 and Bright.nl, both media with respectively 30.000 and 250.000 visitors a day.

Susanne Clermonts

http://www.twitter.com/thisiskrause

http://www.thisiskrause.com

http://www.myspace.com/thisiskrause

http://thisiskrause.hyves.nl

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Krause/27334453163